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On The Ascent And Descent Of The RTS
Thanks to GameSpot for their guest 'GameSpotting' editorial discussing the perceived decline of the real-time strategy genre. The author argues: "While there have been unusual bright spots on the RTS gaming scene, the overall look of it is pretty grim. Most games offer very little when it comes to revitalizing the genre, and eventually they even fail in rekindling old interests that faded away when we let go of Command & Conquer and Warcraft." He finishes with a call to arms, citing Command & Conquer: Generals ("[a] dearth of interesting strategies") and Age Of Mythology ("[offering a] rote formula") as examples of this lack of innovation, and urging: "Only you can stop the market from regurgitating the same old titles, and maybe even encourage it to make a few nudges in the right direction."
A few years ago adventure games were in this same 'state'. All you fans out there: be patient. In a few years time the genre will slowly awake from it beauty sleep, just like adventure games are doing at the moment.
-- Cheers!
Name substantial gameplay differences between Red Alert, Warcraft II, KKND, M.A.X, Knights and Merchants [...] they all offer roughly the same gameplay. It may look a bit different, but it boils down to the same formula: Settle down, collect, build up, expand, destroy.
I hate to burst his bubble, but that is what (RT)S is all about. Next, he says that adventures had no substantial progress since "Adventure" because they are still "solve the puzzles and win" and FPS are all about "shoot the enemy dead".
Besides, there are quite a few games that took RTS one step further, the author names three of them. And yet the future looks grim? C'mon, there are bright spots in every genre, and there is the mass of run-of-the-mill games. That hardly counts as a descent of the genre.
Plus, many games cross borders and mix RTS with RPG or RTS with FPS (Battlezone). So there are influences from other generes that bring in fresh ideas.
I just realized my post has many TLAs. Oh well.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Apart from my differing opinion about Generals (which has very good multiplayer, especially with the Zero Hour expansion), I find it hard to trust any article about RTS games that claims that Dune 2 was the first game in the genre.
The author states "But that alone is not the only piece of misinformation regarding the RTS genre" when it is he that is spreading misinformation. Take for example, Hertzog Zwei, a Megadrive (Genesis) RTS that far predates Dune 2.
The entire article seems to be nothing but a badly-constructed collection of ruminations about RTS games. I don't claim this post to be any better constructed than his article, but I can claim that I am not trying to make you think I am important and cool by hinting at things I don't really understand.
Take for example the section marked "The Problem". All he does to establish what he thinks the problem is, is list a group of ancient RTS games, and then complain that they all had a lot in common. Of course they had something in common: they were all members of the same genre. An RTS game without most of the things he lists, "Settle down, collect, build up, expand, destroy" would not be an RTS.
So, there was no real point to that section of the article, unless all he meant to say was "I am bored of the RTS genre." The thing that make this article detestable is the way he then tries to make us think he is clever, and actually has a point. First, he make a parenthetical aside about the old games he lists, hinting that they didn't have all that much of a storyline. Oh, what wit! What intellect! What humour the author commands!
Secondly, he tries to make his idea bigger than they are. For example, the use of the rhetorical question "...need I go on?", when he does, in fact, need to go on, because he has yet to make any point. He instead writes "...need I go on?", hoping that the reader will assume he made an important point.
The rest of this article continues in the same vein. The author comes close to realising the stupidity of what he is writing when he adds, in the section marked 'But still a problem': "but seeing how there are dozens of titles clinging to the same genre".
How is it that the author cannot understand that the non-innovative games that he lists, including Generals and Age of Mythology, are as much members of the RTS genre as the innovative ones he lists, Starcraft and Homeworld?
And again, if one has a flaky and ill-established point, why say there are "dozens" of examples, rather that actually list them?
I, on the other hand, believe that I have made my point, and will forgo listing other examples of the poorness of this article. If you disagree, post a response and I will elaborate.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
CnC was not the first RTS in the same way that Doom was not the first 3D shooter. They are both the one that many people remember as leading in the genre.
I think he's right about the decline - at least to a certain extent. Here's my quick summary of the Westwood games as I remembered them:
Groundbreaking; excellent story, gameplay and music. Very easy to get into. Liked it lots.
Prequel to CnC, so the story fits in. Gameplay much the same, but different units (including ships and planes) made it interesting. Excellent music. Decent skirmish mode too (which CnC lacked). Liked it lots.
Story continues from CnC, so it fit in (ok, a little stretched, but we'll allow it!). New graphics engine, new units, still interesting. Music didn't kick like the first two. Mild cheesiness, but I still thought it was OK.
Story somewhere between first RA and CnC, but no Kane (some Yuri person instead), so didn't feel quite right. New units, but the cheesiness factor was way up (eg: units all cheer when you complete a mission). Don't remember the music - I was too distracted by all the cheese.
Still annoyed at having been ripped off last time, so didn't bother with this. Smelled like cheese to me anyway.
By now I was into Team Fortress, so I didn't bother. Still annoyed with them too.
Occasionally, I still fire up Red Alert (which runs just fine under wine). It's still fun. It's certainly nostalgic.
The article didn't talk much about Age of Empires, which for me at least, brought some interesting game play - the different types of units and the whole development concept.
I didn't see Total Anihilation mentioned anywhere, which I found odd. That game took the graphics to new hights, and the gameplay too, with much more in the way of ships, subs and planes than Red Alert. Having a commander and nanolathing were interesting. If you were quick, you could have a transport plane pick up the enemy commander at the beginning of a multiplayer game!
OK, so the basic strategies are much the same, but that's the RTS genre. For me, the decline has not been the lack of new stragies. It's been the lack of new story lines and cool music.. and the addition of cheesey units
-- Steve
Personally, it peaked with Starcraft for me. I'm just now replaying Brood Wars because I realized I had never finished it, and it's *still* a fun game, albeit a little rote.
My wish for an RTS game is the following: the build, collect, search, destroy algorithm would still hold true, but it could actually be expanded over multiple missions. In other words, when you built that command center in the first mission, it stuck around throughout the game. Resources would be harder to get, so that Carrier would actually MEAN something and you would want to protect it at all cost.
What RTS games come down to is you are playing a very small part in the very big picture, and the author's have a hard time establishing a believable storyline with only showing a single battle. Perhaps entire campaigns, where you zoom in on individual battles, or something would be more interesting.
--trb