Weird Thing!

[Civrules]

I noticed that when I right click on the civ3 icon then go to properties>find target>text I see something called play the world when I click on it, it says Play The World and below it, it says other things that don’t make sense. I don’t have PTW and I have not downloaded anything related to it.

 

[pdescobar]

That's simply a text file in the civ3 folder that isn't used. Probably from early development when multiplayer was in consideration for the main game. There are plenty of text and graphics "clutter" like this scattered about the civ3 hierarchy such as basename.txt and menu.txt which look to be early files based on SMAC that got abandoned for other ways to do things like the BIC file.

 

[CaptainMeh]

Does this prove that infogrames coulda included play the world with the original Civ 3 but didn't so that they could charge us more $$$ for the expansion???

 

[pdescobar]

Originally posted by CaptainMeh
Does this prove that infogrames coulda included play the world with the original Civ 3 but didn't so that they could charge us more $$$ for the expansion???

No. It simply indicates that they considered multiplayer during part of civ3's development but did not implement it. Perhaps it was a time issue, perhaps it was a complexity issue, perhaps it was a money issue, perhaps it was something else. Would you have been happier if the PTW content had been part of the original civ3 but in tradeoff civ3 was both released a year later and cost twice as much? Something like that may very well have been the kind of choice which had to be made when the original civ3 was determined to be single-player only.

I think it's quite a reach to take a single .5 KB text file with some unused multiplayer error strings in it and consider it evidence of an evil price-gouging scheme

BTW, Welcome to CFC

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by CaptainMeh
Does this prove that infogrames coulda included play the world with the original Civ 3 but didn't so that they could charge us more $$$ for the expansion???

And what exactly would be wrong with that? They're a company that needs to make a profit to stay in business, or do you expect them to just do something for nothing? In all I've spend a little over $100 CAN for the game, but considering the hours I've already spent modding/playing, it's still pretty cheap entertainment.

 

[sealman]

King Willem is right.

I would wager a good sum of money on the fact that they were thinking expansion pack (maybe even doing some of the coding) even while they were working on the original product. They must likely have some idea of the shelf life of the game and have steps in place to continue the interest.

Look at 'TheSims' for instance. I bet many of those expansions were in the works at the same time.

The whole gaming industry is a business and they main purpose is to make money by keeping us interested in the games they make.

 

[jpowers]

Originally posted by Willem


And what exactly would be wrong with that? They're a company that needs to make a profit to stay in business, or do you expect them to just do something for nothing? In all I've spend a little over $100 CAN for the game, but considering the hours I've already spent modding/playing, it's still pretty cheap entertainment.

Hear, hear! I just finished a Monarch-level diplomatic victory that took 10 hours of gameplay. The cost of CivIII and PTW (when I bought them, anyway) totalled $60. Even if I only played that one time, that's $6/hour for a very fun time - about the same cost as a movie, which, if you've been to the theater lately, you'll know is a much dicier proposition for quality entertainment.