Starting to feel a lot of sympathy for Civ5 devs

[jjkrause84]

The more I learn about the game and the code (which I DO NOT understand in any meaningful way) the more I am FIRMLY convinced that Civ5 was a rush job...pobably owing to budget concerns.

It doesn't make my experience any less 'blah' but I am beginning to feel more inclined to overlook the endless faults/omissions from the game in the light of the duress that the dev team probably experienced. Lay-offs, tight schedule, etc. It looks like they really WANTED to put all the stuff in there thta people have been missing but just ran out of time and money, which is sad. I know it would break my heart to work on something for 5 years and then have to release it in sub-obtimal format because of 'business' stuff [this is assuming that that is what happened].

Being a crass, ivory-tower elitist I can have a secret soft-spot for comments such as "Civ deserves the guy who went to Harvard, not the guy who went to Towson" [not an actual quote, but an existing sentiment I've seen expressed] and other unfair personal swipes at Shafer (a guy I've never met in person...probably true for most people here). I truly believe in blaming the guy in charge but to imply that he isn't up to snuff intellectually is not only a bit personal (and unnecessary) but is also totally beyond our ability to assess. I agree that it looks bad on paper but that doesn't mean that he wasn't up to the job and/or that it was the reason we have the product we have today.

I dunno. I'm still disappointed with the game for many reasons (and the list is GROWING! I didn't expect that to happen....) but I'm beginnign to think we should try to mentally cut the guys a little slack here and there. I get the impression that they weren't working under the best conditions.

 

[Biz_]

it's a pretty high-budget title as far as strategy games go

 

[Palfouri]

I feel sympathy because they probably have to visit this forum every day and get flak from people who think it's still 1988 and PC games are released with no bugs (it's a good thing no one here seems to play Paradox Int.'s games), or people who think they are especially qualified to determine whether or not vanilla release-week Civ V is a good game and will ever become a good game, while compliments are drowned out in an unending torrent of elitist tears.

 

[Thormodr]

I agree with you. It was a rush job and I do feel sorry for Firaxis.

2K Games who are always teetering on the verge of bankruptcy likely prodded Firaxis to release the game way too early. I'd say the game needed at least another 6 months of development time.

It's a shame that Firaxis wasn't owned by Blizzard.

Anyway, I think people should be directing their criticism more towards 2K Games for their horrible marketing job and their short term thinking which lead to the early cash grab because of their financial difficulties.

Firaxis and Civ lovers certainly deserve better.

 

[So?]

I agree with you. It was a rush job and I do feel sorry for Firaxis.

2K Games who are always teetering on the verge of bankruptcy likely prodded Firaxis to release the game way too early. I'd say the game needed at least another 6 months of development time.

It's a shame that Firaxis wasn't owned by Blizzard.

Anyway, I think people should be directing their criticism more towards 2K Games for their horrible marketing job and their short term thinking which lead to the early cash grab because of their financial difficulties.

Firaxis and Civ lovers certainly deserve better.

Screw Blizzard. Blizzard's evil nowadays, I wish they were a part of Valve!

 

[UKScud]

The thing is that in the long run I just don't see releasing unfinished products as a sound business plan to encourage people to purchase future products...

For myself, over the past couple of years I've been so disappointed with a number of products that just haven't lived up to expectations because they have been released unfinished. Is it so unreasonable to expect a quality product from a developer these days. Do the "money people" have so much control that the developers have no option but to risk ruining their reputation as the developers of Civ5 have. [my opinion]

Let me put it this way. If the first Civ had been released in the same condition as Civ5 would you ever have bought another "Sid" product again?

I know I wouldn't...

but then again I was expecting the development of an excellent strategy game, not something to satisfy the button clicking facebook brigade, and the bank balance of the "money people"...it doesn't bode well for the strategy game market I'm afraid.

 

[Thormodr]

Screw Blizzard. Blizzard's evil nowadays, I wish they were a part of Valve!

Well, whichever developer has the backbone to wait until a game is ready. I don't know much about Valve to be honest. I at least respect Blizzard for their quality games.

 

[UKScud]

Anyway, I think people should be directing their criticism more towards 2K Games for their horrible marketing job

...and their short term thinking which lead to the early cash grab because of their financial difficulties.

Horrible marketing job? It's the best selling game..and they managed to sell it to us half finished. I'd say they did a great marketing job...especially not releasing any kind of demo until a few days before the release. If the demo had been out there for a few more weeks what effect would that have had on the sales?

The thing is...whilst I have every sympathy for the developers, why didn't they dig their feet in? Do they really have no control over the quality of the product?

 

[tcjsavannah]

I just came in the thread to say that Towson's not that bad. They're better than UMBC.

 

[So?]

Well, whatever developer has the backbone to wait until a game is ready. I don't know much about Valve to be honest. I at least respect Blizzard for their quality games.

They're not really bad -- I just don't trust them as much with activision in the picture.

Valve's still independent, but both of them have a reputation for not releasing games until they are feature complete and reasonably stable.

 

[Palfouri]

The thing is that in the long run I just don't see releasing unfinished products as a sound business plan to encourage people to purchase future products...

For myself, over the past couple of years I've been so disappointed with a number of products that just haven't lived up to expectations because they have been released unfinished. Is it so unreasonable to expect a quality product from a developer these days. Do the "money people" have so much control that the developers have no option but to risk ruining their reputation as the developers of Civ5 have. [my opinion]

Let me put it this way. If the first Civ had been released in the same condition as Civ5 would you ever have bought another "Sid" product again?

I know I wouldn't...

but then again I was expecting the development of an excellent strategy game, not something to satisfy the button clicking facebook brigade, and the bank balance of the "money people"...it doesn't bode well for the strategy game market I'm afraid.

If computers were as diverse when Civ I came out as they are now, you can bet Civ I would have issues. It's very difficult to release a game that will run perfectly on every computer now because that would entail making a game that will run on the dinosaurs that, judging by the myriad problems, it seems a quarter the board still uses, and bleeding edge computers. Not to mention the amount of components that could causes compatibility issues.

 

[WaKKO151]

The thing is that in the long run I just don't see releasing unfinished products as a sound business plan to encourage people to purchase future products...

For myself, over the past couple of years I've been so disappointed with a number of products that just haven't lived up to expectations because they have been released unfinished. Is it so unreasonable to expect a quality product from a developer these days. Do the "money people" have so much control that the developers have no option but to risk ruining their reputation as the developers of Civ5 have. [my opinion]

Let me put it this way. If the first Civ had been released in the same condition as Civ5 would you ever have bought another "Sid" product again?

I know I wouldn't...
but then again I was expecting the development of an excellent strategy game, not something to satisfy the button clicking facebook brigade, and the bank balance of the "money people"...it doesn't bode well for the strategy game market I'm afraid.

I have heard from several un-named sources that they play tested the game but still released the pre-beta game anyway. Hopefully they will patch it over to the real version slowly but surely.

 

[Junuxx]

Anyway, I think people should be directing their criticism more towards 2K Games for their horrible marketing job and their short term thinking which lead to the early cash grab because of their financial difficulties.

Firaxis and Civ lovers certainly deserve better.

Yeah the pre-release marketing and (lack of) hype up was really weird and weak compared to Civ 4's

 

[DaveGold]

I don't think it's that far off the required quality for release. It wouldn't take that long to have added some things like 'automated workers leave existing improvements' and 'automated movement avoids trespassing through city states', simple things that are expected and we know will be fixed eventually. 'Fixing' the AI is too open ended to be considered as a requirement for release, it might never happen.

The thing is...whilst I have every sympathy for the developers, why didn't they dig their feet in? Do they really have no control over the quality of the product?

Not much control no. The only way the developers can stop something going out is if it's unsafe or they can persuade customers to press for a delay. You rarely want to tell your customers that your product is so bad they need to wait longer for it.

 

[YoHo]

The thing is that in the long run I just don't see releasing unfinished products as a sound business plan to encourage people to purchase future products...

But this is the model for the entire PC game industry and has been for over a decade.

Heck, the model has even creeped into the console market. Anyone Playing the unbalanced MP junk that is Halo Reach? And they just announced a big patch for that game which came out a week before CivV.

Heck, I still think Master's of Magic is one of the Top 5 4x games ever made and not only was it nigh unplayable with Bugs at launch AND the most finicky memory config/bootdisk game ever, but it was NEVER completely fixed and even in its broken state is probably the only 4x game people install DOSBOX for.


But then, I'm a genrous guy when it comes to these games.
I still play Star Wars Rebellion, so for me to hate a game, it would have to like steal my identity and murder family members.

 

[Lay_Lay]

Sure, we want to blame the guy in charge, but do we even know who that is?
Could a better leader have gotten the game funded properly? Convinced the firm to invest more in Civ5 development?
These questions cannot be answered unless you are an insider.

 

[Adam7Eight]

No sympathy from me.

 

[Doctor Phibes]

I think you've probably put your finger on it, OP, and I sympathise as a developer too (though not in games). But indeed, as UKScud says, this was in one sense a brilliant marketing job. Focus on the pretty graphics and the hype and you have not merely sustained but maybe expanded the market, while the old lags like me will buy it anyway.

But at the expense of one key concept - 'brand loyalty'. I, for example, pre-ordered Civ5 sight unseen, didn't even play the demo. Brand loyalty. But that just went down the toilet - I won't be doing that again, I'm going to be scrutinising future releases very carefully, perhaps hoping to pick them up cheap when they're a bit beyond their sell-by date. So this means balancing new market share against discarding *guaranteed* future sales. Now maybe in strictly business terms they have this right, it's possible. Or maybe not - branding is a mysterious thing and any cachet you have spent decades building up can disappear almost overnight if you put a foot wrong - like delivering shoddy goods, for example.

Which goes back to the OP's point. I do know a little bit about logistical programming from doing GIS and, given the short-termist view I am seeing, I sincerely doubt that the tactical AI, which is crippled as a result of 1upt, will be fixed. It is just not a trivial programming issue [1]. In fact, in a sane world, the tactical engine would be the first code laid down and everything else built around it. It's likely that the team (again my sympathy) had months and months if not year's worth of development planned on exactly this core issue, but it's obvious that that got canned.

It's all very sad, basically.

[1] It's actually a really interesting one. The one good thing about this game is that it has me thinking about this sort of algorithmic problem. Haven't been there for ages.

 

[UKScud]

You rarely want to tell your customers that your product is so bad they need to wait longer for it.

Fair enough...but the alternative is what has happened which is that a sub-par product is released which ruins the reputation of the developers...

I'm not a programmer or anything like that, but I'd never want to own up to having Civ5 on my C.V. Perhaps it's time the developers started to grow some...

...and think about the quality of the product and their own reputations.

 

[Generals3]

The more I learn about the game and the code (which I DO NOT understand in any meaningful way) the more I am FIRMLY convinced that Civ5 was a rush job...pobably owing to budget concerns.

It doesn't make my experience any less 'blah' but I am beginning to feel more inclined to overlook the endless faults/omissions from the game in the light of the duress that the dev team probably experienced. Lay-offs, tight schedule, etc. It looks like they really WANTED to put all the stuff in there thta people have been missing but just ran out of time and money, which is sad. I know it would break my heart to work on something for 5 years and then have to release it in sub-obtimal format because of 'business' stuff [this is assuming that that is what happened].

Being a crass, ivory-tower elitist I can have a secret soft-spot for comments such as "Civ deserves the guy who went to Harvard, not the guy who went to Towson" [not an actual quote, but an existing sentiment I've seen expressed] and other unfair personal swipes at Shafer (a guy I've never met in person...probably true for most people here). I truly believe in blaming the guy in charge but to imply that he isn't up to snuff intellectually is not only a bit personal (and unnecessary) but is also totally beyond our ability to assess. I agree that it looks bad on paper but that doesn't mean that he wasn't up to the job and/or that it was the reason we have the product we have today.

I dunno. I'm still disappointed with the game for many reasons (and the list is GROWING! I didn't expect that to happen....) but I'm beginnign to think we should try to mentally cut the guys a little slack here and there. I get the impression that they weren't working under the best conditions.

Nono , we should simply redirect the rage to the Executives. Whenever i blame a certain video game brand i don't blame the real developers but the guys above . They are the ones who usually set tight schedules and budgets or lay off half the team (or all three in EALA's case) .