I review a lot of independent games. (I could write a long post on what indpendent games are and what they aren’t, but I’ll just point you to Greg Micek’s column in the April issue of Computer Games Magazine.) Many of these games have small teams, small budgets and sell for lower prices. My most recent review for DIY Games is for one such game, Civil War: The Battle of Bull Run by Mad Minute Games.

Their publisher, Activision Value, has chosen to sell Civil War for $19.99. This is an amazing price for what is really a very good game – flawed, but mostly excellent. This is the same price that you’ll pay for any number of crappy “tycoon” games and for games made to capitalize on the latest pop culture phenomenon, be it Who Wants to be a Millionaire?or Survivor.

The thing is, most serious gamers – the ones most likely to be drawn to a heavily detailed simulation of the opening battle of the Civil War – expect games to cost forty or fifty bucks. If a title is priced below the magic $39.99 sticker, the immediate expectation is of poor gameplay and rushed development. When Dreamcatcher announced that they would be selling Universal Combat for $19.99, developer Derek Smart was outraged. As popular a target as Mr. Smart is, the prevailing opinion of bargain software is that it is dreck, making his fear that the price would ruin his franchise not entirely far-fetched.

Indie games are caught in the middle on this. Most of them sell for a good deal less than fifty bucks. Supremacy: Four Paths to Power goes for $24.99, Jeff Vogel sells his Spiderweb RPGs for around that price, and the amazing Gish is for sale from Chroniclogic for a mere twenty dollars. Because the production costs and production values of a small indie game are usually lower, it is questionable how many people would grab Gish despite its excellence if it wasn’t priced to sell.

So how should the consumer – or reviewer – approach these games? It is common for people to say that X product “wasn’t bad for the price” or “at least I got my money’s worth.” Should we expect less of less costly game and just be thankful that they didn’t cost more? Should a game reviewer go easier on a game because it is easy for the consumer to drop a few bucks on a smaller title? If the game cost less to produce, should this influence the valuation of its gameplay?

These are not easy questions. The reflex action to rate worth according to a basic money/time ratio is understandable and even valid in some cases. If the original Superpower hadn’t cost me any money, but was given to me, would my hate be less severe? Absolutely. Even at bargain bin prices, it was a stupid purchase driven more by a desire to see the car crash everyone was talking about than sound fiscal planning. The thirteen dollar price of President Forever makes it easier for me to recommend it to friends on a tight budget.

But there comes a point when the player and reviewer have to see a game for what it is, and not for what it costs. Games that have more money invested in them tend to be better games. It’s not an iron clad rule of course. Every year is full of dozens of AAA turkeys. But what was the last small scale game to finish in anybody’s annual top ten? This does not mean that there is no fun to be had in the cheap seats.

To be fair to the gamer, lower priced games have to be evaluated honestly when it comes to how enjoyable they are. When I played Supremacy, I couldn’t get past the fact that there was precious little fun to be had, and the lack of enjoyment was in no way tied to the archaic graphics and old school game play; basic game design issues cramped my style. To recommend it to friends and readers, except under specific circumstances, would be wrong – in spite of the excellent price. As a reviewer, games have to be measured according to how they work as games, not how much money the developer had to spend or how little they charged for it.

But the example of Civil War should be pointed out by every strategy and war gamer out there. Great games can be found at the price point usually reserved for cash cow impulse purchases. Examples of compelling play and good fun can be found on all the shelves. Coverage of the bargain game market (like the children’s game market) is pretty sparse, so any savvy consumer should find a reputable source to rely on in this area – Gamespot isn’t going to be doing a bunch of previews for the next Geneforge game.

But trust me on this. Buy Civil War.

Gamerankings is an interesting site for more than the obvious reasons. Yes, it is cool to be able to see which games are reviewed by the most people and which get the best scores. I like to check the average review scores from particular sites or magazines to see which publications are the most out of sync with general critical opinion. Of course, I also like checking out my own reviews and where they stack-up compared to my peers.

My favorite part of Gamerankings though is the voting/review system. Lots of sites have these. Metacritic and Gamespot both have user review sections, for instance, but the Gamerankings one is my personal favorite. All of these user vote/review sections are a nice peek into the black heart of gamers. Especially those who have axes to grind against particular games, publishers, or popular hits.

Take the user votes for Rome: Total War. At this writing, 22 people have given this game a 1 out of 10. That’s more people than have given it a 7. More than the 2s, 3s, and 4s added together.

Not everyone is going to like Rome – especially historical purists who want every game to mimic what actually happened. But there is no way that it is a 1 out of 10. If Rome is a 1 – the worst score possible – what does it take to be a 10? Clearly, many of these votes are backlash votes against a game that a lot of people love and a lot of critics raved about. On a number of game forums devoted to the development of other ancient themed games, you see these people talking about how Low Budget Rome Game X will be better than Rome because…well it’s rarely clear why. None of these 1 voters write user reviews, of course, because to try to argue why Rome is one of the worst games ever made would make you look crazy.

I’m not trying to argue that everyone should like the same games. If you don’t enjoy Rome it’s no skin off my nose. But you can’t play it and not appreciate that it achieves what it sets out to achieve. Give it a 4 or a 5, or at least defend your 1.

Some people, of course, see the world of games in black and white. A game is either good or not – the old thumbs up/thumbs down approach to gaming. There is nothing wrong with this, and if enough people take the ten point scale seriously, these Siskels and Eberts don’t do anyone’s overall score any harm. But if you look at this particular guy’s votes, a curious trend appears. All of the Age of Empires games get thumbs down. All of the Paradox games get thumbs down. Cossacks II gets thumbs down and it’s not even out yet. In fact, most of the scores seem to based on little more than whether the game was popular or not and who published it.

I don’t mean to single this guy out, but he is symptomatic of a breed of gamer who hates something that others like, especially if it is from a company that has disappointed them before. Part of this is the “I’m too cool for…” syndrome. For example, I have a good friend who refused to see Titanic on principle – it was popular therefore he had no interest. We all know people like this. They are too hip to buy into what others like. If the masses embrace it, something must be wrong with it.

In the strategy game arena, these are the people who hate all RTS games and want more TBS. They want more historical accuracy and more options at the same time. They want realism and customization and tanks that have armor the right thickness. These are the “more strategic than thou” people who believe that if a strategy game is a hit with the masses, it must be both shallow and unfulfilling.

RTS is, of course, more realistic than TBS, but the contradiction doesn’t bother them because it’s not about being right. It’s about showing how different the “real” strategy gamer is from the crowd.

Check any random strategy game forum, or better yet, one devoted to a marginal game or minor hit. You will find no end of posts raving about how if you like this game, you are smarter than the average strategy gamer. Spartan players are better than the yahoos who are buying up Rome. If you can’t figure out the Byzantine interface of Victoria, the problem is with you and your desire to play a “click-fest.” (BTW, can we retire this word? I’m not even sure what it means, besides implying that if you use the mouse a lot you must be a loser.)

To end at the beginning, here is my user history at Gamerankings. I try to be as fair in my scores and reviews here as I do in places I publish. Make what you will of them.

Grand strategy masters Paradox Studios has just announced that it will be the North American publisher for Sunflower’s medieval strategy game Knights of Honor. So Paradox is not only acquiring other people’s IP (Diplomacy, ASL, etc) but is now publishing a third party’s game.

This is good news regardless of whether the games they publish are actually worth playing. It is a clear sign that Paradox is more than viable, it is profitable enough to take risks.

IGN has a hands-on preview of Imperial Glory on their site written by Tom McNamara. Be sure to check out the videos.

The most exciting thing in this preview is the intimation that diplomacy will actually matter- that allies will help you out and that the game won’t degenerate into the player versus the world (though that’s what happened with Napoleon, of course.) Diplomacy has always been pointless in the Total War series, from the continual Hobbesian state of nature in Shogun to the easily broken alliances in Rome. So a Total War-like game – which Imperial Glory undoubtedly is – that makes it possible to survive thanks to your friends is something to applaud.

None of the videos show any large scale action for any length of time, but be sure to look at the battle scenes. The destructive power of artillery is obvious and the naval warfare certainly looks like as much fun as the ship duels in Pirates!.

Imperial Glory is at the top of my list for spring strategy titles, and is the one game that might make the summer worthwhile. With the glut of great games released last fall and winter, 2005 seems to have gotten off to a slow start. Age of Empires III is a long way off, and the wait for Legion Arena is more low key.

Imperial Glory will be hitting the shelves in the last week of April, just a little after my birthday.

Just updated my list of CGM reviews on the right hand side. Three in this month’s – well, two and a half. Gates of Troy only got a few words. The other two were for Hearts of Iron 2 (on which I have already spoken here) and Dragoon, a new Horse & Muskets game from Boku and Shrapnel.

Dragoon is one of the few new wargames that can get away with being ugly. Ugly interface, ugly graphics, ugly documentation, ugly everything. It helps that it continues to use the intitiative system that Boku used in the first Horse & Musket games – a system similar to the one you will find in the Great Battles series that ate so much of my time a few years back.

But I wonder how much of my love of the game is wrapped up in the obscure subject matter. Dragoon is about Frederick the Great, certainly an important king and general, but he’s no Napoleon. I’m a sucker for novelty in a game, and the insistence of Boku to address wars that no one else has is endearing.

This love of the obscure could also account for why I think Europa Universalis is one of the finest games ever made and Hearts of Iron does nothing for me. One is about the long history between Columbus and Napoleon- the stuff we never see in games – and the other is about Nazis and GIs – the stuff we always see in games.

I doubt that I am alone in this. A lot of reviewers seem to put a premium on novelty in setting and subject matter. If someone could make a good game about WWI or an update to the old Koei Asian empire games, I would probably rave about them too.

The problem with this, of course, is that most gamers want to play in familiar settings, preferably settings where they already know what the objectives are. So it is clearly unfair to penalize games for giving people what they want. And I don’t. I do think I reward originality in subject matter though, and this may be deceptive for readers who expect that games will give them all the background information they need to appreciate what is going on.

Think of the aforementioned Great Battles series. Each one had excellent documentation – and the Collector’s Edition had most of it in-game. So it was very easy for the player to get a feel for ancient battles, and, more importantly, understand what was at stake in each of the historical moments captured. I think that designers can do more to help players out of the “give me what I want and nothing else” cycle, and hopefully this would mean greater variety in battlefields for me to play on.

One of the truly great disappointments of the last five years was Elixir’s Republic: The Revolution, a political strategy game that promised so much in the years of development but shipped as a pared down linear strategy role-player with many fewer options and a bloated 3D engine that most people used as rarely as possible. It was billed as the most ambitious political strategy game ever, but had clearly bitten off more than it could chew.

Elixir Studios, with new partner Nicely Crafted Entertainment, has returned to the Republic name for a MMO sequel to the post-Soviet political sim, but this time it is former Commies in space. Republic Dawn: Chronicles of the Seven will cast the players as citizens of a distant galactic republic on the verge of collapse after a devastating attack. Player actions will determine the fate of the government – will they help build up a new and stable government or will they hasten the end of the national infrastructure?

This is not the Republic you remember. In fact, I have no idea why the move to outer space was necessary. A terrestrial fictitious nation would be both more manageable and accessible to those players who want to play in a political sim. In an interview with CGM’s John Callaham, Ben Simpson of Nicely Crafted Entertainment said that Republic was more of a concept than a game, so the change isn’t a big issue. Besides Elixir and NCE were working on similar separate projects, so sticking the Republic name on a game they build together seemed obvious.

MMOs rely on giving the player a way to measure progress daily. It is not immediately clear how this would work in a game whose driving engine is political survival. Simpson talks about PvP and PvE, but I’m not sure what the E would be. He talks about players forming political parties and political/economic conflict. NCE has already built a MMORTS, Time of Defiance, and will certainly use their experience here to inform Republic: Dawn.

With a scheduled release of 2007, the mere existence of this game is speculative. The dominance of MMORPGs in the online world is demonstrated by my failure of imagination in trying to conceive how Republic Dawn would work in the real world. Will players flock to a game where everyone can’t be president? What if one party takes over the Senate and starts using it benefit its own members, to the detriment of everyone else in game? How will NCE navigate the tricky line between “All’s fair in politics” and “Why should people keep playing this?” Will there be one Republic, or one on every server? How would casual players be hooked into a world where their input into major decisions is handicapped by their infrequent play?

The small scale success of A Tale in the Desert is certainly informative here, and I hope the NCE takes its lessons to heart. ATITD is not your usual foozle-whacking MMOG and still manages to keep subscribers. The success of a Republic: Dawn will depend on finding a player base for a game for which the model is a player run world with no real combat at all. It would be nice to have a MMOG that did not have elves and orcs and that asked players to really try to affect the world they lived in.

Like the initial Republic, I am really looking forward to what comes of this. Hopefully I won’t be let down again.