Sequels & game evolution

[Chris]

To fully understand this topic it's best if you know 3 games: old ZX Spectrum's Dictator ( http://www.nrtoone.com/dictator/ ), Tropico 1, Tropico 2.

How predecessors & theme affect sequels.


In the ancient times there was a game called Dictator. You were a dictotor of a small country, there were several faction (each has loyalty to you and strength) and 2 foreign powers (USSR & USA). You were to get as much money as possible to you Swiss bank account before the people in your country rebelled and overthrown you. You were trying to maintain stability and/or reduce stregth of factions that are not loyal to you. Also you were "manipulating" foreign powers to obtain financial aid and prevent intervention.

Then someone made Tropico 1. Completely different core, a simcity like map and building of the country. But the predecessor concept was there making the game unique. There were still factions (each person on the island belongs to one or more of factions. These factions approval affected the person happines. But since a person had several mundane needs the faction part, while still being there, had much lower impact on the whole game than in Dictator. As for powers these were the same, but here these were more important than before. Now the foreign aid is a main source of income at the beginning of the game.

Next they made Tropico 2. Now you are a pirate. If you looked at this one, you would not notice the connection to Dictator, they severed the ties almost completely. They removed factions (or they made them so meaningless that I forgotten that these even were there ), they left only country of origin. The home country and your standing with the country affected the person's morale. There were 4 foreign powers, the financial aid was almost removed (before it was automatic and huge, now you needed to issue an edict and it was one time only and it was small). On the other hand foreign intervention became a serious problem and a major concern for a player. Also the standing with the power was affected by your smaller actions (like whose merchant ships you looted) so it was more lively than dry political statements in predecessors. The Swiss bank account was changed to pirate's treasure cache.


All 3 games are good (or even great). Even though these modified the approach of predecessors to rather high extent. Interesting change is the gradual shift from factions to individual people's happines. Also the second in line (Tropico 1) had the most important foreign powers influence, which is really rare to have it in the middle (usually sequels either gradually drop or strenghten a certain aspect of the game).

Theme change between Tropico 1 and 2 affected the game in certain ways. First, the superpowers were made less important, which was unavoidable since 2 powers (USSR/USA) vs 4 in pirated games (England, France, Spain, Holland) means the attention has to be divided among more targets. The change from swiss bank account to pirate cache was good too, but I think they could improve the banking part in Tropico 1 as well, since modern banking allow all features of the old good burial of treasure and even more The biggest flop was with housing. In Tropico 1 everyone lived in residential blocks, it was nice , efficient and elegant. In pirates theme they could not make massive house so they made separate houses. It was a total disaster since these used up a huge area and made the pirates to walk such long distances to reach their houses that it made it impossible for them to go back to the ship to make the looting. In the effect players were never building any houses. They would do better if they were to remove the whole housing concept.

[Chris]

Got more sequels in my paws, so continuation

Paradise Island (expansion for Tropico 1)
Haven't played it yet just took a quick look and read article about it. It's a typical expansion, some buildings added, nothing fancy. But what seems to be the biggest chance is balance. The game was made by another company, the owner of one company met the original company owner on some RPG con and they started talking about it and decided to make the expansion. It is an unusual thing, typically the original company makes expansion. Another unique thing, and what made me buy the expansion (apart from it being extremely cheap since it is quite an ancient game ) was the expansion maker focus. They made buildings be constructed faster and they made is so you can rule as a real dictator (adjustments in balance mostly) and can face more rebels. Both of these were things that made me as a player strongly support that move. I bought it becauase I read they changed balance things, I was not interested in the new features really. Unfortunatelly, I don't know if they delivered what they promised because at the same time I bought...

Tropico 3
Before I played the game I sit down and thought what I would wish it to be. Well, I though it would be cool if the people were moving very very fast, because in Tropico 1 (and 2 too) for people to reach another part of the island was like a lifetime holy quest to a distant land. I felt they were spending most time moving around like turtles instead of working. Of course I knew it was not possible, such rapid movement would mess up the animation completely. So I launched the game... and I found they made the rapid movement I longed for! They used a nice trick. There are garages, each person can go to a garage and "borrow" a car and then go anywhere they need to via roads. It was almost like instant teleportation feature (in a game in modern times). What's more roads were very cheap and unlike Tropico 1 these were built instantly (in Tropico 1 it was a long and painfull process to build roads since these were using builders, so it was both slow and you could not build buildings at the same time). What's nice people can move on foot everywhere (not restricted to roads, only cars need these). To add more some buildings have their own small supply of cars (like building camp and ports) so these few critiacal buildings can function properly even if player is dumb and do not build enough garages. Why so much talking about transport and movement? Because this changed the whole game, changed for the better. In case you wonder, the car mechanic is completely unrealistic and feels a bit strange (they even plainly said these cars appear like magic on the island), still the hole in realism was worth it for sure.
Another thing I wanted to see were more rebels, assasinations and other things so it wen't back to feeling of the old ZX-Spectrum's Dictator (well, maybe not to that extreme extend, but more than in the prequel). My wishes came true again, I was fighting some rebels in first mission (it was a peaceful introductory mission which adds more spice ) and there are even 6 different sources of dangers (rebels, coups, interventions, etc, so far I only encountered small rebels so can't talk about the rest yet).

There was another change and that was an extremely interesting one. It was plain change of numbers in the engine. Money is more scare, there are more people, you don't need wood anymore, prices are different (more interesting prices - I never knew I would ever said that prices of buildings could be interesting). Due to these changes the play is more fluid and enjoyable. You don't get stuck with a lot of money anyomre waiting for people to arrive (sometimes you do, but it feels much more equal), you don't need to collect wood anymore (the simplification here was surprisingly pleasant to me, I mean I really enjoyed that I don't need to worry about wood anymore and just about money and people, strange, I always though I would enjoy more complex systems (if you could call a system where you need 1 resource + money a complex one) since I'm rather hardcore strategy player).

I would say that game really made me rethink the basis of game design. I mean there are several very good "expensive" things like 3D gfx, cars mechanic, campaing mode, achievements. But still... half of what I found to be superior to Tropico 1 was plain, "cheap", easy and simple adjustment of numbers. How much things cost, how many people arrive on ships, how fast buildings are constructed, how probable rebelion is, how many people can live in one house type, how much buildings cost related to other buildings... I mean, these cost nothing to make, if these would be applied to prequel it would strongly enrich the gameplay without really changing even one line of code or any additional costs to the company... Pure designer's work, without any costly creation of assets, made such strong impact on the final outcome.

[Chris]

After playing more I tend to love the "money being the limiting factor" more and more. In Tropico 1 I tend to have quite a lot of money and at the beginning my dilemma was not lack of money but building construction time. Later I was also worrying about wood (building material) and people to staff the building... Was I ever really worried about money? Well, probaby yes, but it was always the last of my worries...
In Tropico 3 it is about money (until quite late). Buildings are constructed really fast (still there are slowdowns) and population is a small problem too (but not always, there is even an occasional problem of unemployment, so it's more like setting up a balance for your current buildings and population - I was forced to max out my population several times only in short term, never in long term). The overall feeling is very nice, you have money to make buildinmgs, but there obstacles like lack of population and builders population and land availability. But these are just that, obstacles. I was really surprised how much I liked this primitive and simple system where in 70% of cases buildings are limited by traditional money.

Which takes me to the question, is it always like that? Should we, as designers, make economy simple and with just one resource? Only one limiting factor with other factors being just a nuisance? What about games where there are several resources and you have to keep a balance, are these broken/bad/could be better with less? Or maybe you have a counterexample with one game with multiple resource requirements being better than a similar one with just one?

[Chris]

Another thought. Reduction of realism can strongly increase playability.

Take a look at movement in all 3 games. In Tropico 1 each person could go everywhere, when moved on roads they would move faster, building roads was a long process. I would say extremely realistic, yet, it was a torment to play (building roads was too heavy investment and not so effective). In Tropico 2 people could move only on roads, but faster than on roads in Tropico 1 and roads were free. It was less realistic but much nicer to play. In tropico 3 people can move everywhere, the movement speed is the same in roads than on the ground, roads were cheap and used only by cars, cars were extremely fast and they were in infinite supply in garages (your people can starve to death because you were too poor to provide food still everyone can own a car). When they arrived via car to a destination the car was "driving itself" back to garage. In short, heavy violations of realism, still the gameplay because of it was outstanding.

[saljutin]

I agree about infinite cars but ... where do you think all monkey gone when u ruined that forest
and I totally agree ... realism is games is not always good, games are GAMES not real life - so why does lets say eRepublic has button WORK and not some form where you need to input at least 30 times some random generated text every 5minutes
you just avoid describing some strange game mechanics which are not "real" - like traveling from planet to planet takes 1 turn and its instant (if it is space then player thinks...oh they have some teleportation or smth )

[Chris]

you just avoid describing some strange game mechanics which are not "real" - like traveling from planet to planet takes 1 turn and its instant (if it is space then player thinks...oh they have some teleportation or smth )

This reminds me of the low quality SF books I read where each author put the obligatory explanation "how FTL works". It was so annoying and boring Who cares, wormhole, folding space, whatever. These are the same things and don't matter to me as a reader. OK, maybe the only exception was Dune, but there the space travel method was unique and had a connection to the story.


Civilization
The first Civilization 1 & 2 were similar. Sure, they made a lot of standard improvements in 2, but it was nothing surprising and worth mentioning from designer's point of view.

In Civilization 3 they added cultural borders (instead of standard unit's zone of control). It was a very nice evolution. It solved the problem of enemy entering inside your "borders". They did it very straightforwad way, they simply added a border in places where human player already perceived the border to be (area around your cities and between your cities as long as these are not "too far"). They added also quite nice metagame of "cultural border struggle" that fit into the game. Another big introduction were resources, it was intended to promote trade (but it was not working very well since AI usually refused to trade so only conquest to get resources remained).

Civilization 4 brought the groundshaking evolution. The biggest evolution I ever seen in any sequel. Sure, they added a lot of new mechnics like religions, corporations, but... it was not the most important, even remotely. The biggest change was interface and the change of mechanics associated with the interface. At the first glance not much is different, but when you look closely you will be shocked. They eradicated, totally eradicated micromanagement. They killed it alive. Excess production points carry over till next turn, so you don't need to optimize production based on capaity, at least not much (this alone cut down the boring playtime to 50%-80%, when I think about it I can't believe no one though about such simple thing earlier). Next one is lack of city riots (you know, you always checked before end turn *all* cities to see if there is no riot coming next turn and if yes then adjust luxury), it was so totally boring and tedious, I'm surprised of myself that I never wished to have some "warn me if the riot will be coming next turn notice", I simply accepted it as a player (this feature alone made me sadly realize I will be never able to go back play Civilization 1-3 ). Next one is auto adjustment of population on the fields (optional, but turned on on default), you know, I never trust computer and do these things myself, but here it was the first time I trusted that the comp will do it all right. The beautiful thing was that when I switched production to science it reshuffled everything (even removing people from fields and assign as specialists, which is against the "change production into science" order I gave since it reduces the production; the AI was abiding to the intent of my order (give me more science) than to the letter, it was awesome). The interface AI also took the liberty of taking into account the future outcome (for example once I noticed that the AI refuse to allocate more people into food gathering even though I gave food production a priority and there were very rich food fields; upon closer investigation I realized that I have low happiness so if I let the population grow right now it would just produce an unhappy citizen that would eat resources and the net benefit of that move would be negative, AI determined this on its own and reduced food production, it was awesome (again )).

All the Civilization 4 changes made the game much shorter. They also removed a lot of decisions from the player. So, intuitively one would say it was a bad design... But, did I play the game less/shorter overall? No. I played more, also the number of finished plays increased (managing a medium-large empire with decent or even good efficiency is doable now). Have I felt the removal of the decisions? On the contrary, I felt I had more decisions to make now (since a huge amount of low level stuff was taken away from me I could concentrate on the things that really matters, no longer the hard work of optimizing moves was deciding on a win, now it was about brains and guts).

As a side note, the Civ4 interface changes probably could be considered as bad by traditional BBG design rules (removal of brainless/low brain activities). I wonder how this could relate to BBGs...

[Murzim]

No matter how I tried, I failed to play Civ4 and I completely ignored civ5.

I still play Civ3 religiously though on Deity difficulty.

Civ2 and Civ1 are of course mastered with thousands of hours

[Chris]

I understand Civ5, since it is quite different. But dislike Civ4 while liking Civ3? How come? These seem rather similar to me (apart from micromanagement).

[Marek]

Another interesting set of sequels is Master of Orion.

MOO 1 was a brilliant game, especially considering in introduced many 4X concepts which we now take for granted.

MOO 2 was different, it dealt differently with the micro/macro management divide. It added too much needless complexity, where MOO had kept the fundamentals simple.

MOO 3... yeah. It's sad and embarassing when a good series gets shat upon like that.

[hiigara]

I have to say that Civ1's micro is quite bearable. I hated civ2 because of the needless introduction of more units.
More units does not mean a better game. Specially because some of the units you don't even get to use properly as they quickly become obsolete. For example the knights on civ1, are quite useless if you are playing in the emperor level.
I never tried Civ3, and never played a full game of Civ4. Civ4 may not have micro but still has too much stuff.
The more realism they try to add to civilization the less fun will be.
For me civ1 is still the most fun of them all.

[jack13580]

your missing out of you never play civ3 its great

you guys are forgetting about rollercoaster tycoon 2 its a realy great game just hard to get at first but once you get to the point where you stop loosing money and start making money it gets realy fun

[Chris]

An interesting thing, so far all the people who disliked Civ4 said they played previous ones on some insanely high difficulty level like emperor or diety, which are not available to mortals. My hypothesis is that it might be less about the game itself but more about not wanting to play the sequel in which you don't excell at.

Civ2 and Civ1 are of course mastered with thousands of hours

I don't necessarily agree with it. To me the best part about Civ series was that the most important was your attitude/will/selfdiscipline not experience or skills. If you were able to set clear goals and follow them you won, if you were unable then you always lost no matter how skilled you were. It frequently took me up to 1 hour to take my first turn since I was evaluating, planning and making decisions

MOO. Some say 1 was best and they broke it in 2 (tactical combat), some say 2 was the best. All say 3 was a total disaster
While I agree that the tactical part was non existant in MOO2 (you just watched the combat observing how well your setup perform) it was also the reason why I liked 2 much more. Actually, I don't think I ever played MMO1 longer than half an hour... It was just not enough complexity to me