Playing One civ through the Ages

[UWHabs]

The biggest annoyance for me with the age transition (even with continuity) is that it resets all your resources and unit orders so that the first few minutes of any age become boring micro. I don't mind the pause in gameplay too much.

It's a good chance to reset your empire, but yeah, sometimes I've had a play session where it can take a bit to choose legacies, go back and forth to the attribute tree to pick out what you want, then you get into the game and you have to re-convert your cities, re-slot resources, re-slot policies, figure out where your troops are, scroll around the empire to see if you got lucky on the new resources or not, scan around to see if there's a cluster of resources that might make for a good settlement spot, etc...

 

[Gori the Grey]

Then what?

Then make it your fundamental task to make a game rather than to devise game mechanics to fit one or another approach to history-telling.

In this case, you would favor continuity, because game-players generally like to pick one game identity and play it through the whole of a game (e.g. you don't start out as the top hat in Monopoly and then at some point switch over to the Scottie).

In other words, how historians happen to be going about their task at a particular moment is largely irrelevant, or at least far secondary, to your concerns as a game designer.

 

[Leucarum]

e.g. you don't start out as the top hat in Monopoly and then at some point switch over to the Scottie).

Of course not, it's all about the thimble to iron meta

 

[Siptah]

In this case, you would favor continuity, because game-players generally like to pick one game identity and play it through the whole of a game (e.g. you don't start out as the top hat in Monopoly and then at some point switch over to the Scottie).

If top hat gets cheaper prices to buy land, iron gets to build cheaper, and scottie earns more from accommodating travelers, most people would want to change though. Especially in a game about mindless capitalism and snowballing

 

[Gori the Grey]

The effectiveness of the slogan "Build a Civilization to Stand the Test of Time" at capturing the appeal of Civ games shows that the franchise is heavily committed to the approach to history-telling that emphasizes continuity (whatever the esteem for that approach among contemporary historians). Not just the "stand the test of time," but the "a" perhaps even more powerfully.*

You cleverly extend my analogy, Siptah, but no one would ever have played Monopoly if those were its rules. The Civ franchise would never have got off the ground if its initial slogan was "Connect a succession of three maximally-advantageous mini-civilizations."

More important to a game's design is that a player's path to victory be easily comprehensible than that it maximize the opportunities for meta. That latter can come in the course of things, and did in 1-6.

*notice the "a" had to become a "something" in the new slogan.

 

[Crashdummy]

We cant ignore the fact that Civilization is a franchise established for over 3 decades, not a new game

Just like Halo failed when it tried to go sandbox, and Fallout failed when they tried to change the identity of the franchise, just like Dragon Age failed when tye tried to turn it into a kind of Howarts Legacy, Civilization has to learn about it. When you have a established franchise, there are things you cant do, you cant go against the core of your franchise, doesnt matter which idea you think you have

I think civ switching wouldnt work in any 4x, but i am 100% sure that it wont work in the Civilization franchise. In the Monopoly case, if Hasbro suddenly decides to change Monopoly into a different game (mechanically speaking), then it would fail

 

[Evie]

The idea that advertising bon mots (which is all that slogans are, not some kind of design vision or mission) should define and limit what the game is and can be is such a mind-boggling one to me. Marketing should not have that much power over the game.

"Gotta catch em all" has never stopped pokémon from not having "em all" in every single game.

And I think that, up til Civ IV or so, Civ could easily have done the switch with no more than some grumbling. But brand identitification - where people build their identities around the brands and products they like - has grown to freakishly intense levels across the board in recent years (it's by no mean news, but it used to be far more limited to a narrow number of fans of a narrow number of brands), to the point that people take any meaningful change to the "brand identity" as not just a game they don't like, but an assault upon their very identity, deserving of the most intense retaliation possible. Which makes it almost impossible to make any major brand changes anymore.

Again, the whole "people take things too seriously" right there.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The effectiveness of the slogan "Build a Civilization to Stand the Test of Time" at capturing the appeal of Civ games shows that the franchise is heavily committed to the approach to history-telling that emphasizes continuity (whatever the esteem for such approaches among contemporary historians). Not just the "stand the test of time," but the "a" perhaps even more powerfully.*

*notice the "a" had to become a "something" in the new slogan.

I haven't seen any research showing the effectiveness of the slogan., especially in as vague field as "capturing the appeal". Btw, the slogan changed in time (it started from "Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time") and Firaxis used the original version of the slogan in their original Civ7 gameplay reveal video.

We cant ignore the fact that Civilization is a franchise established for over 3 decades, not a new game

No questions here, that's why we have controversy about civilization switch feature. But if problem exists only in comparison with previous games of the franchise, doesn't it means the problem is not objective?

 

[Gori the Grey]

The idea that advertising bon mots (which is all that slogans are, not some kind of design vision or mission) should define and limit what the game is and can be is such a mind-boggling one to me.

But that's why I phrased the point the way I did: that the slogan has proven effective at capturing the appeal that the game has for its players: "Yes, that I what I like about this game: that in it, I can build a civilization that stands the test of time." If with each iteration you are drawn to use that as your marketing pitch, it is because you have found your way to a slogan that pithily expresses the formula of your game. And it therefore should have some status within the design vision of any new iteration, and yes even a limiting effect on what experiments with the formula you sanction.

As the Civ 7 designers have found out the hard way.

If I say 99 44/100% pure, you know what soap brand I am describing, even if I don't name it. That was the thing that that soap put on offer that turned out to resonate with customers. Nobody at that soap company should say, "hey, let's start making a soap that lathers up well and try to sell that instead."

 

[Evie]

I stand by what I said: up until around the Civ IV-V transition, nobody would have cared, because the level of freakish brand identity that we see today wouldn't have existed then.

It's not about slogans. It's about people having freaking unhealthy relationships to the products they consume, and being entirely unable to just walk away when a brand goes in a different direction from them, but instead feeling the need to throw up miles and miles of "this game isn't for me" bad reviews and to stand on every soapbox they can find to denounce the crime against themselves the devs have comitted.

At this point, fans identify with the games they love so hard that they would rather preserve the version they knew as a dead fossil rather than allow the game to change away from *their* idea of it. What kind of freakishly messed up mentality is that?

 

[Gori the Grey]

I don't think it's freakish. And I don't think it's a recent phenomenon. I think it's the most natural thing in the world to want more of a kind of thing that you've previously liked.

It's not about slogans, except secondarily--except in the fact that the slogan to which Civ found its way expresses what people like about the game.

The more I think about it, the more I think their needing to change the slogan is the thing that should have been their caution flag. There was some point in the development process when they said to themselves, "Guy's we won't be able to use the slogan 'build a Civilization to stand the test of time' since in this new game people are stringing together three civilizations." Someone then should have said "I wonder if this change is a good idea, then, if we have to discard a slogan that has encapsulated the appeal of the game for so long?"

 

[Evie]

There's wanting more of a kind of thing than you previously liked, and there's lashing out at anyone who gives you anything else until you get what you want (even if that means taking away the things other people like).

We're firmly in the second category here. Not people walking away from a new game that's not for them (which is a natural and healthy thing), but people demanding their way and lashing out when they don't get it.

The phenomenon is not wholly new, but it has grown *considerably* more widespread and intense over the past two decades or so.

 

[Evolena]

But it's also the job of game designers to propose new things, and to have the right to not always appeal to everyone, be them old fans. Otherwise, you end up only having always just more of the same, no innovation ever, because if Civ 6 was a success then it's safer to just do Civ 6.2, Civ 6.3, Civ 6.4...

 

[Gori the Grey]

No, I understand that, @Evolena, and it is absolutely a challenge to the game designers to provide something that players will find new and fresh.

So it's a tricky balance to strike (a point I've conceded many a time in these discussions).

But I would still say that the moment that it occurred to them, "you know, we won't be able to use our signature slogan" should have sent up a huge caution flag: that they were at risk of getting that balance wrong in the opposite direction. (As, again, they have discovered that they did.)

 

[Evolena]

Then Evie's right. Don't misunderstand me, some level of criticism if right, necessary and healthy, but the level of entitlement of some gamer towards what the games (plural bc not only for Civ 7) should be is excessive and may end up detrimental to everyone.

 

[stealth_nsk]

But I would still say that the moment that it occurred to them, "you know, we won't be able to use our signature slogan" should have sent up a huge caution flag

But they did. As I said, the original gameplay reveal video used the original slogan.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Well, I'm not approaching the matter in that way. I'm not saying Gori the Grey is entitled to a Civ game with just one civ through the whole game.

I'm saying, "If they have recognized that they made a misstep, here's where in the process they might have realized that it was a misstep."

The old slogan is conspicuously absent from the original teaser:

And the new one was featured at least as early as this (whenever this was) (1:20):

 

[Leucarum]

Ultimately we have more ways to register discontent with a product than we did in the pre-internet era. Or just otherwise engage with it than we did. How would people have even acted entitled towards the earlier civ games?

 

[Evie]

...Civ III and IV was well into the internet era, Leucarum.

Gori ; it's quite likely true that you, specifically, haven't engaged in the behavior I describe. Certainly your posts here have been measured and respectful. I'm not attempting to accuse you of doing wrong, I'm arguing with you as to the overall nature of the backlash, and its intensity, as a whole. That doesn't mean what I say describe everyone who is unhappy with the design decisions, and every reaction to it. No one can do that.

Even in the past, there would certainly have been posts saying "I don't like these aspects of the new game". And people deciding, after reflection, not to buy the new game because it didn't feel "for them". And other people posting their criticism but deciding that, overall, the game was still for them. That's normal levels of response. Saying something isn't for you is fine. Not buying it is more than fine. I expressed my disappointment with some aspects of Civ III in the past. I skipped Civ V at the time. I haven't bought the latest Pokémon game (and barely played the previous one).

But I didn't make a show about it. I just went and played other games, while waiting for my issues to be fixed (or the game to go on sale at a price point that fit my appreciation of it). Lots of games out there. It's not that hard finding one you'll like, if the new version of your favorite series isn't your cup of tea.

But the "This product in MY SERIES is not being made to my specifications which is a personal attack that deserves lashing out at the creator to hurt their product sales beyond just me not buying it, and to make them feel bad about daring to not give me what I want" level of backlash? That used to be the work of a slim minority within each fandom, easily ignored. But over the 2000s, 2010s, it grew into something extremely normalized, that a lot of people assume is the right way of reacting to not getting what you want.

And it's scary. Far beyond its impact on Civ, because it doesn't stop there.

 

[stealth_nsk]

And the new one was featured at least as early as this (whenever this was) (1:20):

New one and old one are actually part of the same slogan, look at 23:40

EDIT: The full version is "Build an empire to stand the test of time, build something wonderful, something powerful, something prosperous, build something you believe in"

P.S. It's like slogans built in layers