History Respawned has made an interview Leyla and Soren Johnson about Old World.
They interview is about the research which the devs do before they implement something into the game, the focus of games on only certain civilizations, the future plans and more.
Listen to the whole podcast here, and discuss this podcast in our forum here.
Mohawk Games, the creators of Old World, have released the latest patch for their game. Besides balance changes, this update also includes some world maps!
Read the full patch log here, and discuss the patch in our forum here.
Thanks to our member PiR for noticing this update :).
Plough, an independent book publisher with Christian background, has publised an interview with Christopher Tin in their quarterly culture-focused magazine.
In the interview they talk about the inspiration for Christopher’s music, the historical references used in his songs, and the various themes in his songs.
An excerpt:
“My first album, Calling All Dawns, contains twelve songs in twelve different languages. It is all about life, death, and rebirth. The source texts pull on everything from ancient myths, to prayers, to some original texts. The album weaves all these together to create a story, a monomyth as Joseph Campbell would call it. It’s a monomyth about how we are all connected by a common human experience that sort of winds through each of our lives like a thread. Taken together, all of our experiences around the world form this elaborate tapestry of humanity.”
You can read the full interview here: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/culture/music/the-tapestry-of-sound
Visit our forum to discuss this news article: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/plough-com-interview-with-christoper-tin-the-tapestry-of-sound.675664/
After a short break, we now have our Civ5 “Game Of The Month” back. This is thanks to our user zxcvbob, who volunteered to create this game!
This time you play Pacal of the Maya on a standard-size Great Plains Plus map on Prince difficulty. You have to go for the diplomatic victory, and at the same time you need to prevent the other civs from achieving any other type of victory. You have until March 31st to finish this game.
You can find all details here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/news-tsg211-announcement.675510/
We have just seen the announcement of the lastest Pokemon titles, and obviously this is very exciting. While many people will now go and play more Pokemon, we do recommend another way to satisfy your cravings: Play the Civ Pokemon maps!
For Civ4, we have the Hoenn region, which is a flat map of roughly large size of only the Hoenn region, obviously. This map is set up for 12 civs.
For Civ6, we have another region, Sinnoh. It is a huge map with many mountains, so probably a challenge for many of us.
Credits to Saph and DragonXander PR for making these maps.
The developers of Dragon Evo have asked us to spread the word about their just released game, and we are happy to do so, if it falls somewhat in the interest area of us CivFanatics.
Dragon Evo is (per description) a turn-based deck-builder, so similar in some way to Magic The Gathering. You fight with your cards in a fantasy setting, trying to beat your opponent on the other side of the map.
According to the devs there is also some building involved, you build infrastructure, and need to manage its upkeep with gold. Right now there are no grand strategy features or diplomacy, but we got told this could be an option for the future.
The game normally costs 8.19€, but is currently discounted to 7.37€. This game is in early-access.
This game does not fall into our core focus area, but turn-based games which have building and fighting are probably somewhat of interest for us. The game is also cheap, so I guess this can’t hurt to maybe have a look if you’re running low on unplayed games in your Steam library.
Discuss this game in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-indy-game-release-dragon-evo.675644/
The BBC has an article with Sid Meier, where he talks about the current development in the games industry. The views in the article probably come due to the recent increase in the monetisation in this industry, not only with in-app purchases and micro-transactions, but also with the recent NFT hype. He also talks about the rise of online casinos and how many people in Italy are now turning to casinos that are built into games in the form of micro-transactions. According to Stranieri.com, Italy’s leading gambling informational resource, more than 40% of new games launched in Italy have some kind of gambling component to them, whether it be slots or games of chance.
Firaxis has gladly never said anything about the latter, and we are very happy about it.
CUSL – also known as casino utan svensk licens – operates more than 500 casinos in Sweden that are not subject to the gaming pause (Spelpaus) regulation. This includes casino games that you can play without a 3 second wait between slot spins from providers like Pay n Play and Evolution Gaming. There are options for Zimpler and Trustly deposits.
An excerpt from the article:
“Sid Meier says that if major companies continue to focus on ways like this to monetise gaming, they risk losing the audience: “People can assume that a game is going to be fun and what it needs for success are more cinematics or monetisation or whatever – but if the core just is not there with good gameplay, then it won’t work.
“In a sense gameplay is cheap… The game design part is critical and crucial but doesn’t require a cast of thousands in the way some of the other aspects do. So it’s perhaps easy to overlook how important the investment in game design and gameplay is.””
Read the whole article here: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-60304123
Discuss this article in our forum: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/bbc-sid-meier-warns-the-games-industry-about-monetisation.675634/
(The image of Sid Meier is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, and is taken from here).
The Telegraph has published an article two days ago, probably also related to Sid’s birthday, about his story and the experiences with Civilization. They talk about how Sid himself started up in gaming, the relationship to education, and development rules like the 1/3rd rule: 1/3rd keep, 1/3rd improve, 1/3rd new.
An excerpt:
“Can Civ games – which feature numerous leaders from human history including Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Napoleon Bonaparte, Abu Bakr, and Mahatma Gandhi – serve an educational purpose? Meier, who studied history and computer science at the University of Michigan, likes to think so. He says that Civ may have even helped to “legitimise” gaming as an intellectual pursuit. “I mean, I’m remembering back 30 years ago, and it wasn’t considered all that good an idea to play games. People would say, ‘Oh you’re wasting your time playing those games, can’t you do something useful?’ But that has really turned around today, where I think it is a reputable and worthwhile use of time. It might even prepare you for a career in the wonderful world of the gaming industry, whether that’s as a designer, or an artist, or as a journalist.”
Meier is on a roll and becomes more animated. “Where parents used to think it was a waste of time for kids to play video games,” he says, “now they might think this is an opportunity for their son or daughter [to learn something]. Kids can amaze their parents with things that they know about Caesar, or Gandhi, or Genghis Khan.””
The full article is available here (but saldy behind a paywall).
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