Why was Civ4 released before it was finished ? A letter to the developer

[Burberryan]

This is a transcription of an email message sent to the developer and distributor of Civ4. It is posted here as a reference to the game's community and for those interested. Please feel free to comment and discuss, and to pass this message on to anywhere or anyone you feel might be in order (naturally, corporate PR posts -assumed or otherwise- are to be ignored). Thank you.

--------------------------------
I'll try to keep this as brief and to the point as possible.

Basically, I'm writing you to express my disappointment regarding the fact that for the fourth "official" entry in the Sid Meier's Civilization game series, Civilization IV, you have opted to, excuse the expression, drop the ball on certain vital aspects of the game mechanics and design, the most noticeable and certainly less welcome in my opinion being the over-simplified and downright incomplete built-in civilopaedia.

It becomes painfully real that this game is suffering from a cancer that seems to have become an unfortunate trend with a number of publishers in the video games market falling victim to the pit-traps of marketing, when one realizes that it incurred several patches mere weeks from release. In other words, this is yet another game which was rushed to stores to meet some obscure commercial and marketing-minded deadline set by, excuse me this time for my sincerity, people with mediocre standards about their own work and about life in general, at the expense of the game being sold with numerous - previously known and identified - bugs and an unfinished design.

It disheartens me particularly that you felt the need to release Civilization IV with this "light" version of a civilopaedia that contains ridiculous abbreviations of what once were glorious, educative, pertinent, well researched and well written descriptions for the various concepts, historical facts and items included in the game, and that actually goes as far as not even including any description whatsoever for some of them. Those are listed in the civilopaedia, but blank fields with no text whatsoever come up when they are picked by the player expecting to read something interesting and maybe, who knows, learn something while playing - a double purpose that had previously always been a part of the Civilization game series legacy, a standard set by its own creator Sid Meier all those years ago on the product you as a company are now exploiting.

For these reasons, Civilization IV becomes the weaker entry in the game series with the label "Civilization" on them (including both its three predecessors and the "Call To Power" derivations) and a mockery of the very foundations that these games are supposed to be about. As a player and consumer, I'm sorry to have to classify this "light"/incomplete civilopaedia nearly as an insult, as I'm sure would the programmers who worked hard to deliver their own part of the game (which they did brilliantly), since releasing an incomplete game only puts to waste the half which works right.

If you're planning to make an expansion of some sort, please consider including a fully blown and proper civilopaedia to encompass the full game, one such as those we players used to know before Civ4 and which can be installed over the current misery to ammend that black stain in the game and your record as a publisher, and make Civ4 a complete and finished product. I have returned my copy of Civilization IV in the store I bought it from and replaced it with a different game from a different company, but I may consider to purchase it again in the future to support your company if I can play it under adequate conditions, making use of such a resource.

Thank you very much for your understanding and, well above and beyond that, for any consideration on your part to act upon what I described above in your future products.
--------------------------------

~~Da Burberryan

 

[MrCynical]

Are you sending this to Firaxis or Take 2 or both? Remember Firaxis had no real say in when the game was released. Take 2 insisted on moving the release date forward.

You seem to be focusing on the civlopedia as the main point that needs altering, and yes it is clearly unfinished. It has been improved in several ways in the patches though. I am surprised you would return a game over this however. If you have other reasons for this you don't seem to have put them anywhere in this letter.

The game itself is a worthy addition to the Civ series, though it's presentation is distinctly sloppy. I must point out at this stage that Call to Power is not Civ and I personally found to be a rather poor game compared to any incarnation of Civ (including 4). The gameplay in Civ 4 is in my opinion the best I have seen of it's type, and it's a shame that the poor effort on the civlopedia and similar have let it down.

I'd say it seems a fairly well thought out letter and unlike some of the complaints on this forum focuses on an area of the game which is genuinely badly done. I personally feel the gameplay outweighs this, but that is just my opinion.

 

[Sirian]

This is a transcription of an email message sent to the developer and distributor of Civ4. It is posted here as a reference to the game's community and for those interested. Please feel free to comment and discuss, and to pass this message on to anywhere or anyone you feel might be in order (naturally, corporate PR posts -assumed or otherwise- are to be ignored). Thank you.

--------------------------------
I'll try to keep this as brief and to the point as possible.

Basically, I'm writing you to express my disappointment regarding the fact that for the fourth "official" entry in the Sid Meyer's Civilization game series, Civilization IV, you have opted to, excuse the expression, drop the ball on certain vital aspects of the game mechanics and design, the most noticeable and certainly less welcome in my opinion being the over-simplified and downright incomplete built-in civilopaedia.

It becomes painfully real that this game is suffering from a cancer that seems to have become an unfortunate trend with a number of publishers in the video games market falling victim to the pit-traps of marketing, when one realizes that it incurred several patches mere weeks from release. In other words, this is yet another game which was rushed to stores to meet some obscure commercial and marketing-minded deadline set by, excuse me this time for my sincerity, people with mediocre standards about their own work and about life in general, at the expense of the game being sold with numerous - previously known and identified - bugs and an unfinished design.

It disheartens me particularly that you felt the need to release Civilization IV with this "light" version of a civilopaedia that contains ridiculous abbreviations of what once were glorious, educative, pertinent, well researched and well written descriptions for the various concepts, historical facts and items included in the game, and that actually goes as far as not even including any description whatsoever for some of them. Those are listed in the civilopaedia, but blank fields with no text whatsoever come up when they are picked by the player expecting to read something interesting and maybe, who knows, learn something while playing - a double purpose that had previously always been a part of the Civilization game series legacy, a standard set by its own creator Sid Meier all those years ago on the product you as a company are now exploiting.

For these reasons, Civilization IV becomes the weaker entry in the game series with the label "Civilization" on them (including both its three predecessors and the "Call To Power" derivations) and a mockery of the very foundations that these games are supposed to be about. As a player and consumer, I'm sorry to have to classify this "light"/incomplete civilopaedia nearly as an insult, as I'm sure would the programmers who worked hard to deliver their own part of the game (which they did brilliantly), since releasing an incomplete game only puts to waste the half which works right.

If you're planning to make an expansion of some sort, please consider including a fully blown and proper civilopaedia to encompass the full game, one such as those we players used to know before Civ4 and which can be installed over the current misery to ammend that black stain in the game and your record as a publisher, and make Civ4 a complete and finished product. I have returned my copy of Civilization IV in the store I bought it from and replaced it with a different game from a different company, but I may consider to purchase it again in the future to support your company if I can play it under adequate conditions, making use of such a resource.

Thank you very much for your understanding and, well above and beyond that, for any consideration on your part to act upon what I described above in your future products.
--------------------------------

~~Da Burberryan

Verbose and tedious. You could have made your point in two sentences, and that would have been more effective. Adjectives weaken writing. Use them only when necessary.

For what it's worth, the Civilopedia has received extra attention post-release. It still might not be all you want, but they do care about it.


- Sirian

 

[warpus]

Burberryan, it would have been FAR more effective had you sent snailmail instead of email. Your email will most likely be ignored; snailmail would have had a far greater chance of being passed to (and read by) somebody higher up.

 

[Burberryan]

Thanks for your comments, MrCynical; there *are* other aspects of the design and interface I feel are part of the same bigger problem. I decided to focus on the civilopaedia because it's the one aspect that put me off Civ4 the most, and because it's such a large part of the game I regard it as a good demonstration of that same bigger problem - namely, to let marketing take over things and neglect actual product quality, which in the video game industry we've sadly come to know as having a game released before it's finished.

Frankly, it's more than time for the actors on this particular stage (the video game industry) to re-think their priorities and assume their responsibilities. They won't be able to keep pulling this kind of stunt to cheat the public indefinitely, even if they ARE obviously counting on the help of certain review sites out there for that purpose, and if they did then the only part of the equation to blame would be the public itself.

 

[Tacit_Exit]

I'll try to keep this as brief and to the point as possible.

Verbose and tedious.

But very ironic

From Main Page News:

The complexity of games has gone up significantly, but there is another side of the coin: The Internet allows patching. Making games is difficult, and it's good to be ambitious. With Civilization IV, we aimed for a lot more than we ever have with a Civilization game. If we knew that whatever we shipped on the disc was basically our final version and there was no chance that we would ever be able to fix things, we would have been a lot less ambitious, and a lot more careful. The way you are more careful is not necessarily through more testing, it is by leaving the complicated parts out. If there was never a chance for us to fix something, maybe we wouldn't have Internet multi-player, or Civilization IV wouldn't be as moddable.

Sounded reasonable to me. I prefer the latter to a complete on release but souless rendition of Civ we may have gotten were development emphasis different.

 

[Jecrell]

Burberryan, it would have been FAR more effective had you sent snailmail instead of email. Your email will most likely be ignored; snailmail would have had a far greater chance of being passed to (and read by) somebody higher up.

...
And... how do you know this?
Please explain.

[EDIT]

For these reasons, Civilization IV becomes the weaker entry in the game series with the label "Civilization" on them (including both its three predecessors and the "Call To Power" derivations) and a mockery of the very foundations that these games are supposed to be about. As a player and consumer, I'm sorry to have to classify this "light"/incomplete civilopaedia nearly as an insult, as I'm sure would the programmers who worked hard to deliver their own part of the game (which they did brilliantly), since releasing an incomplete game only puts to waste the half which works right.

That just comes off as rediculous and offensive. Civilization IV a terrible game because the Civilopedia didn't have descriptions in version 1.0? You do know they fixed that right? Surely you must have another reason for hating the game so much as to label it the bum leg of the Civilization series over that.

The publisher is a horrible company though, so I wasn't surprised they forced Firaxis into an early release. They're so loaded with corruption it stinks.
[/EDIT]

 

[MattJek]

Civilization IV becomes the weaker entry in the game series with the label "Civilization" on them (including both its three predecessors and the "Call To Power" derivations)

I always thought that the Call to Power series was made by totally different company and has nothing to do with Sid or the other makers of the Civilization series other than being a cheep knock off.

 

[aaronflavor]

Verbose and tedious. You could have made your point in two sentences, and that would have been more effective. Adjectives weaken writing. Use them only when necessary.

I have been told that you are a programmer in Firaxis' employ and a de facto laison with the community. If this is the case, I hope this is not the response that you meant to type. This is not what I would consider to be an appropriate response to what is an especially relevent criticism for a game in Civ4's catagory and cost.

 

[MrCynical]

Call to Power I believe was made by Activision, and didn't have anything to do with Sid. I was rather unimpressed with CTP and found CTP 2 was an unbalanced and buggy game. Neither of them is in the same calibre as any of the Civ series, including Civ 4.

 

[Bushface]

I rather doubt that the original poster had patch 1.52 when the original e-mail was sent, as the patch seems to me to deal very adequately with his main ( or only ) point about the pretty poor 'pedia in the first release. In any case, the brief Wonder descriptions are more than sufficient to cover the needs of gameplay, and fuller details are available in any good encyclopedia.

 

[alanschu]

I have only played with patch 1.52, but I am pretty happy with the Civilopedia.


But if that is his dealbreaker for the game then

 

[RED DIAMOND]

A complete waste of space.

 

[Oggums]

I didn't read the post, but the reasons are obvious.

Like all game publishers, they wanted it to ship before Christmas.

Like all PC games, you ship first, then you patch. It sucks, but life's a *****.

 

[warpus]

...
And... how do you know this?
Please explain.

if you want somebody to take you seriously, write a letter, print it out, and send it as snailmail. it's a lot more professional than an email.

 

[MattJek]

I have only played with patch 1.52, but I am pretty happy with the Civilopedia.


But if that is his dealbreaker for the game then

seems silly, his whole post is a gripe with a busted civilopedia. Wow, the civilopedia doesnt work, big fricken deal.

 

[Sirian]

I have been told that you are a programmer in Firaxis' employ and a de facto laison with the community.

I'm not a Firaxis employee and I don't speak for the company.

That the Civiliopedia out of the box is not all it could have been is true. That is a fair criticism, but it is also one the company has tried to address, and before this message appeared.

The rest of that was a self-important, overblown and badly written rant that flings several insults and says nothing useful. That's not the company's opinion; it's just mine.


- Sirian

 

[NikNak]

I too, was a bit dissappointed by the state of the civilopedia upon the game's initial release. Patch 1.52 has certainly helped matters a lot, but there are still some holes to fill. For one thing, I'd really like it if there were hot links to the entries from items within the game.

I totally expect the civilopedia to get better with each patch. In the meantime, I'll just enjoy the game.

 

[Efexeye]

Other posters have already made the OP's points much more succinctly and effectively- it pretty much boils down to "I don't like the Civilopedia".

The Civiliopedia is useless after a few trips through the game, anyway.

 

[Kolyana]

Unfortunately I think we're witnessing the unfortunate - and yet inevitable - effect of capitalism; the ebb and flow, the natural evolution, of business if you will.

Board rooms only care about profit and shareholders ... Take 2 has and will continue to release sub-standard or buggy games as long as it doesn't adversely affect their bottom line. If they can release a game *now* and reap the rewards of a pre-christmas season, at the cost of a few people having problems and a couple of disgruntled voices, then they will do so ... every time.

Very, very few board rooms will put customer satisfaction before profit.

I've had some problems with Civ4, I'm very disappointed with the general quality, and I'm disgusted with the take2 attitude ... but at the end of the day they're not the only ones and the gaming industry will continue to slide this way until something major happens to cause the industry to 'wake up'.