IG: You talked before about the audience on Facebook and how that’s a little bit different. When you're looking at the Civ Network, how do you know exactly what the overlap would be between the traditional Civ player and the Facebook audience? Do you think you’re trying to create a game for a different audience or is it still going to be for the standard Civ audience?
SM: I think there’s definitely an opportunity there to broaden the audience on Facebook and that the game that we’re looking at is a very flexible game. I think it has to be in a world where some people play 15 minutes a day, some people play 3 or 4 hours a day, and anywhere in between. So I think we’re making a game that can encompass the new audience but won’t leave the old audience behind. In fact, I think there’s an opportunity there for Civ players to kind of show off in a larger arena in front of their friends, in front of their family, in front of people that they know and kind of demonstrate their Civ chops. But it’s also a way of gently introducing new players to the game because you might have a friend who plays and that friend might help you out and introduce you and mentor you or you might have a family. You have all these connections on Facebook that really are part of the experience and can enhance it in ways that we couldn’t before. So it’s a new frontier, we don’t know the answers about exactly what’s going to happen, but we certainly see the potential for having something new for traditional Civ players and bringing something to people who haven’t played Civ before, introducing it in a way that really fits with how they like to play games.
IG: And I guess a lot of what you talked about in your keynote regarding game design and psychology would still apply to this?
SM: Everything would still apply, 100%, yeah.
IG: Even though this is not a standard retail game, the chief design principles that you talked about, the psychology, is all getting funneled straight into the Civ Network too?
SM: I hope so. I was trying to talk about ideas that were pretty general and universal, even though the examples were taken from games that I had worked on. I tried to talk about ideas that were pretty applicable to all different types of games. Certainly to the games that we’re working on, Civilization Network and the other games.
IG: I was at a roundtable discussion with David Perry, and there was a discussion about Facebook gaming and sort of how the designers design more to the metrics and the analytics to see what works rather than designing just from the creative aspect of game design. Warren Spector was not happy with that. He was saying, “I’d rather quit making games before I go ahead and make a game based purely on the metrics.” They get so nitty gritty with the stuff, they’re like, “Oh, the pink font looks better than the blue font. There’s a better response to people clicking on the pink font.” So how much are you actually looking at the metrics part of it when you’re doing Civ Network?
SM: That’s probably not the part that fascinates me. I do think it’s valuable to get player feedback and understand what they’re doing, but I think games are always going to be about gameplay and that’s kind of the fundamental thing. That’s our focus and our interest. The more information we can derive from the player’s experience, the better we can make our game, but I want to understand how people are enjoying our game and how can they enjoy it more based on the gameplay experience, not quite so much on those, kind of, I don’t know, I don’t know what they are [laughs]…that’s not core to gameplay in my mind, so I agree with Warren.
IG: Right, that's what I would think... it's sort of the old guard of game design - you and Warren and a lot of people who have been in the industry for just so many years - and now you have this new integration with the web, and with the web being so important, it’s like a new breed of game designer that’s sort of changing the approach a little bit.
SM: Yeah. Well, I think that’s what’s fascinating about this whole area, that we have the opportunity now to try many different approaches and see what works, what doesn’t work, what appeals to one audience, what appeals to a different audience. Certainly the opportunity to learn and try different things is fascinating, but I don’t think all the rules have been laid down yet. I think there’s an opportunity to try a lot of new things, and that’s what’s really fascinating about it to me.
IG: So, for Civ 5, I understand you’re not the chief designer on that.
SM: Correct.
IG: So, I guess you’re still overseeing it, making sure everything sort of fits the Civ universe?
SM: I give everyone dirty looks [laughs] and make sure they’re taking it [in the right direction], and they’re doing a great job.
IG: What are your primary guidelines that you give to the team that is working on Civ 5?
SM: I think Civ has a really neat history and what we’ve learned is that each iteration is going to be built on some core principles that are going to need to bring some fresh ideas, some new things to the game, and that certainly applies to Civ 5. There’s some cool new stuff in there, things that haven’t been done before, but it’s certainly recognizable as a Civ game. We’re moving along with our audience. We get a lot of ideas from our players. There’s a community out there that thinks there are some things that they’d like us to improve, and it’s an entity, it’s an organism, it’s a lifestyle! We’re ready to move into this new generation of Civ 5 with these cool new ideas, taking advantage of new technology, things like that that we didn’t have before. So I guess I’m the keeper of the flame of the Civ spirit, the core of what the game is about, but the more new ideas, fresh ideas that we can bring into it, the better I think the product ends up at the end of the day. So that combination...mixing all that stuff together and then playing it, weeding out things that don’t work, we kind of always treated it as an organic process.
IG: I know we're almost out of time, so one last question, which is sort of a more general industry question. Right now, as we talked about, there are all sorts of emerging fields and tons of opportunities. As you said, it’s a great time to be a game designer, but at the same time, there are a lot of challenges for the industry too. So what would you single out as the major hurdles that the industry faces for really getting to that next level?
SM: I think we’re doing pretty well. I think that if there’s a challenge out there, it’s with the whole financial structure. You have these AAA titles over here, then you have iPhone games selling for 99 cents. We’re at a time when it’s hard to put a comfortable number on what is something worth. I think that creates a little uncertainty in the players. Should I be able to play for free? What can I get for 99 cents? What about this AAA title? And I think, if anything, there’s a real uncertainty about what the real values of games are and I think that that’s related to the fact that the industry’s growing faster than we can become comfortable with the new technologies and what they can do and what the costs are of making them and things like that. I think this evolution is going on, understanding how all these new areas fit in with the big picture of gaming, but I think it’s primarily an embarrassment of riches. We have all these opportunities and we’re just trying to figure out how to make them all fit together.
IG: Thank you very much, Sid.
1 Comments
May 4, 2010
I think Sid took a look also at eRepublik.com when thinking about Civ Network. :)
All those gameplay (and not only gameplay) problems he spots and all those opportunities are indeed huge.