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Brian Reynolds Interview
jyak writes "Over at the Daily Radar, there is an interview with the game legend, Brian Reynolds, about his new company, Big Huge Games. Apparently, Firaxis is now hiring, if anyone is interested."
He hangs out with Sid Meier. That gives him near-heroic status in my book.
My stupid corporate filtering software won't let me look at the story. But the Big Huge web page is so new it isn't blocked yet. :-) But I don't see anything there about their first game. Can anyone tell me if there's anything about it in the article?
:-)
But in the absence of that information, I do have two things I'd like to see them do.
1. Put the *Real* designer's name on the game. At Microprose and later Firaxis every game had Sid's name slapped on it, whether he designed it or not. Apparently the marketing folks think the sales value of Sid's name is more important than giving the true designer his due. When Firaxis was asked about this policy, their reply was that it is really a "stamp of approval" from Sid, and doesn't really mean that he actively worked on that game.
Because of this, most folks don't even know that Brian actually designed CivII and Alpha Centauri with little significant input from Sid. And now that he's on his own, he finds that the name value that should rightly have been his on both of those great games instead stays with Sid.
So I'd like to see Big Huge take up a policy of crediting the proper game producer, just like movie studios do at the front of a flick. Let the actual game designers have the credit (or blame) that is rightly theirs.
2. As for their first game, I'm dearly hoping its MOO (Master of Orion)-like. That's a game that has had people screaming for for an update for years. Some of the BR touches that CivII and SMAC had would do wonders for the 3x turn-based space genre. Plus anyone who read the back of the SMAC manual knows what a big fan of science fiction Brian is.
Anyway, I wish nothing but success for Brian and Tim and all the gang at Big Huge. And if they need a beta tester there too, my email's attached.
> How was Firaxis formed? By breaking off of Microprose. So the people who broke joined Firaxis were the ones without any job loyalty.
"Job loyalty"??? This is actually *incredibly* common in the Gaming industry.
> Now, less than a year (IIRC) later, people _again_ leave the group and form their own company.
Uhhh, not quite. I don't remember the exact founding date, but I know I registered my interest to be a beta tester on Alpha Centauri with them sometime in the summer of '97. I believe they even had a game out already by then (Gettysburg). Back then the hot game everyone was playing was Warcraft II.
Since then I've worked in 3 different programming orginizations in 2 different companies (and two different states). I have a child who is walking and talking who wasn't even born back then.
So no, I don't think this is an unreasonably short amount of time for Brian to have stayed on. Particularly not in the gaming industry.
The problem with writing your own games these days is artwork. Its damn hard to get good artwork if you're not an artist yourself, and I'm not that kind of artist.
In some cases, such as with tdt (http://richard.iguana.co.nz/tdt/) I have managed to create something that looks ok without needing to have nicely drawn textures and buttons as stuff.
But in most cases, like every tile-map based game I ever wrote, the lack of artwork meant that no matter how good the game mechanics, it just looked crap.
This doesn't mean that I didn't believe people might like it, we've all gone on about how graphics aren't the most important thing in a game, but many times I have reached a stage in the development where I've looked at my game, and at another game which is similar, and suddenly seen that gulf in looks and polish and just given in, it just didn't seem worth the effort.
Ahh well.
You can't win a fight.
Yeesh, check out the requirements on that page for programmers:
1. Must have a CS degree.
2. 5 years experience in games programming
3. AI, 3D on consoles and PC, Distributed network stuff.
Well, I don't have a CS degree and have never programmed a game professionally. AI, 3d graphics on the PC and distributed networking I know pretty well, but I guess I wouldn't even get a look in, I imagine they junk anyone without a CS degree in the first pass.
Sad really. Ahh well, hopefully they'll make some good stuff.
You can't win a fight.
It was, which is why mikewood was talking about the _original_ Civ.
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Oh, okay, so he might as well remove any differences between factions in Alpha Centauri. In the next Civ game, he should make Tanks just as strong as Musketeers, so he doesn't give the impression that he'd like to crush some underdeveloped country. And delete the World War II scenario, because the Germans don't like being portrayed as the bad guys.
Wait a minute. Scratch that, he should just disable combat completely, because war is bad.
(end sarcasm)
Give me a break. To make a decent strategy game, you have to reduce things to simple rules. Yes, that means that certain groups of people are reduced to simple rules. But Sid makes GAMES, not political speeches.
And meanwhile, let me correct a couple of things. Unless you hacked the configuration files, there were no Arabs in Civ II. ANY country could have fanatics. In Alpha Centauri, white Christian Americans were portrayed in an unflattering way, and I'd hardly call them a "minority". And the time portrayed in Colonization was a racist time in history - I'm fairly certain that Indians were not given "equal opportunity" jobs - and to deny that would be revising history.
You were just looking for some pseudo-insightful reason to spout off on Slashdot.
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Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
there's no doubt that network play adds something to real time strategy games. Attempts to make better strategy engines have been very successful but nothing beats a human opponnent. I thought at one point that a great addition to Internet play would be to open the archetecture. Standardize your unit interface and allow anyone to create units (graphics + code) as well as maps. With strict rules as to what defines strength of the unit, speed, etc, one could come up with a cost per unit in resources that doesn't give any one unit an advantage (eg, lots of little foot solders or one really big tank cost the same). Then one day I had a really strange idea: What if all those "credits" you were spending were actual cash? It would be very much like gambling (except this is a game of skill.. not exactly gambling by las vegas standards). One could envision a scenario where two countries wish to go to war but neither country has an army.. so rather than wreck their economy by recruiting their peasant farmers, they hire mercenaries and agree to pay them on a per-kill-basis. So you buy a unit for (say) $2 and when it is killed, you opponent gets $1.50 (depreciation you know), the designer of the unit gets $0.10 and the rest goes to the game developer (or the server). You could have games ranging from free games to super expensive games where the players are fighting with weapons of mass destruction.
Another idea was that individual players should be able to take over one unit that is a "leutenant". That unit can have other units assigned to it by the commander. The leutenant is paid by the commander to mobilize some of his/her units against the enemy. This way people could participate in expensive games and learn the ropes, whilst getting paid for it, before they enter the paid games themselves.
How we know is more important than what we know.