ByzantineCyber

What Total War Medieval III really needs to thrive

Total War: Medieval III has been announced and this what it really needs in order to be a great game that will surpass the previous titles in the series.

It needs to be fun and interesting.

That’s it. While I will write posts later on about specifics, this is the main part that is most important. I have defended Starfield on here, but I realize that the game is more of a sandbox waiting for gameplay to fill in the gaps. Such a game could have done well in the past but not now. Players have been used to optimized experiences. Games that want you have to explore systems is something that games in the generation from the SNES to about the PS1 could get away with. When the PS1 came out, standardization became the trend and the video game industry we have today is the product of that. There were some exceptions in between the way but the emphasis has on been on making everything optimized and holistic.

Total War: Medieval III has to be a holistic game that is also fun and interesting to play. They need to make sure not to overload with too many features here. Focus on making the game fun to play at first and then attempt to add more features. Many games focus on features at the beginning of making a game rather than the user experience.

Total War: Medieval III needs to make sure its art style also does not get in the way of the experience. Some games think they are being sophisticated with their art but its more important to have good gameplay than great graphics. Great graphics can come in a passive experience, but we still stay for the story not the experience of graphics alone. It needs to service the experience, not the experience just servicing the graphics. This happens too many times in movies and we are also seeing it in video games.

They also need to stick to history but not too tightly that it affects the game. I see Total War: Medieval III having a similar nature to Crusader Kings III here, but with more focus on battles you can control in here. The focus on changing history should make for interesting emergent gameplay, something that Paradox Interactive has pioneered but I feel needs more refinement. I believe that this game can accomplish that here.

The user’s needs are important. This is not productivity software but a game. A game needs to be fun and then expand our minds. Sometimes games get too complex and simplicity is bliss.

Civilization VI vs Civilization Player Count on Steam

Civilization VI vs Civilization VII in Peak Payer Count on Steam (Source: Steamcharts.com)

Civilization VII is still being outperformed by Civilization V and Civilization VI in player counts. Civilization V outperforming a game that is fifteen years younger than it is surprising, but I should probably be aware that it was possible within our context of the increasing global nature of gaming in our age. Gaming was always global to some extent but there many players uploading videos on YouTube from Vietnam or Egypt who actively play 20-year-old games on their computers as that is their interest and most importantly, their budget for their computers. This tech debt from the Windows XP era is quite noticeable now.

Civilization VII has had a slight increase in its player base over the past couple months. However, this is small increase and mostly because of its DLCs. The game does have a player base unlike some games that have thousands of players upon launch and then you check a couple months later and hardly anyone is playing it. However, this is a game which is still unable to surpass Civilization VI months after release.

What is quite noticeable is that Civilization VII was barely able to surpass the peak player count of Civilization VI in its launch month. Another issue is the week that it was Kingdom Come 2: Deliverance was taking its energy away. While the games are different genres, their player bases overlap more than say a platformer game. Kingdom Come 2 greatly surpassed the original game’s peak player count. Civilization VII had to contend with six different games that came out before it. This is quite the legacy you have to live up to. At some point, the Civilization series was going to reach its creative plateau because it had basically forgotten its player base.

The game is honestly not that good at giving the player a sense of scale. It’s not the realism which players crave but the scale and macro nature of the earlier games.

I have stated many times on here that Civilization VII is a game that does not have unique moments such as this on a macro scale. Playing as China in that game and having Persia launch a nuclear attack on my Communist nation was truly edge of your set material in an old game.

Another interesting moment are the text boxes in Civilization III. I had the Koreans attempting to manipulate my politics. Such little boxes help to flesh out the virtual history playing out on screen. That is what Civilization VII is missing here.

Civilization VI had a decline in player counts as well, but they were not the same. Civilization VII’s player base is smaller and has more competition from not just other games but older Civilization titles. This makes the act of getting the game to surpass both Civilization V and Civilization much tougher in comparison. Civilization VII is simply not better than Civilization VI as it is product of an age in the industry where style means more than substance.

Why Netflix is not the new cinema

The box office seems to be coming back to life now. Five at Freddy’s and Zootopia 2 are battling it out with other movies such as Wicked for Good and some other stragglers. It seems that the studios are pulling out the big guns in order to save this year so that they can make up some of the money they didn’t have in the previous parts of the year here.

Netflix has Stranger Things 5, Emily in Paris Season 5, but it seems that the magic isn’t there.

I remember years that Netflix would release new titles and it would garner attention. Now, it seems that they are attempting to hold onto their audience rather build it. This explains why they began punishing people who were sharing passwords and putting ads on the cheapest tier. This is adding to the expense of using Netflix and other streaming services. Instead of having one or two places to watch content, you now have them in so many places.

This is not a great arrangement for people now, especially with the novelty of streaming not as strong as before here.

Netflix’s inablity to make originals which match Hollywood’s early output is telling.

Where is Louise Brookes of Netflix? Simple answer: The culture is simply not there.

The idea of having a Charlie Chaplin or Joan Crawford is not happening in the Netflix age. The people who started Netflix were Silicon Valley who didn’t like Blockbuster’s return policy. They managed to create rental giant which became a streaming giant here. They were just interested in a business more than the art. It wasn’t until they began making originals that the art became more important; it was still subordinate in sense to a third concept, the information and archive culture of our age.

Netflix was more interested in using these shows to sell data back to the people who made the content rather than the artistic quality. A few shows and movies could have been seen to be of classic Hollywood quality, but there are not that many shows that reach the brilliance of Hollywood of many decades ago. Maybe of our age but Netflix is going to have be better than that, not just an addition.

Netflix is simply not the new cinema but more of a upstart which thinks it is. They have had successes but most of these were in the beginning of their time of making originals. They are just pumping out more reality television than ever before. Emily in Paris may appeal to many people but Netflix needs to really start focusing on creating artistic movies which can appeal to their audience.

They have a huge audience and yet they make the same content as one saw on the old broadcast channels.

Netflix will continue to gain subscribers counts but it needs more creativity if it wants to retain that audience.

Investors and tech guys generally do not care about creativity. Only investments. Netflix needs to learn how to treats is originals as something more than images on a screen.