Perfectly Peculiar Pixels [#22]

Tl;DR: If you skip everything else today, check the last article. Everyone’s aware of the predatory practices that have slowly taken over the gaming industry. Beloved developers being snubbed out of hundreds of millions of $, genuine gambling mechanics used to sell to rope-in children, and games as a service double dipping into your wallets every chance they get, while others disable you from playing the games you paid for. Well, today you can help fight back on at least one front, with the best kind of couch-activism where all you have to do is join in with your signature, and optionally pray to the great RNG that there are more people than bots in the petition. Many have discussed this movement in great detail, including myself, so I won’t go deeper into it here, but I find it to be the civic duty of every future game dev with good intentions to sign it, and help divert the gaming industry from the slop machine future it’s heading for.

And if you’re still here, let’s discuss, in a very narrow context, the work of one Sid Meier. It would take a few of these issues just to cover this one series in full, so much like his games, this will merely be an orbital view of Civilization and its offshoot.

As a boring professor, it’s a part of my social contract to always remind you to head back to the source. Doing puzzle games? Look at Tetris. Doing RPGs? Play Arcanum. Doing 3rd person open-world adventure games? Well, I’d urge you to reconsider, but if you insist, start with GTA(1). Civilization is a game of nation building, where you try to dominate other nations either through conquest, economy, culture, or technological marvels. The top down art of 1991 is as dated as they come, and even that will differ depending on which system you choose to emulate. Both Civ 1 and 2 have been abandoned by their former, defunct and absorbed masters, and are free to play. Game-mechanics wise, while there are obviously upgrades between the sequels, there aren’t as many drastic changes between 1-3. While I urge you to try 1 explicitly for going back to the roots, and studying the mechanics, 3 is probably the best entry point if you’re looking to just enjoy it.

Ten years and a sequel later, the last wonder of the world you can build in Civilization, is the same ship that takes your from a polluted Earth to Alpha Centauri, presumably to pollute some more. Certainly to eradicate (if you so choose), the indigenous life forms (alien to us… even though we’re the aliens in that game). Built on the backbone of Civ2, Alpha Centauri was ground breaking for its time. It allowed you to build modular units, where vessels could be made separate from the armour and the weapons they would carry. Interestingly enough, this feature hasn’t made it back into Civ3 which would come out two years later. More than just a Sci-Fi palette swap of Civ2 though, it allows you to engage in completely different strategies by e.g. building colonies (cities) on water. Famous nation leaders have been replaced with ideological figures, representing everything from technocratic dictators to surprisingly militant hippies. Weirder? Certainly. But at least you won’t be scratching your head while you get nuked by Gandhi.

There are very few game analysts/critics online who take the time to delve deep into the subject matter, and Chris from Errant signal will always have a place in our discussions, even though, or especially because I don’t always agree with him. His breakdown of how Civilization only caters to a very 20th century world view of nations might sound harsh, but it’s telling of how much of a task it is to take on, to gamify the world, that only few besides Sid Meier have even attempted. Coupled with the fact that gamers can be a fickle bunch, building something this complex while diverting from a well proven formula, makes it a very unpleasant hill to climb and potentially die on. However, it does illustrate the fact that we could, and probably should, strive to make, or rather start with making visually simpler games, in order to explore the systems therein.

At 20GB, Civ VI, is 5,000 times larger than the original game. Ironically, it is considerably less of a game though. Or at least less of a game of Civ. A lot of, arguably, tedious detail has been carefully streamlined out of it. For example, instead of building transport units, be they ships or planes, all your units can now traverse the seven seas once a certain research level has been reached. Moreover, helicopters traversing sea tiles, even if there is a land destination on the other end, turn into boats as well, bizarrely. It’s no longer possible to stack an infinite amount of troops on a single tile, which creates a completely new method of combat to previous outings. Mercifully, the units of other leaders in the game move nearly simultaneously, focusing (when it actually works) the screen only on combat engagements. It also allows you to wonder around while those moves are being made, review stats and diplomatic screens too. I had the glimpse of the old Civilization when 15 hours into it, I was softening up the ancient city walls of a clearly skyscraper laden city, while running down samurai with a modern tank. But, if 30 years later, you take out the tediousness out of a game known for it - is it the same game, and who did you make it for? ^{[edit] also, 2K Games is apparently playing fast and loose with the EULA, and has created a privacy nightmare - make sure you don’t opt into anything with this free game. (yes, I used a bold font variant because it’s that important!)}

STOP KILLING GAMES!!!