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[Servant Corps]

Hiveminds are always, without exception, schizophrenic (because more than one mind is needed to make a hivemind).

[Muz]

Stopped reading the OP when it said "prove facebook games can be good". They can't. It's not what Facebook is for.

They can be good. I could take a standard browser MMO, shorten it to like a 5 min a day thing (instead of fourty 5 mins every day like Farmville), and take out that annoying crap where you have to spam your friends. Then people can work together, dungeon crawl with their RL friends, all without the time sink of playing a MMO. Or it could be like a football game where people can work as a team, specialize in positions, train their player every day. It could be a Hazordhu/Faery Tale Online style game where you and your friends build a city together, instead of the current slew of city builders where everyone builds their own cities and then just click random shit on their friend's cities for money or whatever. Just remove the annoying game designs and you'll have a good game.

Computers aren't made for games (at least not in the pre-graphics card era). That doesn't make computer games necessarily bad.


And personally, I don't get the hype around Sid. He's not known for being some genius game designer. He's known for trying to make epic things and actually doing it. Civ games were as simple as possible, but unique in that they went across all of history. Sid never really had a particular style to sell out with, he made games of different genres, of whatever he wants. It's just like him to try out some completely new genre like Facebook social games.

[Grakelin]

While this is blantant proof that Sid sold out, he already sold out when he:
1) Created Civilizations 2 3 4 5... instead of a new game
2) Rereleased Pirates of the Carribean in 2004 as almost exactly the same game as the original, just with slightly better graphics... instead of a new game
3) Never revisited the ability to craft your own units as seen in Alpha Centauri

And so forth.

Sorry Worshippers of Sid, your god betrayed you.  Deal with it.

I guess I'll do this one by one

1) All the Civ games play differently. I had this argument with Pathos last year. I still stand by what I said then. The Civs weren't just rehashes of the same shit.

2) Pirates! 2004 wasn't a rehash. The entire game was overhauled and, in general, better. There are new features everywhere you look. Fans of the series generally claim the 2004 version was the better game.

3) I do not understand why that is even a sellout, but I never got much use out of the unit builder in AC. I love the game to death, have played it for over ten years now. I only used the unit builder when I wanted to commit an atrocity.

Have you played any of these games?




Also, I think the day he 'sold out' was the day he said "I think I will do this for a living".

If you have a problem with Sid Meier's sense of creative ethics, I think you need to take a good long look at the designers you actually admire. Sid Meier has consistently released games which are designed around concepts he thinks people will enjoy.

[Fikes]

While this is blantant proof that Sid sold out, he already sold out when he:
1) Created Civilizations 2 3 4 5... instead of a new game
2) Rereleased Pirates of the Carribean in 2004 as almost exactly the same game as the original, just with slightly better graphics... instead of a new game
3) Never revisited the ability to craft your own units as seen in Alpha Centauri

And so forth.

Sorry Worshippers of Sid, your god betrayed you.  Deal with it.

This is the best post I have seen yet. Sid sold out by reusing ideas/systems/games in the first two examples but by not reusing something in the third example. Hilarious.

"Sold out" in and of itself is such a hilarious phrase. It really just means "You made money doing something I didn't enjoy as much as the other things you made money doing." If you honestly believe you have a different definition of selling out, let me know what it is, and then apply that definition to Toady's animal sponsorship drive. Did YOUR god betray you?

Not only that, but you have this whole stupid idea that this is going to lead developers to go "OMG! That is how we should make money!" is so far off base it is laughable. If you look at it from a strictly "Lets make money" point of view, what is the biggest cash cow in Sid's resume? How long will it take generic-facebook-click-fest 79 to make 1/4th the money Civ 5 made?

Believe what ever you want. But if you use those beliefs to justify pirating, or writing off a game because it "sold out" you are more guilty of killing the industry as the people who play Civille.

[Servant Corps]

"Sold out" in and of itself is such a hilarious phrase. It really just means "You made money doing something I didn't enjoy as much as the other things you made money doing." If you honestly believe you have a different definition of selling out, let me know what it is, and then apply that definition to Toady's animal sponsorship drive. Did YOUR god betray you?

To me, "Selling out" means making a video game for the expressed and sole purpose of making profit out of said video game. You are not making video games out of a sincere purpose of pleasing the fanbase or bettering the video game community or increasing artistic consciousness or something vague, you just want to put food on the table and buy that new Volvo.

I don't attach any stigma whatsoever to selling out. You need to eat after all, and at the end of the day, all we're really dealing with here is a video game, which is not really high-ranking on the grand scheme of things. The only difference is that you are only making video games based on what you feel is most profitable (i.e, what most people wants) rather than based on some other axiom. If people have fun playing some random generic shooter, why should I stand in their way? Isn't the point of video games to entertain after all? EuchreJack may attach a stigma to selling out; I view it as perfectly normal and not at all distasteful.

[Grakelin]

So does that definition sound like something Sid Meier did?

Remember, each edition of Civ takes 5 years to be released. They've been released at a rate of one per new generation of gamers. Hardly anybody was playing Pirates! 1987 anymore when Pirates! 2004 came out, and the latter was a massive improvement on the former. And a new Alpha Centauri has not come out, even though the entire Civ fanbase would buy it without a second thought.

I'm an artist, too. I would be very happy making the kinds of choices Meier has made.

[EuchreJack]

(flaming removed)

[Sappho]

I'm genuinely confused by the extremity of emotions in this thread. It's just a browser game. Some game developers do it for the pure joy of developing games, but most of them do it because it's their job and they need to make money. I don't see why they should be criticized for doing that in whichever way they deem most effective. Anyway, last time I checked, there is a limit on how many "CivBucks" you can use during the game per day, so that people who contribute cash to the game don't have a huge advantage over those who don't.

I think the game is fun. I enjoy playing it for a few minutes each day. It's the only Facebook game I enjoy, actually. I don't see why it needs to be compared to any other games, or why the creators or developers should be criticized as though their decision to make any single game should be taken as a world-altering monumental event. Reading this thread is like listening to an argument between atheists and fundamentalist Christians.

Western society as a whole has grown to believe that we are all entitled to everything exactly the way we want it. No one is owed quality games by the world. You get what you can from the people willing to make them, at whatever price they ask for, or you make it yourself, or you get nothing. This game happens to be FREE! If you don't like it, by all means don't play it, but for the love of all that is reasonable in the world, don't rant about how it's a sign of the downfall of the industry.

These sorts of arguments remind me of this comedy bit by Louis CK (there's a better, longer version of this bit on a standup special, "Hilarious" is the one I think, but I can't find it on YouTube). Watch it, laugh, take life a little less seriously, appreciate the miracle that is your computer, and relax a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

[nenjin]

People will always harbor some resentment/disappointment for the things a game didn't do.

I think what surprised me reading this (I don't enjoy Sid's particular brand of game design, personally) is that he ultimately made a typical FB game. I think many people were hoping that, being Sid, he was going to take the FB game model and do it better than it's been done by others, because he has great source material to work with. It doesn't sound like that happened. To those expecting no more than a FB game with a Civ theme, he delivered exactly what they expected and he promised. To those who were hoping the goodiness of civs would translate to FB in a way they'd not seen before....it probably falls pretty short of the mark.

Are designers of great games who put out average games while catching the social-media wave at the same time free of criticism? My opinion would be no. Doesn't mean they need quite as much hostility as is being given but....well, take Konami and Castlevania, for example. One game that was brilliant spawned at least 4 major releases that were not, and people have never hesitated to give them shit about it. Justifiably so, in my opinion, when you look at the level of effort that went into some parts of the game.

[Sappho]

As far as I can see, this is the most anyone can reasonably say:

I disliked this. It did not live up to my expectations and I am disappointed. I will not play this game.

Here is what I hear people saying:

The person who did this deserves to be punished, possibly attacked by an angry mob, for failing to live up to my expectations. Clearly they created this game for the sole purpose of stealing hard-earned money from the pockets of the poor and the destitute, and possibly in order to degrade society as a whole. They owe me a better game than this, even though I have contributed absolutely nothing to the production of the game itself and in this case am not even paying for it. They owe it to me because their sole purpose in developing games is to satisfy my desire to be adequately entertained as I sit on my ass staring at my computer screen. In fact, I'm sure that they intentionally made this game inferior, just to piss me off.

Anyway, I think CivWorld *is* better than a typical Facebook game. I've tried many others and they all sucked. This one actually keeps me entertained. You can check in once a day and still make progress, or you can sit there for hours and collect the little "bonus" resources and solve the mazes and the picture puzzles and chat with your friends, if they happen to play with you. There's an aspect of competition, but it's slow-paced and low-pressure. If people want something massively complex and full of micromanagement, then you're probably not looking for a free little browser game on Facebook, simple as that.

I think that if people are so sure they know what a better game would be like, then they should make it themselves. You can't say "This is not good enough!" unless you can make something else that is. I'd love to see it. But if you think Leonardo da Vinci never doodled stick figures in his notebook, you're just being foolish. Someone can make something people consider "great" and still do average, mediocre stuff too. It doesn't mean they deserve criticism. Criticize people if they do something that *harms* someone in some way. Leave people alone if you just don't like what they're doing and it doesn't hurt you. You can say "I don't like that" but you can't say "HOW DARE THEY." It's just ridiculous.

[nenjin]

Unfortunately we don't have the benefit of constructive criticism for any game expect DF around here (and the other devs that stop in.)
So all the rest are left with is just plain ol' criticism. This is starting to feel like the Family Guy MMO Thread. Haters Gonna Hate, u no?

[Empty]

Be glad it's not another evony

More bewbs my lord?

Grr! Not a single mammalian teet or a female whatsover in that damn game. False advertisement!

[Tyler6498]

Honestly the game was better than I expected it to be. (Come on did people really expect such high degrees of professionalism from a Facebook game? I mean BYOND has better games than it does, and that's saying something.) I actually played it for a week before I quit and apparently during that week it was always in the top 5 players, I found spamming food and production the key to success since it sold the highest and raised population.