{"id":1018,"date":"2008-08-03T16:02:41","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T20:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/08\/03\/civilization-4-is-inferior-to-civ-1\/"},"modified":"2008-08-03T16:02:41","modified_gmt":"2008-08-03T20:02:41","slug":"civilization-4-is-inferior-to-civ-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2008\/08\/03\/civilization-4-is-inferior-to-civ-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Civilization 4 is inferior to Civ 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Or at least that’s what Paul Barnett would have you believe<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is important not to get carried away with the idea that players need huge lists of options, Barnett said. “People like the illusion of choice,” he explained. “They like a long menu at a restaurant despite the fact they will always order from the same three things.”<\/p>\n

He used Sid Meier’s Civilization series as an example of a game suffering from a glut of options over the course of several entries.<\/p>\n

“Designers are obsessed with adding in ideas,” he said. “Civilization 1 [was] strong as anything, and then progresses into cuckoo-land complexity before finally returning to its roots with Civilization] Revolution.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

His central point – that more options does not necessarily mean a better game – is a good one. I’m an evangelist for simple and elegant designs and love to rail against games that mistake options for depth, details for immersion.<\/p>\n

But to call Civ 4 “cuckoo-land” is silly because all of the options are clearly laid out. Everything is explained, systems are transparent and you can easily get the hang of things without getting lost in the number of choices open to you. And the choices support the core idea of the game, not detract from it. Civ 4 isn’t some hydra headed monstrosity like, say, Supreme Ruler 2020, with no focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or at least that’s what Paul Barnett would have you believe: It is important not to get carried away with the idea that players need huge lists of options, Barnett said. “People like the illusion of choice,” he explained. “They like a long menu at a restaurant despite the fact they will always order from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-gq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}