paying for a Digital Deluxe Edition if I want the Babylonians<\/a> as a playable Civ? Not nice, 2k Games. Not nice at all.<\/p>\nI get the business thinking here – bonuses for special editions or early orders is standard operating procedure now. And if you are going with Steam you need to have something to encourage the digital downloads. And Steam is great when it works, which is most of the time. It’s a DRM scheme that we’ve become used to.<\/p>\n
But have they thought through the impact here? Civilization multiplayer is getting more popular and viable with every version. If I buy the Digital Deluxe Edition and choose Babylon, will any of my friends who do not have this version be able to play me? What if I don’t choose Babylon, but they are still in the game somewhere (the Civilopedia entries, for example). Does that mean we can’t play together? Will people be able to buy Babylon separately as DLC? Though I can imagine 2k has visions of making a lot of money by trickling out new nations as DLC, this would just make the MP problems even larger. I have Babylon but not Holland, Tom has Holland but not Canada, Bruce has Canada but not Babylon…<\/p>\n
This is not really new, I suppose, if you consider expansion pack compatibility, but this is one nation. A single Civ. No other gameplay additions. And this could cut many users off from each other.<\/p>\n
Even more fundamentally, Firaxis is seen as one of the good guys in the business. This is obviously not their call – this is a publisher decision – but this decision does take some of the shine off the idea of this small, user friendly developer that churns out good games without the need for a huge media machine or developer drama.<\/p>\n
Civilization is a game that has always embraced a complete toybox approach to design. Everyone who bought it got to experience playing as Caesar or Mao or Gandhi. And it’s not like Babylon is Portgual – no offense to my Portuguese readers. This is a major foundational civilization and one of the originals from the first Civ. (Also the first time Hammurabi is not the leader, by the way.) This business decision is a small one, but one that strikes at the core of what Civ has always been about.<\/p>\n
This is not the same as preorders getting new uniforms or cavalry troops in Napoloen: Total War. This is like preorders being able to play the Swedes when no one else does.<\/p>\n
This makes me a little angry. (Even though the Mesopotamia Map Pack will be cool.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I love Civilization. Millions of us do. I love Babylon and Nebuchadnezzar. Hundreds of us do. But the idea of paying for a Digital Deluxe Edition if I want the Babylonians as a playable Civ? Not nice, 2k Games. Not nice at all. I get the business thinking here – bonuses for special editions or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","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":[8,78],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-CR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409"}],"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=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3231,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions\/3231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}