Proof of BTS' and Battlefront's philosophy

[Pixman]

Hi guys. I have not posted in a long time, but I thought this might interest all of you. Some of you are probably aware that Sierra/Impressions has cancelled production of their much anticipated Civil War Generals III. Let me assure you that this fan of CWG II is greatly disappointed as are a host of others. My point in this post is to share with you the reasons for the cancellation as given directly by Jeff Fiskle -- chief designer of CWG III. I cut the following from the CWG III message board and pasted it intact:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Greetings,

I am used to assuming a persona, or some play with words when I post on the forums. That hardly seems appropriate now. I am writing to say that we wanted to let you all know in a more personal way than a press release that Civil War Generals was cancelled. That is why we informed you in a stylized newsletter.

Since Sierra purchased us five years ago, Impressions Games has been our own little island of strategy game development in Cambridge MA, while Sierra labored on in WA, and CA. The bad times that Sierra experienced seem to be over, and we were never really directly affected by their turmoil. The reason we have been left alone (besides the 48 states between us)is we have a great track record with the quality of the products we produce, and we police ourselves.

We made a mistake when we began Generals3.

We thought that we could make a fantastic Strategy Game that took place in a Civil War setting. This game would be fun for everyone who had enjoyed Risk, or Axis and Allies, and at the same time it would be the best Civil War Game ever. We were on track and making that exact game. The problem was that every person we showed it to, in France, Germany or even the US said, “Oh you mean it is a US Civil War Game?”

Using Shogun as an example,(thanks Dell)if you notice not a single preview has labeled it a wargame even though the slogan is total war. It is perceived as a strategy game. It is this kind of subtlety that was going to kill Generals before it even made it to the shelves.

Face it, any type of PC gaming is niche. Even ‘mass market’ PC Games are not common topics for conversations around the dinner table. So what if the Sims have been on TV, and every major media publication. If you walk up to the first stranger you meet and ask them if they know what the Sims are, they will think you mean the Simpsons. PC Games in the Mass market? Far from it. Not only were we a PC game, we were plunked down into the wargames niche, and that is a small niche within a niche.

If I am the owner of a 400 square foot store known as Babbages, or EB, I don’t want a big bulky ‘war game’ box. I want a playstation CD or a Diablo II. So if we are going to put the effort of a Diablo II into a product, should we not hope to achieve something better than a small corner next to ‘other Wargames’?

So 2011-15 is the 150th Anniversary, who knows, maybe Civil War Games will be in demand. Hopefully we won’t have to wait this long. Like Ken said, not this game, and not at this time.

Thanks for sticking with us and sorry it ended this way. The least we can be is honest with you about why it happened like this.

Jeff Fiske

Designer, Impressions Software

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Sound familiar? Almost straight from the Battlefront Manifesto and chimes in with some of the posts Steve has put on this board as well. Steve produced CWG II, and he and Jeff know each other, but I would be surprised if Jeff consulted with him before posting his statement. From my dealings with him, Jeff is a class guy. Obviously, he stood up honorably and told it like it is to his loyal and disappointed constituents.

The bottom line to me is that Battlefront and BTS are right on track with their marketing strategy. They recognize the "niche within a niche" that we represent and value us for it. They want to keep quality PC wargaming alive and know that even quality, dedicated, well resourced companies like Impressions cannot deliver in the marketing mainstream. So they have created their own channel for development, marketing and distribution. As we have all experienced to date, this has some pros and some cons. In my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons. Especially when you consider that, without their efforts, we might not get any quality wargames at all.

I applaud you BTS. The flipside of my disappointment with Impressions is greater appreciation for you. CWG III was going to be a great game. Jeff knows it. I know it. Everybody knows it. And they still did not make it. Lose, lose, lose.

My last comment is, if Jeff or others from the Impressions team become available as fallout of this decision, I hope there is room for them in our little world here. They really have a lot to offer to the wargaming community.

You guys are great. Thanks for all your sacrifices.

Pixman

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Fact is the enemy of truth. - Don Quixote

[rdarnese]

Yeah I met the guys at Impressions at last years E3 and they are great guys to work with from what I gather.

This even comes more full circle. The ex Talonsoft guys who went to Breakaway Games are doing research and art work for the Pharaoh add-on, another Impressions product.

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Richard Arnesen

Shrapnel Games

www.shrapnelgames.com

[Mike D]

PIXMAN LIVES!

Hey Pixman, how's it going?

Nice post by the way, but very disappointing to see another wargame producer falling by the wayside. Like you said, hopefully they will land on their feet.

Mike D

aka Mikester

[Lee]

Why don't they just finish the game and sell it directly through

their website? That would keep costs way down and wargamers

will go to whatever lengths necessary to get a good wargame.

[Guest Ol' Blood & Guts]

This is why I think long and hard and waver over and over again before I buy a game at at retail establishment. I was saved from buying Star Trek Armada because I followeed the Armada Forum before and after it came out and then learned that it had problems with nVidia chipsets.

I hate to say it, but Empire Building games and FPS games don't give me the heart-on that they used to do. My interest right now is almost soley on wargames and Klingon Academy sorry, but it's fun blowing warp nacelles off Excelsior-class BCs

But my true heart belongs with wargames. They're are the only type of games that you can play over and over with different outcomes and strategies.

[jdmorse]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ol' Blood & Guts:

But my true heart belongs with wargames. They're are the only type of games that you can play over and over with different outcomes and strategies. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Hit it on the head OBG. The challange of most games seems to be to discover the "optimal" strategy and then it's the same result and you lose interest. Look at all the cheat codes (hey does CM - final have one for invincibility, or unlimited ammo, lives?-sorry

Seriously look at the interest and passion that just the beta w/ 3 senarios has generated, Madmatt's CMHQ, webpages (w/ more to come no doubt) even our own film dept [Go PeterNZ] and it's knowing that even w/ the same approach in CE, if the StuG's get you, or you get them or some combination that the outcome works out differently. That's really why for me it works, plus w/ imagination you can realisticlly visualize it as personally experienced.

[This message has been edited by jdmorse (edited 04-12-2000).]

[von Lucke]

My opinion of the accountants who run Sierra only sinks lower every day... What idiots! Sid Meier proved a well done Civil War game can sell. And I, for one, have been waiting a long time to see a Grand Strategy version of the Civil War. Oh well --- maybe by 2011.

[Pax]

Mmm. Shifting the focus a bit, I must comment that there are a select few FPS/RTS games that are worth playing.

If you haven't played Myth, both the original and the sequel, they are *well* worth your time. They don't involve resource gathering, just troop management. The multiplayer implimentation is nothing short of brilliant, with amazingly well focused game types, and stunning team play. No gaming experiance has come CLOSE to the team tournaments I played in. Unit dynamics are excellent and trading is implimented well(sounds very similar to the DYO in CM). Anyway, if you haven't played them, and ever liked the RTS genre, you should grab them. They also have an excellent single-player campaign, to rival any other RTS single-player campaign. Anyway, end promotion speech.

(Yes, I know the sig looks ugly, I'm just too lazy to go fix it.)

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--

Drew E. Harry

Moses Brown School

"This calls for a subtle combination of mathematics and extreme violence." - The Cube

[Miyamoto Musashi]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by von Lucke:

My opinion of the accountants who run Sierra only sinks lower every day... What idiots! Sid Meier proved a well done Civil War game can sell. And I, for one, have been waiting a long time to see a Grand Strategy version of the Civil War. Oh well --- maybe by 2011.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well, they'd already impressed me as not having a surplus of gray cells when Sierra announced that it was chucking the better part of their entire Mac software line just as Apple is in the midst of its greatest selling boom in a long time... but as long as the twitch-heads keep buying millions of copies of games like Half-Life, this is going to be par for the course. It's not like people in general (present company excluded, of course) are getting smarter or in the mood for more mind-challenging games. IMHO, Alpha Centauri and Civilization are anomalies in this larger gaming world which demands games that don't require a large amount of brain power to succeed at...

[Howitzer]

Originally posted by Miyamoto Musashi:

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>

Well, they'd already impressed me as not having a surplus of gray cells when Sierra announced that it was chucking the better part of their entire Mac software line just as Apple is in the midst of its greatest selling boom in a long time... but as long as the twitch-heads keep buying millions of copies of games like Half-Life, this is going to be par for the course. It's not like people in general (present company excluded, of course) are getting smarter or in the mood for more mind-challenging games. IMHO, Alpha Centauri and Civilization are anomalies in this larger gaming world which demands games that don't require a large amount of brain power to succeed at...

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well said, MM, well said.

Steve C.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Dang, I've been so busy I haven't heard yet. And I was just emailing with Jeff a week or so ago. Yesh, guess it is time to find the phone and give him a call. Having nearly had CWG 2 killed off several times while we were making it, I know what happened. Funny enough, CWG 3 was killed off right after I left and then was brought back to life again only to die another death. And my guess is that they spent 3-4 times as much money on something killed off than we spent on CM which will be released. Maybe even more...

Steve

[Guest R Cunningham]

While I support the general gist of this thread that the future of computer wargaming is going to have to be like BTS' philosophy I have to wince when I see negative remarks made about other game genres.

Just because the other game types get all the hype and win all big awards doesn't mean those games are the reason wargames appeal to the niche within a niche. I have been a wargamer for over 20 years and yet I play the hell out of Half-life. I never considered myself a big action/FPS fan and then I tried the Half-life demo and that sold me, just like a lot of people got sold on CM because of the beta demo. Last week I tried the demo for Homeworld because I read some postive remarks about it and was pleasantly surprised. I had grown tired of the RTS formula after playing starcraft but Homeworld does enough things new that it grabbed me.

You can rail against "twitch" games like Half-life as the enemy but the biggest seller in 99 was Railroad Tycoon 2, a strategy title. Half-life sold over 400k copies while Railroad Tycoon had over 700k. The much-maligned CC3 only sold 45k copies.

I think the bottom line is the suits don't have a clue about what makes a good game regardless of genre and to them everything is a unit. They don't understand how games get developed and they think like that guy who posted a while back about losing 50 sales for every day that BTS delayed in releasing CM.

[dumbo]

"Sid Meier proved a well done Civil War game can sell. "

Actually unless you are refering to a game other than Gettysburg he didnt. That game did not sell well at all I am afraid.

In my experience any wargame set before WW2 is sales poison. Although American Civil War games can do Ok in the states they dont hold much appeal for others.

Its a pity that other eras dont sell so well I would love to see a few good strategy games for Napoleonics or Ancients. Oh well it aint likely to happen any year soon.

[getthat_wreckoff_theroad]

This is bad news.

Will there be any wargames to play in 20 years time ? Today, the emphasis does seem to be on graphics and "action". Not much consideration is given to those who want a good game with a steep learning curve and are willing to put in the effort to learn the game mechanism. Manuals are getting skimpier and skimpier and the depth of gameplay is becoming ever transparent. Even PG 3D and PGII had a considerably shorter manual than the original PG.

Something must be done. BTS appear to have the answer - but surely the future of computer wargaming cannot rest on their shoulders alone. CM MUST be a success. It MUST entice other programmers/developers to go it alone. If not then all is lost.

[Guest Big Time Software]

Cunningham, I agree that the "twitch" games themselves are not evil (hey, I played Quake until my eyes bled ). The problem is that the publisher mentality goes for the lowest common style of game. They are losers when it comes to making SMART games, so the lean towards flash (and even have a hard time doing that!). So increasingly the only type of game on the shelf is "twitchy", which is only reinforced by the average gamer who seems to go for twitch games more than smart ones.

It is a typical Catch-22 argument. Publishers put their weight behind twitch games, more people then buy them, reinforcing the publisher's resolve to make more their games more twitchy, which seems to get even more customers, etc., etc.

Strategy gaming is nearly dead. While the example of Railroad Tycoon 2 might be a bright spot in 99, it is probably the *ONLY* one even close to having that many sales. And because it is harder to make a good game like that, don't expect a lot of similar ones from other publishers. History shows that such attempts will fail, and the suits know this.

Steve