How does the enhanced version compare?

Most of the enhancements in the new version center on that type of thing - a lot of smart, critical feedback that teaches you how to play the game as much as it teaches how what is happening inside the game. Take the example I just gave you. Players might not know the concept of even having a barge to move stuff across the river, let alone that in order to get a barge you need barge landings and a shipwright and all that. And then there’s a specific situation, like when you go “Hey, why isn’t my statue being built?” so you select it and it tells you what is going on.

So that’s about sixty per cent of the Enhanced Version. Another twenty per cent is actual functionality/game balance changes. For example, we’ve added a brickyard that dramatically changes how construction happens. Building is a real pacing issue and affected the fun of the game. It’s not something people didn’t understand, it just takes a long time to get bricks into the pipeline.

We gave the priest a wife. Again, we thought it was cool that each family has a mom, a dad and some kids and they do different jobs so you get a little household economy there. We thought it was nice that the priest was extra hard because he can’t have a wife, but the priest provides critical services in the game, and there was no way to make the priest powerful enough so we gave him a companion to do his shopping for him.

Then there’s a bunch of stuff that is just tweaking, like making a temple stay active longer when a priest activates it. I think we made people move faster on roads, because previously they favored roads but didn’t move faster on them, so roads ended up being a negative because people would take longer paths when the non-road route was more optimal. So a bunch of stuff that makes the game play better, smoother, faster.

Plus Vista compatibility, we changed the graphics a little to make them more up to date, added some content – a couple of new statues to place, for example – because we wanted our existing users to get something for free. We also wanted to move away from the old style tutorial, which was fine but it takes a long time and by the time the player gets through it, he’s not sure what he’s learned. So one of Jeff’s big points was that we want the player to be learning about stuff as he’s doing it in a real scenario. So we have this quick start scenario that teaches you the game and is the basis of the demo.

We look at this as a relaunch. I don’t want to overstate the enhancements. People who already own the game can get them for free and I don’t want there to be any confusion. The enhanced edition is designed to be better for new users, so that when they play it they will have a more positive experience than they did with the initial release. We’re taking full responsibility for all the shortfalls in the previous release.

Children of the Nile

Given your experiences with Societies and Caesar IV, do you think the game space is now more ready for the reimagining of the city builder that CotN was intended to be?

We just had this discussion here. I’ve shared Children of the Nile with various people over the years. When we first pitched the game to Microsoft back in early 2002, everyone was really psyched about it and then one person said, “Do we need another Pharaoh? Pharaoh was really good.” The context in 2003, 2004 was “Pharaoh, Pharaoh, Pharaoh.” and there was an institutional understanding of how city-builders were made. While I’d say that that isn’t entirely gone, as I’ve shared the game I’ve discovered that people who did not grow up with the experience of those games don’t have those conceptions and slide into CotN and really like it.

SimCity: Societies had the added dimensions of being a branding issue. EA has this colossal brand and this game breaks the paradigm of that brand.

While there are definitely people still out there who say “No, this is what a city builder is supposed to be”, it’s not quite the same as saying we are releasing Pharaoh 2. The context is different now and I think Children has some life left in it. The preconceptions about what an historical city building game is have changed because gamers age out and new ones come in. I don’t know how much it has changed. Some people will never like it, but other people get it and like it.

You know, one thing to remember, the marketing company for Children made the decision to put my name on the back cover and say “From the lead designer of Pharaoh” and they used a similar design colors and that was a decision they made to put that connection out there. We’re now entering a space where we think a lot of people that see this game (it’s going up on Steam) won’t have any idea what Pharaoh is or who we are. They’ll just see a game where you build Egyptian cities. We know that the game is good and fun, but not for everyone, but we’re just looking at this: the first game made several million dollars to make and now we don’t have to pay to make it, so it’s win-win for us.

We’d like the game to come to end, when it does, on a positive note. As a company, this shows that we’ve never given up the fight with this game. We’ve improved it and the people who worked on it are still here.

How has digital distribution changed the economics of being a mid-tier independent developer?

It’s huge. The typical publisher deal with an independent developer has the publisher advance royalties in the several millions of dollars and they pack back a royalty percentage somewhere in the low teens – 12-15%. Which means that 15 percent of net sales come back to the developer, but they have to pack back the royalty advance first. So, let’s make the math easy. If the percent is 20%, which is really high, then the game has to make back five times what it cost before the developer sees anything. If it’s a 12% royalty, it’s eight times. Which basically means you never see royalties. It would be better to get a three percent royalty off the top, instead of what you have now, which is a model almost designed to make sure you never get royalties. In some cases, the royalty is actually capped. And the timing means that you might never see any royalties until many months after the game is released.

Jeff Jeff Fiske: And this means that it is very difficult to keep a team intact. A lot of companies go out of business now just after they’ve released a game and who’s there to do the support for it?

Chris: With digital distribution, we have a good relationship with Steam. I used to work with some of the key people at Valve from my days with Sierra. Looking a game like Children, they know it’s a quality title and they know us. It’s a title that they wanted. The economics now, well, we sell the game for half as much (20 dollars) and we get a percentage right off the top. With royalties, anything lower that 15% and it might as well be zero. I’ve argued this point with publishers, asking for a percentage off the top, and they don’t want to do that. With Valve, we make money on every sale.

They were ahead of the curve in saying, “You know what? This is what PC gaming is going to be.” It will take a little while. I remember when people didn’t want to use their credit card on the internet, so it will still take some time before people stop going to Amazon to order their game in a box but it’s going there fast and Valve has done it very, very well. They are a real partner.

I don’t want to sound all wishy-washy. But it’s really exciting to put a game out there, sell one copy and see a revenue stream from that. To know we can go out there and address consumer issues by ourselves…it’s just a better way for the PC business. The other way does not work for the majority of PC games.

Caesar IV

How much of that is because the PC audience is changing?

When we used to make games in the early 90s, wouldn’t talk about whether a game was an RTS or an empire builder or an MMO. It was a golf game or a fantasy game or a game about building castles. There was less talking about things in terms of category and more in terms of subject matter. My point there is that the PC audience is huge and diverse and what we think of as the “gamer” audience is a little less so.

I think that publishers eventually created a line that was never there, focusing on the types of games that sold several million copies. I think the PC audience is big and diverse, and they want a game that’s fun and a game that will work on their machine. They don’t want to keep buying games that say they will work and then don’t. They aren’t necessarily as concerned with pixel shaders and bump mapping. Implicit in there is that they want innovation. I don’t think they go out and say they want something new and different, but they go out there and don’t find things that are new and different and get bored.

I think it’s a simpler argument to make that the PC audience has not changed. We used to make games like Lords of the Realm and sell 90,000 copies and that was a huge hit. If we made a game like that right now, would it sell 90,000 copies? Probably, only instead of being in the mall we would be online. Somewhere in the late nineties, we realized you could sell millions of copies of an RTS, and OK, now every game has to be that way and some gamers got left behind.

But they’re still out there. You go to Gamersgate or Stardock and there they are in the same numbers, but they look really small compared to World of Warcraft and Diablo.

Jeff Fiske: And especially the big console sellers...

Be sure to stop back on Monday for Part II of our talk with Chris and Jeff from Tilted Mill as they get into their new projects.