3 ms·
The point is not to be historically accurate. Ideally you strike a good balance of fun, challenging, and historically accurate - in that order. I can't speak
by blunte 5y ago
The point is not to be historically accurate. Ideally you strike a good balance of fun, challenging, and historically accurate - in that order.
I can't speak for the games listed, but for the one AAA game I had the opportunity to work, "but is it fun?" was a question we would ask ourselves periodically. The natural tendency was to strive for correctness and simulation level accuracy. But that's usually very much not fun.
- mmcdermott 5y agoThat tracks, I think. Most strategy games are about things that real people had to be paid to do. There haven't historically been many who would govern a province for "fun". For money, glory or influence, sure, but not really for the visceral thrill of the thing.
- mcv 5y agoWhat different people consider fun varies a lot though. There's no universal standard of fun. Take Paradox games like Europa Universalis and Crusader Kings. They go to quite a bit of trouble to approach historical accuracy (there are still a lot of abstractions of course, but they do a far better job than the Civilizations and the Total Wars). A lot of people love them exactly for that reason. For those people, historical accuracy itself is fun. For other people, these games are probably horrible and tedious. People have different tastes. I certainly would love a more historically accurate city builder. I lost interest in the fake base-building standard a long time ago.
- blunte 5y agoIndeed this is all very true, but if you have a big publisher, “fun” is usually focused on a large target audience. That’s why it’s so great that we have good tooling nowadays which allows indie developers to aim for the niche that they like.