Solver: Sid Meier -- is he to be blamed for some of Civ 3's faults, working on SimGolf during that time?

DanQ: I do believe that there are faults in Civilization III, just as there are with any game. Depending upon the area that the fault falls under, different individuals would be held accountable in different proportions than others and I don't believe that Sid is any exception. However, with the exception of the exclusion of multiplayer -- now being addressed in the upcoming expansion pack, "Play The World" -- I don't believe that there is anything major to lay blame on anyone for anything in CivIII. My feeling is that a great part of the reason people have lashed out as CivIII, and compared it so often to CivII, is that players have simply not found as much of an overhaul in terms of the depth of the game in going from CivII to CivIII as opposed to CivI to CivII. I am not saying that I don't believe this assertion to be true, but rather on the contrary. However, that's not the end of the story in my books.

Firaxis was walking a tightrope when they were trying to balance new features and innovations in CivIII to best avoid it from being labeled as "CivII 1/2" without overwhelming new and experienced players alike. Our expectations were high with the game being released five years after CivII was originally and it being two-and-a-half years after the first press release of its existence was published during the 1999 E3 Expo. For better or for worse the Internet too was a source that built up this expectation, and it is a consideration that some of us as still dealing with. In fact, based on my observations if you were to take away CivIII's comparisons to CivII and grade the game based on its own merits, the outlook and resulting scores in rating the game would be much higher. Truly this is not realistic, perhaps not even preferred, but living in the shadow of a predecessor often predisposes fans and critics alike to a negative spin in their review.

Again, multiplayer exclusion aside, I believe that Firaxis succeeded in walking the aforementioned fine line. Undoubtedly my comments here will be regarded as biased given my position in the community, and I accept that as a given. To those who would quickly dismiss my opinions as being something more sinister, may I remind you that we all have biases regardless of our positions on anything in any community.

Solver: As we all know now, Civ 3 got rushed to the market. Was Firaxis right or wrong with this decision?

DanQ: This question kind of leads into what I got to talking about just moments ago in #37. First off, saying "CivIII got rushed to the market" cannot be stated in such black and white terms -- it's definitely a grey area open to interpretation. Let's use the analogy of building a thesis around the statement "CivIII got rushed to the market". What are the major arguments you would introduce to support this? Here is what I would write.

First, the exclusion of multiplayer. Second, the slew of bugs requiring patching and so on. Like any good essay, you would have to cover the opposing side and rebuke their arguments. What would those be, that which would point to saying "CivIII did not get rushed to the market"? The game was in development for somewhere in the vicinity of three years, for starters. Already I know those who support the former argument are already thinking of something to destroy the credibility of the statement in the last sentence prior.

"But Dan", you cry, "you are only telling us what we already know: the position of the two sides of the debate. Where do you stand on this?" I believe that there were parts that were rushed, i.e. multiplayer and bugs present, but overall I do not believe it was rushed. In closing though, let me give you this to think about: Firaxis was the developer of CivIII, not the publisher: that was Infogrames. The publisher will often dictate when the game is to be released as they are footing the bills for the marketing and perhaps part (most?) of the production costs themselves. If you truly believe that CivIII got "rushed to the market", are you certain you're directing your line of fire in the right direction?

No, I can’t agree here. We do know that Infogrames has hurried Firaxis, so a few things were left out. So I’d ask you now to evaluate the performance of Infogrames thus far.

I have no further comment on this matter at this time.

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