Civilization VII is clearly a game for people who love style over any meat and potatoes in their gaming meals. It seems that the people who made the game were fooling people with graphics and nice sounding music. This is a big reason why the game is not doing so well right now.
The game had tons of advertising that was being poured onto YouTube. However, the game is not worth the money and one can clearly see that engagement on YouTube is lagging Kingdom Come 2. While these games are not the same genre, one can see how Kingdom Come 2 has spoken to what the audience wants. It has been two months since the game came out, and it is highly successful. The team has been continuing to update the game. They also make videos that give a behind the scenes look at the creation; this provides inspiration for budding video game makers.
Civilization VII shows that style cannot win over substance. People are paying just to watch a moving painting with some interaction here.
A warrior unit exploring a diverse terrain in Civilization VII, featuring plains, hills, and water.
Civilization VII is continuing to fall in obscurity on Steam. The company, Firaxis Games is still living in a reality where they believe that the game is successful. However, it seems that they are more interested in pushing with their multiplatform games which are not selling on the charts. This inability to think critically about their game is why the game is doing so poorly with gamers. Civilization V is currently ahead of the game consistently now. Why is this? Simply because it is not a PC centric game.
Being a PC centric game makes sense for Civilization. When they announced this game, I was suspecting that the quality would suffer. I was right and I should have been more careful here. Civilization VII doesn’t even respect its title, its not about civilization but about city states. PC-centric games tend to be big in scale not just tiny mobile games. That is what Civilization VII is missing.
I think that we should understand what it means that the game is on all these platforms here. It means that the team is wasting their time trying to milk the game for all its worth and not trying to build something sustainable.
I honestly believe that Civilization VII is going to be dark age of the Civilization games.
It isn’t selling well, and it does not have big player base on Steam. Civilization VI is already ahead of it.
Civilization VII should be made for PC gamers and then they could move towards console games.
Console games have their own territory and PC games have theirs. The obsession with putting the game on Meta’s VR systems is just a sign of a company that isn’t serious about the game.
They no longer seem to care about their player base and just want to hide behind videos and screenshots.
It would be better if someone else would make Civilization from now on, because they are not doing a good job with it.
Civilization VI will still be the Emperor, while Civilization VII will be sulking in the shadows as a game that will be obscurity and a lesson in that game studio’s reputation depends on the gamers.
Creating video games is tough. Being a programmer in the modern industry is like walking on knives. You have so many obstacles that are getting in the way and rewards are either great success or a failure which prevents from really enjoying the act of making games. Unlike other programmers, who tend to be rather focused on dry ideas and concepts, programmers are artists not accountants. This means that they have a creative spark in them.
That creative spark in a company is difficult to maintain. Civilization VII represents a series that is increasingly become more casual and not for the original group of fans who kept it going in the 1990s up until the release of Civilization V in 2010.
Civilization V was seen by many to be a downgrade from Civilization IV. Some have said that Civilization VI is a reaction to Civilization V while trying to fuse Civ V and IV in one cohesive whole.
However, it is clear that Civilization VII was a reaction aganist such compromise.
The team on this game seemed to be more interested in change than in continuity.
However, they did not even seem to put enough effort to make the change worthwhile. It is not even competent enough in order to keep the interest of players. Right now, Civilization VI is ahead of Civilization VII.
The early 2010s Civilization V, is still able to garner many players and is not far behind in player counts when comparing Civilization VII.
Creativity without spark is simply being a person on an assembly line who makes competent pieces that fit into a grander whole. This game is not able to convey that to player.
Civilization VII is a game without a soul or passion. It is clear the video game industry is clearly rusting and it is going to take new thinking to get out of this rut it is in.
My Game Reviews 