Civilization IV Discussed As GDC Slides Released

Thanks to Evil Avatar for pointing to a CivFanatics news post discussing new information about Civilization IV from this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Jose, recently released online as a PowerPoint slideshow. Apparently, the in-development Firaxis PC strategy sequel, not yet officially revealed, features "Continuous, immersive 3D world (what-you-see-is-what-you-get)... Drop unfun legacy (pollution, rioting, maintenance, corruption/waste)... New killer features (religion, civics)... RPG elements (unit upgrades/experience)... Coding from scratch (multiplayer, mod-friendly)", with the important note from lead designer Soren Johnson: "Can still take over the world!" There are also a host of other GDC slides/lecture notes now available on the official site, including "Winning the Race Against Pirates And Crackers: Next Generation Copy Protection" by Erik Simon (PDF), and "Managing the Hydra: Successfully Running Multiple Projects in a Videogame Studio" by Dr. Greg Zeschuk of BioWare (DOC, PPT including some fascinating graphs.)

Comments

rocky development cycle

[kwoff]

Civ3 had a pretty rocky development cycle. We lost all of our leads after about a year and we also had almost 100% turnover within the programming department.

And that turned out to be a great game, so I'm really looking forward to Civ 4. However, I'm not sure what to think about:

Drop unfun legacy (pollution, rioting, maintenance, corruption/waste)

Although there might be less annoying things, but those annoying things are part of what makes the game.

Re:rocky development cycle

[GeekGirlie]

I think the beauty of all the Civ games is the realism that the pollution, rioting, anarchy, etc. presents. Not only do those elements make the game more challenging but they do make them a little more realistic. Civ is a game that you can play over and over again and never really play the same way twice. But, will you really want to play it again if you can beat it in an hour because the things that make it challenging are stripped away?

The other slide shows

[mrluisp]

Erik Simon's slideshow was really enlightening. It seems like the game industry is finally starting to realize that there are better methods to prevent pirated copies of games appearing in such time periods. The current copy-protections used are easily crackeable, and are usually more of an annoyance to legitimate customers than the pirating scene.

In his slideshow, Erik actually talks about the scene and how they function. It's nice to see that he is making an effort to understand how the enemy works, in order to develo pbetter methods to beat them.

Erik also makes an interesting observation. He says that there are only 12 people world-wide actual capable of cracking new protection codes in the "scene". That number seems a bit low, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was accurate.

Bioware's slideshow makes a strong emphasis on treating its employees with the proper amount of respect and courtesy. They use rewards to encourage good behavior, and keep all their employees informed of any major events involving the company. It's good to know that some companies out there still make an effort to treat their employees properly.

Re:The other slide shows

[Anonymous Coward]

I find his argument interesting:

- Nearly every PC game uses weak protection
- Weak protection is cracked in no time
- Therefore most PC games are getting all the downside of protection and none of the benefits
- Strong protection will be cracked, but it can delay the cracking for 3-6 weeks, enough to sell a lot of copies (at least 10% more)
- Therefore what the industry should do is use much stronger protection on all titles

He doesn't address the question of what would happen if no protection at all were used. So far as I can tell, as weak protection has costs but zero benefit (as he claims) the industry would be better off simply in terms of not having to purchase the protection. He does not however address the additional benefit of the potential increase in sales that might result.

If compatibility issues due to copy protection result in games being returned to the store, or in people changing to console games rather than PC games, then removing protections altogether should result in PC game sales going up - with development costs being reduced, not increased

In addition, strong protection relies on people wanting the game now, not in two months' time, for its increased sales. If people want it now but have to wait two months anyway to get the patch to correct the compatibility issues, then that advantage is lost and we're back to protection being a cost with no benefits.

In short: he says weak protection is worse than useless so the industry must use strong protection - but he is assuming that protection can be made strong enough, and to an extent you rely on everyone else doing it. If you have no certainty that (a) your protection is strong (you have little control here) and (b) so is everyone else's (and you have no control over this at all), then there must be an advantage in quitting the arms race altogether.

Re:The other slide shows

[mrluisp]

Having no protection won't cause people would rather pirate to game to suddenly decide to buy the game. I doubt it would increase sales. If anything, they would save on the small licensing fee they are paying for copy-protection software. If they're not going to put any protection, migth as well make the game available for free. If it's even easier to crack (all you have to do is download the iso), I believe sales would actually dip. Removing protection does not resolve the issue, the issue being the significant amount of sales lost to pirating.

Consoles have protection features as well. And it's just harder to get around them than for the pc. When the dreamcast's protection was cracked, the number of pirated dreamcast games exploded.

The solution is a strong protection which doesn't inconvenience the customer. I don't know if Erik has it all figured out, but it's a step in the right direction. Just because he acknowledges the inefficacy of weak protectipon doesn't mean they should just do away with it.

Few people wait two months to buy new games. Yes, patching issues do play a certain role, but it's a whole different subject. As he stated, most of the sales for new titles happen in the first few weeks.

If you develop a strong protection (and he has laid out methods to do so), then you know (to a certain degree of certainty) that your game will take longer to hack. Even two weeks can make a world of difference. If stronger protection begins to result in longer crack times, other developers will follow suit, and it will lead to longer delays for cracking.

There was this article on gamasutra a few years back about title for the ps1. This was when ps1 games were being heavily pirated. The developers went to great lengths to make their title harder to crack, using multiple consistency checks and introducing bugs when those checks failed. They wouldn't crash out, but once you progressed far along into the game, if you had a cracked copy, the game would start failing. It took about a month (my memory is vague on this) for the game to be fully cracked, and the developer reckoned they gained lots of extra sales from this delay.

Major changes

[arhar]

I applaud them for having the guts to make some major changes to the franchise, as opposed to 'let's not fix what's not broken, make some new graphics, sounds, levels, and call it a sequel'.

However, I'm praying to God that they don't make it real time. Civ series is one of the few last examples of turn based strategy games done exceptionally well. I'd hate to see it become another RTS clone ...

Drop the legacy?

[Battlegeek]

"Drop unfun legacy (pollution, rioting, maintenance, corruption/waste)" I will admit that these aspects were not the most fun parts of the game, but they did add to the challenge of trying to balance foreign and domestic affairs. Thats leads me to two different tangents. Games are not interesting if they are not challenging. Sure it may be fun to zip through a simple game once, but you are not going to want to play it again. I have been playing and replaying Civ for 12 years. Secondly, maybe we need to send a copy of Civ to the Whitehouse as a learning tool.

I guess it was just too hard for them to fix.

[kabocox]

Drop unfun legacy (pollution, rioting, maintenance, corruption/waste)

Each one of these wasn't that bad. The problem is they didn't give you any really good pollution cleanup or reduction tech. What 2 buildings will magically fix all our pollution needs? Nope. They needed a much wider tech tree that allowed you to discover/invent 5-10 buildings that would cut your pollution to near zero. Rioting was bad. The bad thing about it was that it stopped production of what ever you were building. Of course if it didn't do that, no one would care. I guess it would be nicer if they had 3-4 rioting levels. Instead of just stopping production, they could have protests that would extend the production time alittle. Other than rearrange people you the only option you was to build religious institutions, and some entertaiment centers. I guess having "riot prevenation" units would help. The problem with how they have traditionally done it though is that a military unit can't really be moved out of a city in a democracy with out a percentage being unhappy. There weren't really that may options other than over build troops or buildup temples and such.

Maintenance come on everything built needs maintenance or it degrades and becomes useless!
Corruption/waste this is I agree is a PITA. Other than a court house and the forbiden palace you really didn't have any corruption reducing buildings or units. The same goes for waste.

Each of this could be fixed by having several special units that help reduce the effect. Think maybe a actual Jester unit to reduce unhappiness, or a Judge or Court offical to reduce corruption rather than just the buildings.

Incidentally...

[Mongoose Disciple]

Am I the only one who didn't care for Civ 3?

I like the genre, and Alpha Centauri is still one of my favorite games of all time. After spending countless hours playing that I was expecting more out of Civ 3.

Sure, we're talking about a sci-fi vs. historical strategy game, but still... I'd be interested to hear any opinions on why Civ 3 might've been a better game than I gave it credit for. I thought the culture system was cool, but in so many other ways it seemed like Firaxis took a colossal step back from what they'd achieved with AC.

Re:Incidentally...

[mjpaci]

I hated Civ III with a passion. It just didn't appeal to me, that's all: the sounds, the graphics, the complexity. I still play Civ II all the time--call me old fashioned.

Key wonders:

Pyramids (grannery in every city)
Adam Smith's thingy (reduce costs of improvment maintenance)
DaVinci (free unit upgrades)

There are more, but those three are key to rapidly develop your society.

--Mike

Hope they change nukes

[ben_degonzague]

I love Civ III but hated the way nukes worked in the game. They didn't prevent people from going to war against you. You'd use them, then others would declare war on you. On top of that, using nukes caused just pollution which then caused global warming! How about adding radiation which can't be cleaned up and goes away within time. I can't wait for Civ IV, hopefully I can catch up on all my reading before that happends.

Re:Hope they change nukes

[Rayonic]

Radiation that won't go away after a nuclear bomb? Tell that to the people living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They seem to be doing just fine.

Re:You are describing SMAC.

[pezpunk]

i second this post. honestly, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a greatly underrated game. it's the TRUE sequel to Civ2, and it beats the heck out of Civ3, which i really thought was pretty weak. it didn't ever OWN my time like Civ2 and Alpha Centauri (SMAC) did.

SMAC even lets you design your own units based on which techs you have discovered, and the audio quotes you hear upon researching new technology are alternately hilarious or profound.

sprinkled throughout are also quotes from Nietzsche, Kant, Plato, Aristotle, Einstein, Kierkegaard, and others. while this stuff has little to do with the game mechanics itself, it nevertheless helps me feel truly immersed in the progress of my society. each new scientific discovery really feels like a breakthrough, and it gives one a sense of how this new trechnology will effect my nation.

"beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master" -- Commissioner Pravin Lal

"We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?" -- Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7. (termination of speciman advised)

Beware, you who seek first and final principles, for you are trampling the garden of an angry God and he awaits you just beyond the last theorem. -- Sister Miriam Godwinson

Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce a Dataprobe. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken. -- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang

Of course we'll bundle our MorganNet software with the new network nodes; our customers expect no less of us. We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us. -- CEO Nwabudike Morgan

Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all? --
Sister Miriam Godwinson

Why do you insist that the human genetic code is "sacred" or "taboo"? It is a chemical process and nothing more. For that matter -we- are chemical processes and nothing more. If you deny yourself a useful tool simply because it reminds you uncomfortably of your mortality, you have uselessly and pointlessly crippled yourself. --Chairman Sheng-ji Yang

"The Academician's private residences shall remain off-limits to the Genetic Inspectors. We possess no retroviral capability, we are not researching retroviral engineering, and we shall not allow this Council to violate faction privileges in the name of this ridiculous witch hunt!" -- Fedor Petrov (upon discovering the technology of, you guessed it, Retroviral Engineering)

"It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." -- Chairman Sheng-ji Yang

Agreed

[wowbagger]

Personally, I'd like to see MORE real-world issues added to Civ:

How about making resources be NEEDED, rather than simply nice - what if you HAD to trade with (and thus be at peace with) that other country to trade for oil, or else all of your tanks stop working? What if you HAD to trade for uranium or all your city's nuke plants shut down (and pollution skyrockets).

How about making things like water and electricity issues for a city - not enough power and your fancy electric mines stop producing? Not enough water and your farms dry up?

What if you could build aquaducts between water sources and where it is needed? (but defend those or the enemy will shut them down, and then see previous paragraph). What is you could build power lines so that the cities with excess power could help the other cities out?

What if you could caravan food from places with a surplus to places that needed it? What if you could poach your enemy's caravans for food?

CivCTP is my crack cocaine - I start a game and next thing I know it's three AM. But you really cannot do diplomacy against the AIs - they have no reason to trade. Make it a bit more like the real world - if the Zulus need chromium and I have all the chromium mines, then no matter what their prediliction towards war, if they want to build their railroads they'd better not piss me off!