Dev blog #3

[gollum]

More non-truths falling like rain.

In almost every interview that i can remember, Mr Simpson has entertained that "We make TW games for our hardcore fans because we are such ourselves" and that "we make the games we want to play". This one:
http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/r...oper-interview
is no exception (5:36).

In the #3 of this recent blog the weight of responsibility for the influence of "commercial reality" is thrown - typically of CA - to the publisher.

Yet, listen to this; in the very same interview linked above Mr Simpson states (6:23): "When we started out on Rome, we wanted to make a game that would appeal to as many people as possible and thats hardcore strategy gamers; people that only buy a strategy game a year or maybe have never bought one before...!!!"

So which is it Mr Simpson? Hardcore strategy gamers or people who only buy a strategy game a year or maybe have never bought one before (and like the action)? Please help me understand who is who because the two cannot be one and the same. Nor can their needs and the gameplay/gamedesign to accomodate them (be the same).
And if - God forbids - it turns out that you are actually (from RTW onwards) designing for the casual gamer and your blog is nothing but marketing talk, as in my opinion is, then who is more commercially concsious? The developer or the publisher? Could it be that CA wants the games to be every bit commercially oriented as SEGA does but cannot admit it openly beause people will disaprove?

Antithetical soliloquies the TW community has been fed back then, antithetical soliloquies is being fed now.

After all this, people are buying NTW at their own risk. CA has spoken.


PS: The most funny bit of that interview though is Tim Ansel @ 5:58: "Its not intended as an educational device...but on the other hand its fairly accurate as well".

With incinerating men from fire arrows; with men getting thrown 10m in the air from elephant/cavalry charges; with screeching women, flaming pigs wardogs and aracni ninjas; with cavalry behaving like a flock of birds; with chariots outrunning cavalry; with the Romans having the best cavalry roster; with heavy cavalry being awfully powerful in pre-stirrup classical antiquity; with the stereotypical (and wrong) depiction of the "barbarian" factions as crazed uncivilised loons; fairly accurate, sure.