It has been difficult at times for new mainline releases in the Civilization series of games to win over new players right out of the gate. For Civilization VII—which launched just shy of one year ago—the struggles seemed to go deeper, with some players saying it didn’t feel like a Civilization game.
Civ VII’s developers, Firaxis Games, announced today it is planning an update this spring called “Test of Time” that rethinks a few unpopular changes, in some cases replacing key mechanics from the original release.
I spoke with Ed Beach, the Civilization franchise’s creative director, as well as Dennis Shirk, its executive producer, about what’s changing, the team’s interpretation of the player backlash to the choices in the initial release, and Firaxis and 2K’s plans for the future of the Civilization model.
The heart of the controversy
There were of course bugs, balance issues, and missing documentation and UI features, and there have been updates to address some of those issues, with more to come.
For example, I asked about two oft-requested features: a city connections view, and the classic hot seat local multiplayer mode.
Beach said a connections view is in the works, though it will come after the big spring update. As for the hot seat, he said that “there are some key members of our development team who feel passionately about getting that out.”
Shirk promised that’s coming too, but declined to say when.
But the real heart of the controversy is that Civ VII broke with what a lot of players considered core DNA for the series.
“We introduced all these great new mechanics because we wanted to give our players something new to chew on because they had something very similar from IV or V to VI,” said Shirk. “It was like if we were making Madden and we decided they’re going to play with a soccer ball instead of a football.”