Should a GalCiv Sequel go Mainstream?

from GalCiv2 Forums

I've been following Galacti Civlizations 2 for a long time.  Probably not as long as some folks( never played GC1 ), but I remember reading the developer diaries on this website before it went beta.  I still have this reccolection of somebody mulling over STL containers, and how they don't really like to use them ( which makes me chuckle a bit :D ).  When the game was finally released, I was very excited, and impressed by what this "indie" team had produced.  Yet, for various reasons, the game never really stuck with me.  It was very difficult for a first time player; I would make so many mistakes that I often wouldn't have a single military ship up by the time the Drengin came knocking with troop transports.  And sometimes it just felt a bit "flat"; I didn't feel all that connected to my civilization.  I tried again when Dark Avatar was released, and I definitely saw a big improvement, but it still didn't feel like the gameplay was compelling.  Now, after TA and 2.0, I think I can finally say that I'm hooked.  The game has polished off those rough edges, filled in the dull spots, and delivers on the best part of 4x. 

But it's made me wonder.  For me, it took 2.5 years, 2 expansions, and a lot of frustration to really get to "the good stuff".  Yet I always knew that there was a real gem in there, and I'm glad I kept trying.  4x games are possibly the ultimate power fantasy, and I think that's a pretty universally appealing experience.  But for whatever reason, I feel games like these are relatively obscure. 

 

I keep thinking about what this game might be like with more production value, the sorts of features that draw in your average gamer.  Things like voiceovers for your "secretaries", generals, governors and fellow leaders.  Perhaps some real-time animated scenes depicting the galactic council, starbases, and various locations on your planets.  A little more "activity" floating around the galactic map, like bustling trade routes, ships docking into stations, etc.  Fleet battles and ground invasions that are flashier and more entertaining.  These sorts of features help you feel like your civlization is real, and not just some collection of statistics that you are trying to balance or min/max.  A lot of these things are elements that CivIV did to some degree, and I think it has helped elevate the game beyond the usual 4x status.

And then, I also think about what might make GalCiv a bit more approachable.  It's been said by many designers that the player should never be confused about what he or she is supposed to be doing.  In GalCiv, I have been completley stumped countless times as to why my people are going down the toilet.  Some of that could be helped by simple toggleable messages, such as :

"Your people are getting cramped and angry!  You will need entertainment to sustain a population of this size." 

Or perhaps,

"Your Military is considered a Pushover.  Not even your friends will support you if this trend continues." 

GalCiv2 had tips, but nowhere near enough for the complexity involved in running a proper civilization.  An easy-to-read breakdown of your facilities' output and costs per planet, and as a whole would also go a long way.  The AI could also be a bit more communicative, and have more personality.  There are some good interactions in the diplomacy window, but it would be nice if they made passing comments to you that indicated how the AI is reacting.  The "Relations" tab is good, but some colorful feedback would help clue people in without pouring over the tab every turn.  Better visual indicators would be great too; for example, I just recently found out that your Influence form starbases falls off exponentially whereas the little radius is a solid circle.  An alpha gradient indicating influence strength would have been so much clearer.

 

The above suggestions are some of my big wishlist features for a GalCiv3.  I'd like it to get bigger, and broader appeal.  I'd love to have a more visceral connection with the universe.  But when I take another look at it; does going "mainstream" make sense?  First, there is the financial perspective.  Doubling your engineering staff and quadrupling your content developers ain't cheap.  Flashy or not, I dunno how many more 4x titles you can really sell these days.  The genre is always going to be a bit niche; theres no way around managing tons and tons of numbers, even if the numbers are clearly explained.  Hard to sell that over Halo.  Second, GalCiv2 went a long way on its "indie" street cred.  This isn't a big-budget cash cow, and it doesn't feel like one.  Sometimes the "low-budge"-ness of it is kind of nostalgic, and comforting.  It reminds me of simpler times in PC gaming.   Maybe people want it to stay a bit obscure, and difficult.  Perhaps the numbers and using your imagination are what fans dig the most.

So what do YOU think?  Do you feel one way or the other?  I saw a poll here the other day where GalCiv3 was clearly the most desired future project.  How would you want it to shape up?  Just more gameplay depth, or would you like lots of bells and whisltes?  Do you want an epic media-filled experience, or to keep it simple and focus on the core gameplay?

Let a brotha know!

9,666 views 6 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

I think galciv3 will improve a bit and will perhaps go a bit farther toward "mainstream" features much like galciv2 evolved from galciv1 I'll say

 

too much mainstream and you'll end up with a poor "sims 2" like community, stardock must continue at its own pace, without trying to rush from a quite successful indie galciv2 to a full featured mainstream civilization 4 ...

 

that said, I miss the ingame "civilopedia" the most, I would like galciv3 to get at least an incomplete one but full featured to be modded and completed by players. This would allow for a near wiki like experience without even alt-tabbing and risking a crash to view information on strategies & other data

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

For your definition of "mainstream," yes. GalCiv should have production value. It should have polish.

However, you confuse polish with "broad appeal," and that's just not right. Polish is something that every game deserves, from games made by a guy in his garage to games with $30 million budgets.

Broad appeal is about making the game sufficiently simple that more people who might be interested in playing it will do so. The mechanics of, say, Civilization 1 are much simpler than those of GalCiv2 or CivIV, so it has more appeal in terms of its gameplay.

Making the game more reasonable to play is not the same as making it more broadly appealing. Making a UI that intensionally makes things difficult for the player is not less "mainstream."

Elementals seems to be on-track for a much better, more polished UI experience. Hopefully, they'll be able to prevent many of the UI problems that have plagued them in the past. And hopefully, they'll ship a truly finished game, rather than what GC2 was in the beginning.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I think for the most part what you see is the effect of a limited budget.

GalCiv II had something like a $600,000 budget.  A future GalCiv III would have a much larger budget which would fill in a lot of the rough patches.

I think Elemental will really demonstrate what we can do when we have a good budget to work with.

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

@ Alfonse : I agree with you partially, but not entirely.  Polish is about making sure that every feature you  have  works properly, and has sufficient support to make it intuitive, accessible, and most of all FUN.  I agree that every game should have this.  But many of the features I described, particularly the ones that require lots of flashy content, are not really polish.  They are "spectacle", designed to lure people into the universe through sensory stimulus.  You don't need "spectacle" in order to be polished, but it sure as shit doesn't hurt.  

And regarding your statement about simplicity, I think the old Blizzard addage sums this up the best "easy to learn, difficult to master".  This is a worthy goal for any game, IMHO.  If you could be successful in GalCiv by knowing how most things work on a very basic level, but needing to know the nitty gritty details in order to be competitive at a higher level ( difficult, since there is no multiplayer ), that would be the ideal.  Yet I could still see this being a turn-off to the die-hards, who really enjoy gleaning the arcane underlying functions that govern the gameplay.

 

@ Frogboy : $600,000?  really?  That is just incredible.  Over how many years?  Does that include patch support and any maintenance of Stardock Central, or only for core GalCiv2 development costs up to release?  At my current place of business, that kind of number is just unheard of.

- edit : Just read the GalCiv2 postmortem on Gamasutra.  Really cool stuff BTW, answered some of my own questions.

I'm very much looking forward to Elemental, especially seeing the kinds of progress you have been making in the GalCiv2 expansions, Sins, and Demigod.  But TBH, I had figured the resources allocated to Elemental would be comparable to what was done for GalCiv2.  Now, if you guys are putting a significantly larger investment in Elemental, are you expecting to recoup that through a straight-up higher units-sold count?  And if so, does this mean you believe that a higher potential market for 4x can be reached through extended feature sets ( and perhaps better advertisement and your recent "word of mouth" achievements through the Gamers Bill of Rights and such )?

If you guys guys are going "bigger and better" with 4x that is great news indeed, but I just didn't think that historical sales supported that approach.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

GalCiv II had something like a $600,000 budget. A future GalCiv III would have a much larger budget which would fill in a lot of the rough patches.
End of quote

Much larger?

As in... enough additional features (from GC2 basics) to keep a relatively high number of coders (say, a team of 10+ people) busy *Full-Time* on that project?

Or... a completely new project which starts from scratch (meaning; engine-interface-concepts-etc) with a similar dedicated team which would focus on new features?

The difference is huge (! both in terms of investing budget & possible results as it pertains to quality output) since the former pulls off its energy from experience and a good set of established programming rules while the latter must risk that the activity may become a loophole of multiple development crushs, including wrong (or tricky) decisions about the WHAT & the HOW.

 

One thing to consider also is that the entire money made available can only indicate how serious SD is about GCIII. More might not mean better or optimal though.

If anything, Elemental--WoM can indeed create an invaluable synergy between some staff at work & design choices & coding objectives.

GCIII would (or should hopefully) only benefit from that particular title production steps.

We, as potential customers, will certainly gain from it all also.

 

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Yea, a GalCiv III would be able to leverage what we do in Elemental. 

GalCiv II was really a derivative of GalCiv I wihich in itself was a derivative of The Corporate Machine.

Elemental, by contrast, is whole cloth new.

GalCiv II certainly shipped complete (AlFonse has a 2+ year disagreement with that view). But the game's success has allowed us to continue to polish the game and enhnace it but we're ultimately limited by the engine which is a patched up 9 year old engine at this point.