The hate for Civ7 will end the series, if not soon then eventually

[stealth_nsk]

I’m tired of triple A execs thinking that all video games have to be GTA online or Fortnite. I don’t know what’s going on with Wall Street that this requirement has been imposed on gaming. Civ would have had an audience and made money.

It can, but for how long? People of our generation are not born anymore, we just die. And most of us play less and less video games. Clinging on older audience is a clear path to decline.

And at least Firaxis took efforts to make the game as compatible with old fans interest as possible.

 

[tman2000]

Nope. All I'm saying over and over again is that we don't have information whether Civ7 will be a success or not, because metrics we have don't touch the key points yet.

This is bordering oddly close to the - invoking Star Wars again - argument from 8 years ago that “Oh what Star Wars fans, you thought Star Wars was for you?”

How long until some Firaxis exec on blue sky starts blaming racism for why the game failed (they have to admit it flopped first). It’s like there’s a playbook for controlled demolition of a user base.

I’ll bow out here

 

[stealth_nsk]

You said that accommodations for new audiences might alienate old fans, that’s unhappiness with change. We’re not unhappy with change we’re upset over an unfinished garbage UI and terrible insulting features like the modern age cultural victory.

Some of this isn’t that subjective.

That's true. Both UI and cultural issues are one of the most widely accepted problems of Civ7, that's why they got the most attention in the patches.

Again your argument is that there’s this secret massive console base of new casual fans that will give the game massive success. Beyond wishful thinking, this is also indicative of just contempt for the former core audience.

Again, you claim I said things I never said. The things I said are:
1. Firaxis is targeting console audience. That was clearly communicated by Firaxis in their media.
2. We don't know the size of console audience, because we have no reliable stats on them.

Just this. "Don't know" means "don't know", nothing else. I'm sorry to put emphasis here, but it's not the first time I have problems with other people misunderstanding the "don't know" not only on this forum or this thread, but even on this page.

 

[Ornen]

We're walking in circles. That's the 3rd thread where it was already explained in details while player count is not really relevant

ok, I think it is relevant. so thanks for your input

 

[Ornen]

This is not what I would call clearly communicated. It’s oddly specific knowledge of business strategy.

I’m tired of triple A execs thinking that all video games have to be GTA online or Fortnite. I don’t know what’s going on with Wall Street that this requirement has been imposed on gaming. Civ would have had an audience and made money. It was never going to be Call of Duty

Thanks for revealing to us though that Civ 7 was ruined because it was designed to be a multiplayer console game for short attention span young people.

Oops looks like a turn based strategy game about history didn’t capture that audience

console gamers are not strictly essential for the game's success, but it's a (relatively) low cost way to bring the game to a new audience.

most of the growth in video game audiences in the past 10 years has been on PC & mobile. console gamers actually make up a smaller slice of the pie than they have in many decades — I'm talking since like the SNES era. international audience (especially China) is a much bigger deal for a game like Civ at this point, and the series has been making major inroads on that front.

anyways I don't know how much the 'well now it's on console' argument has come up here. to the extent that it has, my answer is this: the PC game audience has grown astronomically in recent years, and is now larger than it has ever been.

 

[user746383]

I'm not saying there's necessarily a secret invisible mass of happy players somewhere on an island somewhere that offset all the evidence we can actually see, I'm Just Asking Questions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions

 

[stealth_nsk]

I'm not saying there's necessarily a secret invisible mass of happy players somewhere on an island somewhere that offset all the evidence we can actually see, I'm Just Asking Questions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Asking_Questions

Trying to oppose formal logic with conspiracy theory accusations is quite weak thing to do. Claims of Civ7 being failure without any real evidence look like conspiracy theory to me too (or, at least, wishful thinking), but I don't use it as argument, because it's counterproductive for discussion.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Let's get to the facts. Failure or success of the game depends on its sales and we have the following data on Civ7 sales:
1. 2K financial report claiming Civ7 has record presale number by the end of the last year
2. An article claiming in the first weak after release, Civ7 was the second best selling game for PlayStation in UK
3. Estimations from some gaming sites, which give number of Steam sales as about 1M with huge spread. Those estimations weren't updated since their creation in the first month.

As far as I know we don't have any other information on Civ7 sales and none of the sources gives a slightest hint of failure.

Now, we have a lot of indirect data, which could potentially correlate with sales, but we have zero information about this correlation. Moreover, those gaming sites already did it - they already used number of simultaneous Steam players in their approximation of initial sales.

P.S. Just for those who missed like 20 previous messages. I don't claim Civ7 will be a success, I just don't see any proofs it will be a failure.

 

[user746383]

Thanks for the summary of your points, can you connect them to the topic of this thread so I can understand better?

 

[aelf]

Whether or not they are criticized, the point I was trying to make was that you could remove civ switching and ages from VII, and you still have enough changes to justify calling it Civ VII and not Civ VI 2.0.

But the OP refers to more than just civ switching and ages. The unhappiness of the playerbase in the aggregate isn't confined to one or two changes. Everything should be taken into account. About the only things that aren't controversial are a few peripheral changes like commanders and navigable rivers.

There isn't a clear line demarcating whether something is a 2.0 version of the previous iteration, but if you take away the changes made in Civ7 one by one, it will eventually become Civ 6 2.0. And the bigger the changes that you take away, the more movement the needle makes towards that mark. In any case, it isn't necessary to define an ontological point where it would become 2.0. All you need is the perception in the market that it's just Civ 6 2.0, and as the producer, you could only guess as to what that point is when you set off to make the game.

Again, the OP isn't focusing on a single issue or even a single group's perspective. It's not about being positive or negative or taking a stance towards player reception - something people keep failing to understand. It's taking a step back from the personal to analyse the big picture using concepts such as the product/franchise lifecycle. And the assumptions that it makes shouldn't be controversial, to wit:

1. People tend to be resistant towards change (for something they're familiar with).
2. Nothing in the market lasts forever (and everything will eventually be replaced by something else).

To restate the main thesis of the OP differently, the more popular a product or franchise is, the larger the commercial risk that Assumption 1 poses. Conversely, the less open producers are to innovating and making changes to a product or franchise, the more likely Assumption 2 will catch up to them.

And the corollary to that is the pushback that Civ7 is receiving represents a realisation of this phenomenon.

 

[user746383]

But the OP refers to more than just civ switching and ages. The unhappiness of the playerbase in the aggregate isn't confined to one or two changes. Everything should be taken into account. About the only things that aren't controversial are a few peripheral changes like commanders and navigable rivers.

There isn't a clear line demarcating whether something is a 2.0 version of the previous iteration, but if you take away the changes made in Civ7 one by one, it will eventually become Civ 6 2.0. And the bigger the changes that you take away, the more movement the needle makes towards that mark. In any case, it isn't necessary to define an ontological point where it would become 2.0. All you need is the perception in the market that it's just Civ 6 2.0, and as the producer, you could only guess as to what that point is when you set off to make the game.

Again, the OP isn't focusing on a single issue or even a single group's perspective. It's not about being positive or negative or taking a stance towards player reception - something people keep failing to understand. It's taking a step back from the personal to analyse the big picture using concepts such as the product/franchise lifecycle. And the assumptions that it makes shouldn't be controversial, to wit:

1. People tend to be resistant towards change (for something they're familiar with).
2. Nothing in the market lasts forever (and everything will eventually be replaced by something else).

To restate the main thesis of the OP differently, the more popular a product or franchise is, the larger the commercial risk that Assumption 1 poses. Conversely, the less open producers are to innovating and making changes to a product or franchise, the more likely Assumption 2 will catch up to them.

And the corollary to that is the pushback that Civ7 is receiving represents a realisation of this phenomenon.

Did you actually post this with the wrong account? Or why are you referring to yourself in the third person?

 

[Gori the Grey]

Thinking about it, it looks like Civ as franchise starts using the strategy of iterating between revolutionary and evolutionary versions. Which, in the ling run is quite good.

This might be one way of framing it

IF

the company has the honesty to say "our 'revolutionary change' in Civ VII turned out to be a misstep. We didn't realize how important it was to fans of our franchise for the game experience to involve playing one civ through the entirety of history. Starting with Civiliz8ion, we will regard that as a fundamental aspect of the franchise."

Because then (if we can assume that there will be a long run), this revolution will have had a kind of value in the long run of the franchise: identifying a direction not to go..

 

[queenpea]

2. We don't know the size of console audience, because we have no reliable stats on them.

Just this. "Don't know" means "don't know", nothing else. I'm sorry to put emphasis here, but it's not the first time I have problems with other people misunderstanding the "don't know" not only on this forum or this thread, but even on this page.

Isn't it safe to assume that the console audience is smaller than the PC audience?

 

[Noble Zarkon]

1. People tend to be resistant towards change (for something they're familiar with).
2. Nothing in the market lasts forever (and everything will eventually be replaced by something else).

To restate the main thesis of the OP differently, the more popular a product or franchise is, the larger the commercial risk that Assumption 1 poses. Conversely, the less open producers are to innovating and making changes to a product or franchise, the more likely Assumption 2 will catch up to them.

Nice TL;DR (and I'm not being sarcastic!).

 

[Marla_Singer]

1. People tend to be resistant towards change (for something they're familiar with).

That's the typical fallacy we usually think when we are pissed because our "genius idea" is poorly received. Mario Kart is being changed as an open world on Switch 2. Do you hear anyone saying "oh that's awful! They are changing it"? No. It actually stimulates people's curiosity. Why? Because that's a good idea.

As long as you'll give credit to that idea that people are resistant to any change, just because it's a change, you won't be able to find any answer to your questions.

 

[kaspergm]

Did you actually post this with the wrong account? Or why are you referring to yourself in the third person?

To be fair, the term "OP" can refer to the post as well as the person, I reckon?

Either way, following this discussion from the sideline is hugely entertaining (and I know I'm being cynical here).

That's the typical fallacy we usually think when we are pissed because our "genius idea" is poorly received. Mario Kart is being changed as an open world on Switch 2. Do you hear anyone saying "oh that's awful! They are changing it"? No. It actually stimulates people's curiosity. Why? Because that's a good idea.

As long as you'll give credit to that idea that people are resistant to change, you won't be able to find any answer to your questions.

I think the truth is a bit more gray zone here. I think it's fair to say that most people are resistant to change when it comes to something they love. But I also agree that people will normally be won over if the changes are well executed.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Isn't it safe to assume that the console audience is smaller than the PC audience?

Estimated total active Playstation users are about 130M, XBOX - about 200M, Switch - about 120M. That's 450M total. How many of them bought the game? Zero information. How many of them will buy the game with discount? Also zero information.

I don't think it's safe to assume anything. I found realistic number of current console sales to be between 100K and 10M, but it's subjective from overall market expectations, it's not based on any data specific to Civ7.

 

[Marla_Singer]

I think the truth is a bit more gray zone here. I think it's fair to say that most people are resistant to change when it comes to something they love. But I also agree that people will normally be won over if the changes are well executed.

We don't even know if that open world idea for Mario Kart is well executed as the game isn't even released, but no one is discarding it right from start. The thing is that Mario Kart becoming an open world doesn't change the core concept of the game which is about Mario driving a kart. Therefore what a Mario Kart game is expected to be is not altered. So yeah, I can hear that people have expectations when it goes about a sequel, but having expectations is something different than being resistant to change.

I will continue with a Nintendo analogy. If for the next Mario, it would be decided that Mario would be redesigned to be more realistic in appearance and behavior, those changes will be poorly received because they don't meet players expectations about what a Mario game should be. That neither means they reject any change in a Mario game, nor that they are against more realistic video games in general.

 

[kaspergm]

We don't even know if that open world idea for Mario Kart is well executed as the game isn't even released, but no one is discarding it right from start. The thing is that Mario Kart becoming an open world doesn't change the core concept of the game which is about Mario driving a kart. Therefore what a Mario Kart game is expected to be is not altered. So yeah, I can hear that people have expectations when it goes about a sequel, but having expectations is something different than being resistant to change.

I was not really arguing with your conclusion, I just stated the fact that it IS a pretty well established fact that fans will be skeptical about changes. I also think it's fair to say that the idea of what exactly constitutes the core of a game is not necessarily universal.

 

[aelf]

To be fair, the term "OP" can refer to the post as well as the person, I reckon?

Indeed. And linguistically, as far as I know, OP in the sense of original poster is treated like a proper noun and therefore tends not to be phrased consistently as "the OP."