Rob Zacny

Episode 256: The Days of Yor

Recommended Posts

This week Troy and Rob talk about Galactic Civilizations 3 with lead designer Paul Boyer. Paul explains the goals of the alpha and what early backers can expect at this stage of development as well as future builds. Rob and Troy rattle off a few items from their wishlist, and both of them are wrong once again about how fun the ship builder was in GalCiv2. --Michael

 

Join in and listen to our 2^8 episode.

 


Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Congratulations on 100000000 episodes, and reaching your ninth bit!

 

I'm firmly in the "more focus in 4X games please" camp.  If I'm going to be designing ships, I'd like that to be the focus of the game, not an ancillary subsystem I can't avoid.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Indeed, haven't listened to the episode yet, but arguably the biggest point in Beyond Earth's favor in my book is the lack of designing your own units.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I feel bad for game developers.

It takes a lot of mind power for a consumer to understand that a "100"-bucks price point is meant as a wall to keep them outside ... unless they are willing to a) support the project in general and B) invest time to the game development part.
On the other hand, there is something intrinsically - let me say - 'obscene', about asking people for a lot of money to become a glorified Q&A tester? What crushes this second point, is the freedom of commerce. Who ever wants to agree to a contract of this sort has every right to do it ... and people from outside, like myself, have no right to complain about it.

What I like about "Early Access" in general, is the ability to 'join' such an early project and see it develop over time. It makes players understand the process of how the sausage is made better. It is also interesting how game developers are willing to share the process with their customers? Certainly, experienced, dedicated players always had a chance to give feedback to a game, but this 'daily-build' sharing, makes everything more immediate and dynamic? It also makes it difficult to explain to non-developers how these builds are 'early', 'fragile', 'broken' ... in progress. Players tend to judge what they see (often harshly). It takes time to understand and 'see' the game, behind the build? Early 'bad comments' can suddenly hurt such a project, as much as it can help the work process to make it a more 'polished' product?

I wonder, how much player feedback is part of the daily sorrows of a producer or project lead and at which point they have to shut down that noise.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

What I like about "Early Access" in general, is the ability to 'join' such an early project and see it develop over time. It makes players understand the process of how the sausage is made better. It is also interesting how game developers are willing to share the process with their customers? Certainly, experienced, dedicated players always had a chance to give feedback to a game, but this 'daily-build' sharing, makes everything more immediate and dynamic? It also makes it difficult to explain to non-developers how these builds are 'early', 'fragile', 'broken' ... in progress. Players tend to judge what they see (often harshly). It takes time to understand and 'see' the game, behind the build? Early 'bad comments' can suddenly hurt such a project, as much as it can help the work process to make it a more 'polished' product?

I wonder, how much player feedback is part of the daily sorrows of a producer or project lead and at which point they have to shut down that noise.

 

Unless you're one of the lucky few that works for a self-funded team that can afford to go silent-running, you've got "customers" whether they're the actual players who want this thing, publishing reps, brand managers, "project foremen", or any of a thousand other varieties of "stakeholder". With the actual players you have some leeway; they actually want to play this thing someday. Whereas (from personal example) on a normal project you can have the Italian branding office of the IP holder suddenly lean in when the game is supposedly released to manufacturing and require that in the Italian SKU the splash screen logo be a different shade of blue.  Or else legal pulls the rights.  Cue panicking publisher, and a 2 minute fix in photoshop that reset the whole QA and approvals pipeline, delaying shipping by a month.

 

Or you get the classic thing where late in the project a bunch of people financially tied to the project who never showed any interest in it before and have no understanding of the development process suddenly start demanding changes; all the characters should be wearing trilbys instead of fedoras, this level should be set at night, those cars that are a static part of the level geometry need to be driveable, there need to be hundreds of pedestrians wandering around here, hey, when I drive into a crowd of pedestrians I want to see all their trilbys fly off...  And suddenly you're a year from shipping again, when you thought you were in late beta.

 

Which often leads to the classic: "We've spent two years on this, and it doesn't look like it at all.  Head office is furious.  We're throwing it all out and starting again from scratch." followed six months later by "We've spent two and a half years on this, and it doesn't look like it at all.  Head office is furious..." ad nausium.

 

The players want the game.  They may not be educated in the development process, but quite frankly they're better educated in it than a lot of producers I've worked with.  More importantly, the players want a fun game, and they want to actually play it some day.  Maybe they want more than you can deliver, or something only vaguely related to what you're working on, but ultimately they want the game.  They aren't "protecting their IP" or trying to fit things into financial quarters or walmart shelf slot allocations, they aren't trying to counter other games, or "appeal to _____ demographic" or tick marketing boxes or "the game has to have boss fights, it's expected" or "zombie games are selling well, what if we made them zombies?" or "let's talk about monetization strategy and ARPU" or any of the thousand other concerns that the traditional publishing model foists on development.

 

I would far rather deal with the people who are going to be playing the game.  Maybe they don't understand development, but you can teach them, show them.  And at least all of their demands, reasonable or not, are aimed towards making a game they want to play.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I feel bad for game developers.

It takes a lot of mind power for a consumer to understand that a "100"-bucks price point is meant as a wall to keep them outside ... unless they are willing to a) support the project in general and B) invest time to the game development part.

On the other hand, there is something intrinsically - let me say - 'obscene', about asking people for a lot of money to become a glorified Q&A tester? What crushes this second point, is the freedom of commerce. Who ever wants to agree to a contract of this sort has every right to do it ... and people from outside, like myself, have no right to complain about it.

I don't feel bad for them, they're the ones choosing to charge people 100 dollars. Never say never, but I couldn't see myself doing that for something I was working on. The arguments I've heard (the ones in this episode included) don't sway me, there are better ways of reaching your most dedicated fans than asking them to pay more than everyone else just because you know they will. It's just a way to get more money out of them, I think it's sleazy. If you want feedback then invite them to a closed alpha. If you're dead set on paid early access you can still limit who gets to buy it without slapping an insulting price tag on it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Which track of the soundtrack of which game is played at the start of this episode?  I checked the GalCiv 2 sountrack and didn't find a match.  Did I miss it, or is the music from something else?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

No it's from GalCiv 2. It's the intro music isn't it?

I'm cautiously looking forward to this. The space 4x though is a genre stuck in a rut. I enjoyed Endless Space even though it's tech was more about numbers than tech, but anything I've taken a look at recently (star drive, horizon) all just feel like the same game. It's a odd genre tbh.

Still I suspect all my strategy playing time at the end of this year will be consumed by Civ: Beyond Earth. And I've still not touched Crusader Kings II.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's from GalCiv3! It's titled "Menutheme" or something similar, but it's a reprise of the theme used throughout GalCiv2. I've always liked the Galciv2 music and was very pleased to hear that theme in the alpha when the game opened. I thought it would be a nice touch open and close the show with the theme, so in it went.

GalCiv2 is one of my personal favorites, probably because it hit me when I had just discovered Civ3 and was getting into the 4x genre. I liked the quirky robot and I've never minded "lasers 3" -- I don't feel like my play experience would be vastly expanded if some bit of lore was tacked on to the fact that my lasers were upgraded. I like putzy work like ship building and I LOVE tech trees that force you to make decisions by going down certain paths at the opportunity cost of neglecting others. So while I get why all those things bug some people, GalCiv is firmly in my wheelhouse.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now