Articles

GameGuy: The
“Real-Time Strategy” Edition
By Mark H. Walker

No one gave me a crystal
ball, but I do have a couple of RTS titles worth of experience. Perhaps
enough to answer the question du jour: What’s the future of RTS?

Well, I saw my good friend
RTS the other day. He was hunched in front of his monitor lassoing
troops, building hundreds of tanks, and looking downright bored. You
know what I said?

You need to get out more.

If he does, RTS has a bright,
bronzed skin, stud-muffin kind of future. If he doesn’t, he’ll end
up looking like the pasty-faced folks I saw at E3. Here’s why.

RTS game developers are
spending way too much time looking at themselves in the mirror. To
make their games better, they study RTS titles past, present –and
when they can get their hands on them– future. That’s fine, but it’s
not the key to that stud-muffin destiny. Innovation is.

Now any publishers reading
this please note that the following things are not, I repeat (as the
Hollywood military types say) NOT, innovation: Better graphics, thousands
of units, improved interface, more detail, lame-assed -“Well
my brother said he could write a little”-stories, and three hours
of poorly acted FMA.

Innovation, and its first
cousin, inspiration, can be found anywhere –books, movies, Sarah
Michelle Gellar– but perhaps the easiest inspiration can be found
in other gaming genres. The key to real-times strategy’s future is
the intelligent cross-pollination of genres. Not only does cross-pollination
breed good games, but strong sales. It’s not surprising, produce a
RTS with strong role-playing elements and you not only bag the strategy
crowd, but role-players as well. No news there, but it seems a difficult
point for developers to grasp.

Some folks, like Sweden’s
Massive Entertainment, got the message. Their “Ground Control”
is THE FIRST RTS science fiction game to employ honest by-God military
tactics. (Gamer’s note, baiting an AI opponent or swamping a defense
with Zerglings aren’t tactics, merely gimmicks.) Massive dug deeply
into turn-based war gaming archives to pull out several features –such
as differing armor thickness on tank’s front and sides, the ability
to hide troops in tall grass, and the importance of combined arms–
and inserted them into smack dab into the middle of Ground Control.
The result is an engaging game that challenges the brain as well as
the click-finger, and attracts RTS folks AND wargamers.

Another genre-mixing RTS
is Chris Taylor’s Dungeon Siege. Hell, most people would argue
if it even is an RTS or rather a role-playing game. Any game that
breeds THAT type of argument is also sure to breed cross-genre sales.
Role-playing gamers have long battled through the next quest, level,
or room, not because of cool spell affects, high polygon count or
3-D terrain, but because they care about the characters they control.
Dungeon Siege provides eight of those characters. Characters
that battles RTS-like hordes of monsters. So, to paraphrase the Osmonds,
it’s a little bit RPG and a little bit RTS.

Action games are the third
genre that has a lot to offer real-time strategy. Battlezone,
Battlezone II, have shown promise and solid sales. But not
until Operation Flashpoint did the action-strategy vein produce
a blockbuster hit that unleashed the forces of gaming (and the attendant
developer’s bucks). Make no mistake, a real-time strategy title that
puts gamers *in* the shoes of the forces they command will one day
make mega-bucks.

So, if genre inspired innovation
is the wave of the future, what **won’t** work in the days to come?
I think production-based RTS has reached its high-water mark. Folks
are tired of building factories. They want to fight. Even games with
production based systems –such as the Age of Empires II: The Conquerors—
often downplay resource gathering. Nauseating detail and battlefields
choked with hundreds of units are also passé. You think Warcraft
III will put hundreds of warriors on the field or concentrate
on making the warriors you control interesting? Both detail and tank
hordes fall under the heading of what-use-is-it-if-the-game-moves-to-quickly-to-enjoy-it?
Of course everything is going 3-D, but that’s not innovation, merely
the current price of admission into the gaming world.

Real time strategy is at
a crossroads. Those developers who back away from the mirror and walk
into the sunshine of genre-inspired innovation will become the bronzed-gaming
gods of the future, their titles bought by not only strategy gamers,
but action, role-playing, and wargaming aficionados as well. On the
other hand, those churning out the games whose claim to fame is “stunning
3-D graphics” or “control thousands of uniquely animated
units,” are doomed to sink into the dusty depths of discount
bins, only sought by the pasty-faced, gaming hard core.

© Mark H. Walker,
LLC 2002
Mark H. Walker is a veteran interactive entertainment journalist who
has written over 40 books including his soon to be released, Games
That Sell!