If that's not genius, I don't know what is.
Most games written in assembly were not at the scale of Transport Tycoon, though.
(Of course over time things strayed too far from the original vision, and the result is the post-ENT crapfest that carries the official "Star Trek" name, but is otherwise a generic action movie franchise. A strange situation, in which the only work still sticking to the deep and hopeful vision of the future is the little animated show that everyone thought will be a joke.)
I'm also pissed about the Borg subplot - in the trailer and initial episodes, they set up the scene for some amazing drama and deep storytelling, and then they just literally crashed it into a planet and discarded like space trash. It was a huge letdown to me.
The “dystopian stereotypes” in Picard seem to me to be classic Trek with a very slight change of focus (largely in dwelling in aspects of the setting and social contexts which were indicated in other parts of the franchise but only briefly or tangentially interacted with.)
Kind of like what Lower Decks does, but in a different direction (and played for drama rather than laughs.)
So here's me hoping that in 5-10 years time, I'll fall into their "target audience" window and they'll make an inspiring, positive show for people like me.
It tries to be a comedy, a parody, but you can also tell it's a love-letter to old-school Star Trek.
Sometimes a singular vision leads to something great. Something it doesn't. Sometimes a single vision contained by bureaucracy leads to something great. Sometimes a vision helped along by others creates great things. Sometimes nobody has any vision and they somehow end up with something amazing. Sometimes you have a bad vision and others turn the core of your idea into something awesome.
There are literally tons of examples for all of these. We have 10k+ years of human history of art.
I have to disagree with you here.
Both Civ II and Alpha Centauri were headed by a strong single author. As were both the original Civ and Civ IV which I and many others would see as the best manifestation of the game.
We can also see this outside of the Civ franchise. Think of Super Mario, Popoulous, Doom/Quacke, Sim City, Elite – just to name a few.
Great games were made by great Designers, yes, single authors. Very much akin to big movies or fantasy novels.
Doom was a tense collaboration between Carmack and Romero. Carmack was geniusing out the engine, while Romero was pulling hard on the game atmosphere, music, level design and details like the timer that spawned Doom's speedrunning culture.
Quake, which was Romero-less, was a technical masterpiece, but not a very memorable game. There was the brown level, the other brown level, and the brown level again but different. Its modding potential plus competent network code really made it a big hit.
Without it's art, doom would be a very different game.
Can't recommend Masters of Doom enough, the book that talks about the history of id Software. That all these guys came together in the same place is a miracle in itself.
Could you elaborate on that? I'm aware of speedrunning (it's fun to watch!) but I don't know anything about "the timer".
[1] https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/
These examples, at least (the others are a bit outside of my knowledge), fit the pattern outlined above of having worse successor projects headed by a former team-member.
If it was part of a book or movie you’d roll your eyes.
Railway Empire has a lot of the same mechanics as Railroads! but with much better graphics a little added complexity. I don't that many video games these days, but Railway Empire is one I find myself going back to play again and again.
Would be nice to see someone do the same for Pirates!
For example, I think Lukas Pope is a good modern example of single author creating really unique and novel games. Civ 2 and Alpha Centauri on the other hand are more like good examples of fresh ideas being injected into a series under new leadership.
However, my definition of what can be considered a game is also quite broad, and Obra Dinn clearly has an interactive game loop so I think it counts.
I didn't play civ2, but what fresh ideas did alpha centauri bring?
There was the ability to do unit customization (which actually could get a bit overwhelming to teenage me), which came from other 4X gamee set in space I guess.
Another thing is that Civ 1/2 didn't really have very strong differences between nations gameplay wise (if you played as them, enemy AI is a different story). That really started with Alpha Centauri and its ideological factions being partially represented by their gameplay strengths and weaknesses. The way it balances an implied a grander sci-fi narrative through these ideological factions and quotes from their leaders on the one hand, and gameplay mechanics affecting how these factions evolve with the development of new technologies on the other was novel and hasn't really been equalled since imo.
As for Civilization II - it sucked hard and if anyone feels insulted about this claim, then they really have to sit down and shake their brain box to remember if that Windows monstrosity of Civilization II was really that great. Sure, videos of advisers was new technological advance, which very quickly became nuisance and then were turned off. Music was initially great, but after a while I had to play Civilization II without it, unlike Heroes of Might and Magic II, which had the greatest music and was proper full screen game for Windows(and DOS!!!). Not to mention, that there was great strategy game of Master of Orion 2: Battle of Antaris. And then there was a Civilization clone - Master of Magic - with had a very successful following as Age of Wonders. Anyway, I can still enjoy first Civilization(even with that nasty bug, that glitches Earth map in late game), because of Genius simplicity of a game, but can't say the same for Civilization II even if I had fun when I played it, because usage of Windows GUI in Civilization II will feel outdated and very unappealing, which only later Civilization titles fixed.
As for Alpha Centauri - it was not as widely available as Civilization II and technical specifications were ahead of most of PCs, when most of them were not powered by latest Pentiums. That sucked, as I really wanted to play that game(hence the discussion about greatness is more limited, unlike about first Civilization), but by the time I was able to get a hold on it, it was already outdated(and unplayable due to Windows compatibility and color paletting issues!!!), compared to other games that were released at that time.
One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
What I'd love to play is a game like XCOM, but where the tech tree is broader than you can cover in a single game, and where options have tradeoffs - so e.g. it could make sense to have a squad where one soldier is carrying a plasma weapon, and everyone else carries regular rifles, because tactical considerations make it a better option.
(Also one implication of this I didn't like in terms of role-playing: firearms are our weapons, laser weapons are our weapons made from reversing some basic science off alien tech, and plasma weapons are just their guns modified so humans can handle them. I always felt there should be a way to make lasers ultimately better than plasmas, based of my favorite trope of humans beating alien invaders with smarts and sheer force of will.)
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[0] - I never played the old ones, but from what I hear, it's the same, except much more difficult.
>>One other hand if you take XCOM in its various incarnations, it does have a very compelling game play loop, with very consequential decisions to be made, and the combination of tactical decision making at battle level and the long term factors in the overworld is a very interesting one.
Hmm, this is interesting observation, but I have excatly the same feelings towards Civilization games that you are describing about XCOM games, because I felt that XCOM games did not offer very deep game and were very repetitive to the same grind. But then, I also have a dislike for any doom scenarious of future and probably that was one of the reasons why I was not impressed by XCOM games and also Civilization II with free range of scenarious as the first thing that map makers did was creation of doomsday scenarios and the ones that weren't doomsday scenarios were not as fun as other games.
>>In short, we do need to reassess if Civilization games are indeed great games, considering that they are unqualfyingly praised in much of the discussion.
Well, I feel that some of the "hate" or claims about greatness of some games in past is more on the meme level that over time have developed in myths, that some now are taking too seriously - even religiously... :))
It also has to be taken into the account, that any author that is riding the wave on someones else success has to praise object of the topic even more and that makes self fuelling cycle, but I would not go so far as to claim, that Civilization was not a great game. It stood test of time - my memories of first Civilization are of those times, when other very popular option was Wolfstein 3D and then Doom and Doom II and I still played first Civilization when I got bored of Civilization II. Of course I played later Civilizations as well and had fun, but my ground base memories are not about them all so there will be a bias about some of them.
>The strength of the modding community is, instead, the very reason the series survived.
Oddly, the best games to bear his imprimatur, Civ II, and (by far) Alpha Centauri, were not headed by Meier. It does seem like games, of all things, would have the potential to be at their greatest under the vision of a single author, but history has shown the opposite (many times, after designers of successful games go on to head their own projects with total control, the results fall short of their predecessors). Part of this might have to do with the possibility space of game states (far too great for a single person to test, explore, or even conceive of), and also the complexity involved in programming a complete game. However, another explanation is that it is still possible to achieve greatness via that approach, and we merely have not had any genius game designers so far.