LOL…no anger…just the facts :).
There’s a joke about GameFAQs in here somewhere if I can just find it…
Mr. Friedman, I certainly share your disappointment in Elemental and Civ V, if not your rancor. But I couldn’t be more excited about the news. I don’t see the union of two disappointing games so much as I see talented people eager to fix something that’s admittedly broken.
For Shafer’s part, he’s a smart guy who rose through the ranks of Firaxis by thinking outside the box, even if it didn’t always turn out for the best (espionage in the Civ IV expansion, for instance). I’m glad to see him out from under the tall shadow cast by the Civ games and I love the idea of him working with Derek Paxton and Brad Wardell. That’s a talented group there, and I think rebuilding Elemental will give them a great opportunity to examine what works, what doesn’t work, and to go from there.
-Tom
I just don’t see the logic behind bringing someone over from one disaster to work on another.
Sorry about the rancor, but Elemental and Civ 5 were my two most anticipated games of this last year. And I got screwed by both :(.
Civ 5 is hardly a disaster except in the minds of fanboys, and their opinions never matter. It’s the only civilization game I’ve ever bothered to play more than three total games of, which would make it an unqualified success since you get your money’s worth out of a standard priced game at about ten-twenty hours of playtime. That some people refuse to play the game at a high enough difficulty to challenge them is a problem with the person, not the game.
ckessel
4686
Depends on if you think they guy has talent. Failure teaches as well, or better, than success. The most talented people in almost every field have a past littered with failures big and small. It’s that process that gives them the experience to make the most of their abilities.
I suspect Jon has the talent, plus now more experience in that type of game, and that this is a spectacularly good thing for Elemental.
jpinard
4687
Brad messed up and Elemental will be great because of it. He’s learned and seen the light.
Jon may or may not have messed up as the politics at Firaxis/2KGames sounds very unhealthy. Jon is responsible, but it may have been out of his control either way, he too will have learned, and if all the things we hated were because he forced it that way? Well lesson learned and the next game will be better.
They’re bright people with unlimited potential, who openly embrace things that work or didn’t… they are NOT stuck-up, ignoramus, hacks.
Alstein
4688
It depeneds on why you think Civ 5 failed. I think conceptually it’s fine, but needed more work and polish in many areas, and I have suspicions that the publisher didn’t let Firaxis have the time/resources they needed- isn’t the AI code still legacy Civ 1 code?
As for Brad, I think a lot of the issues with Elemental was an undersized staff working on an overambitious game, with Brad not realizing things until it was too late. It’s definitely on Brad to me, but he’s done everything possiible to fix both the game and the problems with Stardock, and GalCiv II gave SD both patience and ultimately one free pass if it doesn’t pan out. So yeah, I’m disappointed, but still hopeful. SD was in a bit of a unique situation to do what they did, Brad was really lucky in that regard also, but it was earned luck. I’d almost say the problems with Elemental should result in much stronger games from SD in the future, as Brad has found guys who cover his weaknesses as a designer.
As for Firaxis, I am really worried about their future. Civ VI better be awesome, though Civ really seems to be going the way of Star Trek movies these days.
Strato
4689
I had a stroll over to the Elemental forums today. Oh boy, some of the comments that people are posting is akin to what I’d see in the bottom of a community cesspit after community chilli night went bad due to contamination with Clostridium difficle. I guess the hyperbole is contagious.
Still, I like this post of Jon’s
http://forums.elementalgame.com/403503/page/3/#2860522
I still find it hard to believe Civ V failed. Steam stats consistently show it performing well in the top 10 daily. How is that a failure? Edit: That’s the only reason I’ve quoted your post - describing it as a failure doesn’t seem right the more I think about it.
To me, it seems more a case of appealing to a different target audience just like with Civ Rev. I am not a part of that target demographic by the looks of things, Civ V has no appeal to me currently, but not much point getting filled with rage about it, unlike the people around bashing on Jon, laying the blame unfairly at him. Gone are the days of remembering Caveat emptor and instead now people focus on externalising blame to the nearest and most convenient source?
Also Alstein, I do agree that Civ V needed more work and polish, I have to say though with Civ V trying to make both small and large empires viable couldn’t have been easy.Or even isolated starts.
Being stranded on a continent in Civ V no longer means a beeline to astronomy to get caravels in the hope that the player hasn’t fallen behind the rest of the world. Build the population instead, and all should be fine, a bit like a real life Atlantis waiting to be discovered.
I am worried about Firaxis also. In my opinion the last four games have all been disappointing. Civ V, for reasons that have been discussed to death. Civ IV: Colonization for having a bad AI and some severely broken game mechanism and not being fun. Civ Revolution for not being port to the Wii despite the early promise (although by most accounts it is a fine game for Xbox or PS/3).
Final Sid Meir’s Railroads!, to me Railroads was even more disappointing than Civ V. At least Civ V has a number of features which were an improvement over Civ IV. Railroads was not only worse than the Phil Stein’s/Poptop’s versions of Railroad Tycoon, but worse than original. If had been released a few years later I would sworn it was released by Zynga for Facebook.
Strato -
Civ V certainly hasn’t seemed to fail as a commercial product from an outsider’s POV. I don’t know how much money was sunk into the project so I can’t speak with any sense of authority when it comes to ROI or payback periods, but it has reviewed fairly well and it seems to be played quite often even with all its faults (several of which have been getting better).
On the other hand, it did fail to be what a lot of fans of the series wanted it to be. No matter what the game does in the marketplace, it can still be a dying series from their perspective (much like Dragon Age is threatening to do for me). That’s still a failure of the game, although not necessarily making it a failure as a game.
Strollen -
FWIW (which likely isn’t much), Civ IV BTS (7/07) came out after Railroads! (10/06), although it was just an expansion.
Ponicus
4692
Civ 5 may have been commercially a success, but I have been playing Civ since the first one came out and I have never played one as little as I did Civ V. To me, simply, it’s more shallow than any of it’s predecessors. The complexity of managing a civilization is gone. The complexity of diplomacy is gone. The shininess of the game wore off within a weeks time. I spent a lot more time playing Elemental than I did Civ 5.
However, it does follow the mantra Firaxis seems to be following the last few years and it worries me too. Very aesthetically pretty and stylized, but simpler and more accessible. For long-time fans like me, this is the exact opposite direction I want to see these games going. I think they are foresaking their long-time fanbase in effort to attract new customers. That’s fine, but then they risk burning loyal fans like me.
Civ 5 ended up being a disappointment for me and I have been addicted to every Civ ever released. And I’m glad someone mentioned Railroads because that was a HUGE disappointment for me. I agree, bigger disappointment than Civ 5. Sid Meier’s Railroads dropped a big smelly steamer all over the legacy that Sid created with Railroad Tycoon. I wish someone would make a true modern sequel to Railroad Tycoon 3. Railroads was… ugh… i dont even want to think about it. And the support for Railroads was piss poor I remember.
Railroads! was a bad game even for casuals. Despite the lofty promises, Colonization did look and feel like a big mod for Civ IV.
I think Civ Revolution succeeded at exactly what it was meant to do, which was to port a simplified Civ experience to modern consoles. My kids loved it. They were able to grasp it immediately with very little handholding on my part. Obviously, longtime Civ fans were going to be underwhelmed with it, but I didn’t expect it to match Civ IV. I have no idea how it did financially, but I suspect it made a profit.
I’ve been playing Civ since Civ I, and I wasn’t underwhelmed by Civ Revolution. It’s an interesting game in its own right. Sure, the cartoonishness (particularly of the advisers) can be misleading, but it’s not really “dumbed down” Civ, it’s a different take on it, with some interesting new ideas.
For example, Culture buys Great People in Civ Revolution. So Culture is something you want to produce for its own sake, not just to bump some borders as in Civ IV. It’s an important a step forward as the Great People points for specialists introduced in Civ IV. We see some of that with Social Policies in Civ V, though honestly that mechanic has some problems compared to the rewards from Great People.
To take another example, the civilization bonuses are very powerful in Civ Rev. So it’s a significantly different game depending on who you play, far more than in any other version of Civilization. The Mongols in particular play very differently than any of the others, since they gain a free city every time they take out a barbarian camp.
jpinard
4695
You’re absolutely right. With Railroad’s, Sid not wanting to listen to anyone about what the player’s desired was very disappointing.
I’ve also been religiously playing the Civ series since the first and appreciated Civ Rev for what it was and gotten immense enjoyment out of Civ V. And I can’t be the only diehard who doesn’t consider them failures by any means.
Railroads! was a bad game even for casuals. Despite the lofty promises, Colonization did look and feel like a big mod for Civ IV.
Completely disagree. It was the perfect game for casuals. I really enjoyed Railroads for its simplicity and I think that’s why many hated it. I do agree with you about your second point regarding Colonization though.
Looking at Wardell’s recent track record, his talent is a touch tarnished. It may work, it may not but it is curious Firaxis would let a hotshot designer leave.
Colonization would have made a great scenario for Civ IV, as a stand alone game I was completely underwhelmed as it the player was railroaded into one victory condition.
Completely disagree. It was the perfect game for casuals. I really enjoyed Railroads for its simplicity and I think that’s why many hated it. I do agree with you about your second point regarding Colonization though.
I’m with you. I think Railroads can be a fun little game, though with some unfortunate technical issues. It’s not a railroad sim, which would certainly disappoint RRT3 fans, but it’s actually a kind of train RTS, meant to be played in competitive multiplayer in 30-60 minute matches. It’s not perfect as that either, but it can be fun. It’s kind of a real time video game version of Age of Steam/Railways of the World. You play to eliminate your friend, but you’re not really going to be able to build an empire.
Of course, I bought it for like 10 bucks on clearance so maybe my expectations were lower. I think if they made a streamlined (and bug-free) version of it for XBLA for 800 points, it would be really cool.
My personal problem with Railroads is the collision model. Or rather, the inability of the trains to handle it. If you turn collision up to “hard” to make it interesting, it doesn’t matter how intelligently you place signal towers, the trains will stupidly find a deadlock. The only real solution is to make collisions impossible by giving each train its own exclusive track, which takes all the fun of fiddling with signal towers and bypasses out of the game.
