Civ 5 is a crown fucking jewel compared to the turd that is Elemental. Say what you will, but Firaxis had a vision, a designer, project management, and competence, which are four things Stardock didn’t have. All of Brad’s postings about improvements are just him flinging shit at the wall hoping that something sticks.
Or he might have been making a tangentially related joke, poking fun at the way Elemental (and Brad Wardell) was treated.
Ding-ding-ding-ding!!! We have a winner!
JM1
5784
Fair enough. I put too much consideration into who was posting.
Edit: Not that I didn’t notice the sarcasm - I simply thought he was slating the people who are complaining about Civ5.
Alstein
5785
Civ V was going to rule the roost, even if its launch was Elemental bad, and Elemental’s launch was TA good. The brand name is that powerful, plus there’s a sizable community of PC gamers who will shun anything that isn’t on Steam. My congressmen has it harder then Civ V does, and he runs unopposed most of the time.
The people who have passed on Elemental due to its launch are probably hardcores, who might be persuaded by a really good review, and forum posts on boards such as these, or other PC strategy boards.
Jarmo
5786
Or they are evidence of an iterative design process that plays out in the public eye in an astonishing display of openness. The negative reactions are one reason why unfinished work is not usually presented to the general audience.
They are trying stuff and seeing how it works. This is how game design happens. Usually it happens behind closed doors.
The obvious addendum is that it usually happens before the game is shipped but we’ve been over that endlessly. They thought they were finished but they were mistaken and bla bla and ad infinitum.
You can try to handwave that away, but really, this is the important distinction between a normal design process and Elemental’s.
I don’t think he’s handwaving, rather just acknowledging that 5731 posts came before his and that most people don’t care for a re-hash.
I’m not taslking about a re-hash. I think that an iterative design process changes fundamentally if you’ve already screwed the project up and are now trying to fix it. Especially if you’re doing it in public.
Disregarding the upheaval associated with the much-publicized firing and rehiring process, there’s a number of factors that I think would exert influence on the decisions being made. We all know that a “pure” iterative process is an unattainable dream (no project has unlimited time, budget, or creative resources) but the current situation has to be a pressure cooker.
That’s a much different environment from the pre-gold status in which you are brainstorming and iterating features on a project that hasn’t formally released.
Jarmo
5792
If they didn’t happen on a good design when they had all the time in the world, how would they now come up with one from thin air when the clock is ticking? Iteration is what they do. They continue plugging away and listening closely to ideas from anyone and everyone but still making the decisions of what to include or try.
Except it sounds like “they” have made all the decisions already.
Jarmo
5794
Isn’t that what you wanted? That they just form a design and release it? I’m not getting you.
One or the other. Right now, it sounds like they’re trying to do both.
Brad’s made all the decisions on what to do and where they’re going, but they’re still taking suggestions and fiddling with stuff. It’s kind of nutty. Frankly, I think the game would be better served at this point by shutting out all the noise and driving on with the plan.
It certainly can’t turn out worse.
Sarkus
5796
Personal anecdotes aside, Civ5 is still the top selling game on Steam and is #4 on their list of what people are actually playing right now (behind the multiplayer shooters that usually dominate). I don’t think that really supports on a broad scale the idea that people have already “moved on.”
Jarmo
5797
I think you’ve got that reversed. Listen to suggestions and roll your own—fiddle with stuff—make decisions, that seems to me to be what they are doing.
It’s kind of nutty.
What isn’t about this Ringling Brothers three-ring circus?
You realize those statistics imply exactly nothing regarding dropoff, right? High sales = high players? I’d certainly hope so, otherwise those buyers just dropped $50 for an icon on the desktop.
We just don’t have the kind of statistics we’d need to know one way or another. That means we’re working exclusively off of anecdote.
kerzain
5799
I’ve already done that this year, alot of people in this thread have.
Well, let’s use the Steam stats. You know, the non-anecdotal evidence. How long has the game been out? Either a lot of people are playing the game and liking it, or they are losing interest and more people are coming in behind them and buying it despite the bad personal anecdotes.
Either way, I don’t think Civ 5 needs to worry about Elemental stealing their players.
