quote:

The EC3 List

Almost every single fan of the Civ genre has at one time or another sat down and thought to themselves, “wouldn’t it be great if firaxis put this feature in Civ3?” Everyone has their own little list of pet peeves that they want firaxis to include in Civ3, but we at Apolyton sat down and asked the question “what are the ideas that Civ3 needs to actually be Civ3?” This one question sparked many ideas and a great deal of discussion, and it spawned the EC3 list.
There is a derogatory name for Civ3 that has cropped up amongst the fans, that name is Civ2.5. The term Civ2.5 represents all of the fears of the Civ community. It represents the fear that Civ3 will be rushed out the door bug ridden before it is ready. It represents the fear that Civ3 will not be innovative, that it will not take the Civ genre to new heights but will simply be a carbon copy of Civ2. Civ2.5 represents the fear that Civ3 won’t be the game it could have been. It is a very bad term. Every single fan rejects the idea of Civ2.5, we are all hoping for Civ3. The EC3 list is about ideas that could help the designers of the game get a feel for what innovations the fans consider essential to Civ3. The EC3 took the pulse of the fans, to see what they want in order to help the Civ3 team at firaxis make this game as good as it possibly could be.
We all have faith in the Civ3 team but even the best and brightest can’t possibly think of every good idea on their own. We feel that the Civ3 fans are a great resource for ideas, just take a look at The Apolyton List of Ideas, it’s a huge list of good ideas. However, the EC3 is not about including every single idea we could possibly think of, it is about including only the most essential ideas in one List for the Civ3 team to look over.
We sat down for weeks in a democratic process where anyone who wanted to could submit one idea to the EC3 list. The important thing is that each person could only include one idea, so we hoped that it would be the most important idea they could think of. These ideas were divided into two categories, New Ideas and Fixes. Both are fairly self-explanatory, but in a nutshell, the New Ideas were concepts that hadn’t ever been in a Civ game before, while Fixes were radical changes made within the existing framework of Civ. All of the ideas had to be explained in Civ2 concepts so everybody could understand, and after we received all of the ideas we wrote up the final drafts and voted on them.
After the voting wrapped up, we put all of the ideas into a list determined by the votes each idea received. All of this was done in an open and democratic process and although things were confusing at times, there were never any complaints about the democratic methods used to make the EC3 List. We are not trying to design Civ3 by committee, far from it. We are trying to inspire the Civ3 team and direct their attentions to the most pressing areas of the game, those areas that need the most improvement and innovation. Many good ideas came out of the EC3 List, and it would be an honor for any of those ideas to be taken and placed in Civ3 without any changes, but that is not expected. All we expect is that Civ3 will be as good as the Civ games that have come before it. If Civ3 is going to do that it needs to press ahead and expand gameplay, and many of the ideas in the EC3 List would really push the boundaries. In closing, think of the EC3 List as a set of cliff notes on which areas of gameplay demand the most innovation in the minds of the fans.
Here is the EC3 List. The numbers out to the side of each idea is the number of votes that idea received, and all of the ideas are linked to their final draft.

quote:

Kelley Gilmore wrote:
>
> Hi again Markos.
>
> Can you tell me how many people participated in the making of the EC3? It's
> a really interesting list...you guys are awesome!
>
> Kelley Gilmore
> Communications Manager
> FIRAXIS Games
> (410) 891-3001 x131
>

Hi Kelley,

thanks for the kind words, they mean a lot

In the final stage we had around 140-150 people voting. There were a
total of 25 participating ideas. There were more ideas which did not
participate because those who initially suggested them did not send a
final draft. I cant have a number on the total of the people who
participated in the process(suggestions of ideas, discussions, voting),
but all the discussions together(which can be found at #>
) were over 1000 posts based on a quick calculation

Perhaps Korn469(commiextc@hotmail.com) who was one of the main
organizers has more details...

happy civin'
Markos Giannopoulos | markg@apolyton.net
Apolyton Civilization Site | http://apolyton.net
A GameStats Affiliate | http://www.gamestats.com
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