Civilization Facebook Game Admits Defeat

[IanDavis]

Honest question: if the social bubble has burst, does that mean the whole 'everything must be tied to sharing' system that the PS4 is going to have is just Sony jumping onto a bandwagon that has not only long passed, but is in a ditch and on fire?
Does this also mean that the generation after these new-boxes might be free of this constant and superfluous style of socializing? I'm really hoping it does.

In this case, "social" is the name of a particular genre of games that try to monetize time and attempt to spread virally via social networks. While they're almost impossible to play alone, they are usually very anti-social in nature.

Meanwhile, the PS4 is talking about actual social behavior, like when you chat with your friends via steam and take screenshots of that time when your friend totally crashed the Galaxy, AGAIN.

 

[WarpZone]

Facebook 2004 = people socializing with each other.

Facebook today = cluttered and insincere spam factory designed to steal your personal information, question mark question mark question mark, profit.

Farm Town = A simple time management game where you can gift items to friends, tapping into the tendancies of players already using facebook. Designed to allow the most enjoyable social interactions with the smallest possible time commitment.

Farmville = Zynga rips off Farm Town, successfully milks the freemium business model for all it's worth.

Civilization = Legacy series of American turn-based building games for the PC. Designed to be played single-player or competetively in long, epic campaigns.

CivWorld = Frankenstien monster created from the desecrated corpses of Civilization and Farmville. With the pacing of farmville, the aesthetics-of-play of Civ, and business practices hastily cribbed from the Zynga/Facebook playbook, there was basically no reason for anyone like this game. The fact that it lasted for two years and attracted even 88,000 users is a testament to the licensing power of the Civ brand which Sid Meyers basically just flushed down the toilet by greenlighting this game.

I don't think this marks the beginning of the end for Facebook games or Zynga, unfortunately. I think it's just a textbook example of how not to be Sid Meyer's IP.

Don't get me wrong, any indie developer would LOVE to have 2000 daily active users. But Zynga is the EA of facebook, (wow... what a terrible thing to call somebody...) and the EA of facebook somehow needs 27 million daily active users just to break even.

 

[Therumancer]

Personally I'm hoping for some major lawsuits to come of things like this, and start finally hammering down the EULAs. I doubt this will be where the line is drawn though.

One thing I've always pointed out is that people paying real money for virtual property is a touchy thing, especially seeing as it's been defended as this non-existant property having value based on context and what people ascribe to it. Video games at their current level of development can't exist indefinatly, and with all of the microtransaction fueled games out there, especially "free to play" ones that you can jump in and out of, it's inevitable that they are going to start to go down, probably in clusters as many of them reach their "twilight" at the same time.

I know the companies ARE covered by their EULAs, or so they think, but there is going to rapidly be a question as to people with hundreds or thousands of dollars invested in these games who stay committed until the end, losing all the time and money they put into the product especially if they still want to play, or simply if they liked the idea that they could play anytime they wanted and have their virtual property waiting for them.

With a failure of a game like Civworld, I don't see much of an issue here, but when I look at people simply losing their "Civbucks" and/or whatever was purchused with them I see the beginning of a trend that is going to be interesting if people get mad enough when a company like Funcom goes down (in the middle of a huge crash), or perhaps worse yet "Perfect World" given that right now Star Trek Online seems to have risen from the grave to become a bigger success than City Of Heroes (Cryptic's former leading game) ever was, I myself put a decent chunk of change into AoC/TSW/STO/CO between those companies and I know people who have literally purchused everything in the respective online stores for those games.

I think we might be in for an interesting few years, and to be honest I think the goverment should introduce legislation requiring any kind of game with microtransactions to be backed by a trust fund that generates enough interest to ensure the operation and maitnence of servers indefinatly even if the company otherwise expires.

 

[Evil Smurf]

next time, just make a new Alpha Centuri.

Yeah, but not as a Facebook game.

Dear God, anything but that!

Also, I'm asking you about your cat user group.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/groups/chat/Catoholics-anonymous

Feel free to join. We do cat gifs.

 

[Deryl Owens]

Personally I'm hoping for some major lawsuits to come of things like this, and start finally hammering down the EULAs. I doubt this will be where the line is drawn though.

One thing I've always pointed out is that people paying real money for virtual property is a touchy thing, especially seeing as it's been defended as this non-existant property having value based on context and what people ascribe to it. Video games at their current level of development can't exist indefinatly, and with all of the microtransaction fueled games out there, especially "free to play" ones that you can jump in and out of, it's inevitable that they are going to start to go down, probably in clusters as many of them reach their "twilight" at the same time.

I know the companies ARE covered by their EULAs, or so they think, but there is going to rapidly be a question as to people with hundreds or thousands of dollars invested in these games who stay committed until the end, losing all the time and money they put into the product especially if they still want to play, or simply if they liked the idea that they could play anytime they wanted and have their virtual property waiting for them.

With a failure of a game like Civworld, I don't see much of an issue here, but when I look at people simply losing their "Civbucks" and/or whatever was purchused with them I see the beginning of a trend that is going to be interesting if people get mad enough when a company like Funcom goes down (in the middle of a huge crash), or perhaps worse yet "Perfect World" given that right now Star Trek Online seems to have risen from the grave to become a bigger success than City Of Heroes (Cryptic's former leading game) ever was, I myself put a decent chunk of change into AoC/TSW/STO/CO between those companies and I know people who have literally purchused everything in the respective online stores for those games.

I think we might be in for an interesting few years, and to be honest I think the goverment should introduce legislation requiring any kind of game with microtransactions to be backed by a trust fund that generates enough interest to ensure the operation and maitnence of servers indefinatly even if the company otherwise expires.

It would be easier to just make a last patch for the game about to expire that lets you play the games one player style without needing to connect to a server or just make the software into shareware so players can take it onto themselves to maintain a community. Either way would be more effective than passing laws and involving lawyers who would just muck it up.

 

[Undomesticated Equine]

Well I played and this news does not surprise me at all as the game sucked. It was pretty much pay to win game that constantly encouraged you to buy some civ bucks.

 

[dalek sec]

Honest question: if the social bubble has burst, does that mean the whole 'everything must be tied to sharing' system that the PS4 is going to have is just Sony jumping onto a bandwagon that has not only long passed, but is in a ditch and on fire?
Does this also mean that the generation after these new-boxes might be free of this constant and superfluous style of socializing? I'm really hoping it does.

Dear god in heaven I hope so. I'm so tired of this social crap that's been going on for the past few years now. If I want to share my gaming stuff with someone I'll tell them myself. Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels about the subject like this. Just wondering but where did you hear about the "social bubble" bursting cause I really would like that to happen already.

 

[Tanis]

I had NO idea this even existed.

And, to add insult to injury, I actually 'liked' Alpha Centauri & Civilization 2.
But, still, no 'recommendation' this game was there.

 

[Dryk]

Honest question: if the social bubble has burst, does that mean the whole 'everything must be tied to sharing' system that the PS4 is going to have is just Sony jumping onto a bandwagon that has not only long passed, but is in a ditch and on fire?
Does this also mean that the generation after these new-boxes might be free of this constant and superfluous style of socializing? I'm really hoping it does.

I wish it would die, die in a horrible fire...

But ass Angry joe pointed out, the Share feature for the PS4 is more likely aimed at people who do things like Lets Plays and such, even though it will probably be useless for them as it doesn't allow them to do any of the editing and the like, just shows everything on the fly

Does that mean that it's aimed at the "point a camera at the screen" crowd then?

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I had NO idea this even existed.

And, to add insult to injury, I actually 'liked' Alpha Centauri & Civilization 2.
But, still, no 'recommendation' this game was there.

I'm in the same boat. I love Civ, and heck, Sid Meier's body of work in general (the man could make a game about watching paint dry addictive, if he set his mind to it.) I use Facebook, I think I may have even liked some related pages, but I've never heard of this game until today. I'm probably about as close to a target audience as this thing had, and I didn't know about it until they pulled the plug.

 

[DoveAlexa]

Dear god in heaven I hope so. I'm so tired of this social crap that's been going on for the past few years now. If I want to share my gaming stuff with someone I'll tell them myself. Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels about the subject like this. Just wondering but where did you hear about the "social bubble" bursting cause I really would like that to happen already.

In this very article. "...it's not difficult to speculate that the social bubble is deflating a bit, if not yet fully collapsing." I decided to remove the cruft words/apologetic language and just say burst.

 

[aattss]

That one was actually one of the funner ones.

 

[RandV80]

Honest question: if the social bubble has burst, does that mean the whole 'everything must be tied to sharing' system that the PS4 is going to have is just Sony jumping onto a bandwagon that has not only long passed, but is in a ditch and on fire?
Does this also mean that the generation after these new-boxes might be free of this constant and superfluous style of socializing? I'm really hoping it does.

Dear god in heaven I hope so. I'm so tired of this social crap that's been going on for the past few years now. If I want to share my gaming stuff with someone I'll tell them myself. Glad to know I'm not the only one who feels about the subject like this. Just wondering but where did you hear about the "social bubble" bursting cause I really would like that to happen already.

I'm with you but I don't know which way this is going to swing. It's one of those things where if 51% of your market favour the socializing side, then it's going to be implemented for 100% of the users. You can try to ignore it sure but it's still something that gets in your face from time to time and as it costs money to implement it's something you've unfortunately had to pay for.

As someone against these things I like to liken it to reading a book, or hell even movies. You may want to discuss them after but during the event you sit down and let the material entertain you. You don't have an "watched 100 movies!" 'achievement' pop up on the screen in the theater, or in a book an option to share or tweet your thoughts after Tyrion lures Joffrey into a brothel where gets violated and beaten to death by a horde of angry whores (that doesn't actually happen, unfortunately ). I know video games are more of an interactive medium, but that doesn't mean I want to be interrupted while playing.

 

[Strazdas]

next time, just make a new Alpha Centuri.

a tohusand times this. we defeinatelly need new apha centaury. we had 3 Civ games since.
better yet, join them. make Civ 6 with alpha centaury to happen afterwards. like, you build a spaceship in Civ, then the spaceship flies off and bam your in apha centaury continuing your civilization with same rivals, still being calculated on earth if no spaceship and lagging behind if thats the case in civ. like a civ game that lets you go not only into thep ast but into the future. i been wantign for such game for like 5 years nwo though, tough