Where are all the RTS games?
By : Paul Miller
Let me preface this saying I love RTS games. They might be my favorite genre, with sex simulators coming into a close second. I’ve played so many; I can’t even begin to remember the names of them all (mostly due to lack of trying) that being said, where did they all go?
I was born in the 90’s (1990), and what seemed to be the case, was that there was almost an OVER saturation of RTS games during that time. (That being said, I’m neither a historian, nor a good “rememberer” as the kids’ call them so my memories may be a bit skewed)In fact, the first RTS game I played was completely by accident. I got age of empires because I thought I’d be able to play as a knight, not GOD. So I took to the Internet, and researched what might be causing this.
Learning Curve:
As I’m sitting here listening to the Starcraft Brood war soundtrack, watching Replays of WCS finals. A thought occurred to me. That first sentence might have been a lousy opener. Another thought was that, Why aren’t more people playing starcraft? It’s easy enough right? You select a unit, build a building with said unit, and build ANOTHER unit and attack with it. That’s a Piece of cake right? I’ve been playing this game since 1998, and that is STILL all I understand about it. There are people who have dedicated actual workweeks’ to understanding timings, and moves called pushes, inside this video game. All that being said, Starcraft is on the EASY side of the learning curve compared to some other RTS’s. While players don’t want their hand held thru a game, they also don’t want to have to pull out an almanac to learn when, where, why to place a building that’s going to give them gas so they can build ANOTHER building that will give them battle cruisers. I’m not saying that RTS are too difficult, but the games that are popular now definitely changed up peoples expectations on how much you’re supposed to put into a game before it becomes fun.
RTS games tend to be better for computers
Now I’m not going to get in d debate on which is better, while I know full well the correct answer is the Bop it X-TREME. (but does that count as a pc or a console?!! Oh nooooooooo!). What I am going to say is, rts games suffer because they tend to run the best on PCS, with Halo Wars being the only exception I can think of off the top of my head. The reason being, the mouse is simply more ergonomic to move around with, and having keystrokes makes things VERY easy. You can’t accomplish this as easily on a console. Now, can it be done? Sure! Will it?, hahahahahahaha.
If you think that a company will devote the time to make a game like starcraft 2 work on a console, when it already does well on a pc. Then
- You weren’t born in the Nintendo 64 era
- You must have forgotten that…
Making games is still a business
Surprise! Bet you didn’t see this one coming! Did you know there are actually PEOPLE behind some of your favorite games? Turns out they eat and even poop too! With every sour article someone writes they seem to forget this is the years long result of an extremely talented teams blood sweat and tears. You know what blood sweat and tears costs? Money, and in certain part of the world goat skins I guess. And the bigger games get, the more you’re going to need. As this gaming market keeps getting bigger and bigger; we’re not going to see the next big RTS, because that’s just not fiscally responsible. While starcraft 2 is doing pretty great at the moment, even those numbers are dwindling to a new genre; the moba. My point being this, are we going to see any more, high budget triple A RTS games outside of Warcraft 4? Probably not, but that doesn’t mean RTS’s will die. I don’t think they ever will as long as we have independent developers that love them, and people like you and me who will buy them. Developers can’t afford to keep paying their programmers in fritos anyways.