I disagree with this premise. I think games like age of empires and StarCraft had mass appeal and success. They brought in audiences who don’t normally like games, and broadly were well received by young, old, and different genders. Especially age of empires 2.
Modern RTS games are just (mostly) sloppy, unfinished, cashgrabs with no vision. They suffer the most from the transition to 3d as well. If a major studio actually put work and time into a polished, 2d, isometric, RTS that wasn’t solely focused on being an esport, I think there is a major vacuum for them to fill.
Hell, starcraft created the concept of a professional gamer being a thing. To say that RTS games dont have popular appeal is just outright wrong.
3D isnt a bad thing though, C&C Generals did it fantastically.
Definitely! Just to clarify, I think that good RTS games make good esports, but fundamentally on the basis is being carefully made, captivating, and nuanced. I think an overt focus on developing an RTS as a esport tends to lead to low risk, streamlined designs which while fun, lack some of the staying power that older, more established titles have. Perhaps, I’m disillusioned about the genre in general, and that’s not the case!
Also, yeah 3d can be good, but I do think that Sprite based graphics are easy to parse and very pleasing to look at. I wish we had a healthy balance of the 2. 2d also tends to look more, evergreen, with 3d RTS looking dated on release due to the quantity of animated units. Though, strong art design would help offset this.
Or Command & Conquer, which didn’t had as strong of a competitive community comparatively, but were very successful through their fun story campaigns. Also, there’s some pretty successful real time 4X titles too that very much hit mainstream audiences, despite being even more of a niche due to their scale. I think a lot of RTS games often tried too much to compete with the esport niche too, trying to replace the established titles, which is kind of an impossible task. Doing an RTS that doesn’t aim for this goal can still be successful however, if one puts the focus on that instead of targeting unreachable heights.
A lot of the competitive RTS crowd transitioned to MOBAs and it’s hard to scratch that itch with an old-school RTS now. Having the full offline and online package was key of the time when those games were popular and you don’t get that when the competitive space has moved on.
But you have a point. RTSs at their peak were super triple-A stuff, with mind blowing execution and production value for the time. Point and click adventures have a bit of the same problem, they used to be these massive technical showpieces and as a mid-size or indie thing they are a tougher sell when the modern equivalent of investment is going to absolutely insanely huge games in other genres. Even when a triple-A studio does one of those you tend to not get as much of a massive investment, and when you do (say, Total War: Warhammer, or even Manor Lords) they do see success. It’s just never going to be the same because you’re never going to call your friends over to show them Warcraft 2 running on your PC.
Modern RTS games are just (mostly) sloppy, unfinished, cashgrabs with no vision.
As were many classic RTS games. I fondly remember Machines, a fully 3D example from the late 90s. I recently noticed the CD case describes it as “3D Real-Time Startegy.”
Okay so the lesson to learn from the mainstream success of StarCraft is to put sexy submissive and breedable murderous bugs in your game
The RTS genre will never be mainstream
StarCraft: exists
Lmao what the fuck is this guy even talking about
Starcraft hasn’t been mainstream for over a decade.
You know, they said, ‘An RTS is like PC-only by nature, why would you work on a single platform game when you could have made something multiplatform and another genre?’
Bruno thinks that’s because big publishers are hoping for lightning-in-a-bottle hits that return 10 times their investment—“When you’re operating at that scale, you want to build something that has the potential to sell 30 million copies,” he said—and he doesn’t think the RTS genre is ever going to produce that kind of success. If it did, he’s skeptical the game in question would really be an RTS as he defines it.
So, first, even if the audience is limited, you can make a game that has a 10x return on investment if you can do the game on a smaller investment. A big publisher doesn’t intrinsically need to do big-budget games.
Second, the genre grew up on the PC. And it often has conventions tuned to a PC platform. Precise selection, use of groups off a keyboard. But it seems to me that it’s not impossible to produce new controls. The roguelike genre also was developed on a PC, and had a lot of conventions that were not friendly to other platforms, like use of many keyboard buttons that one would need to tap. But Shattered Pixel Dungeon ( !pixeldungeon@lemmy.world ) is a pretty good mobile adaption of the genre.
Based on this chart, video game revenue on the PC is relatively-strong compared to consoles in historical terms. What’s new is mobile.
According to that, in annual game revenue, consoles are about $30B, the PC is about $45B, and mobile – the newcomer – is $101B.
So, first-off, the PC is a quarter that. I’m not sure that it’s unreasonable to do a game that targets a quarter of the market. There are lots of genres that target only some of those platforms. First-person shooters aren’t gonna be all that great on mobile either.
Secondly, there have been console RTS releases. Off the top of my head, Supreme Commander also came out for the XBox 360. That series tends to be less of a clickfest, but it clearly means that doing an RTS on console is doable.
Thirdly, I think that console controllers are the hardest to adapt to that. I think that it’s probably pretty reasonable to do a touch interface. And if you can do PC and mobile, that’s more than three-quarters of the market.
Based on this histogram, they’re still coming out at a decent clip in absolute terms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games
That has the peak year being 2001, with 41 releases.
But still 14 releases in 2023.
And some of those are games that I have played or purchased but not played – I can say that there are some decidedly good recent releases.
Like, Carrier Command 2 is on there and is pretty nifty. It doesn’t play much like Starcraft, but it’s hard to argue that it’s not a real-time strategy game.
Can you recommend any that have good single player campaigns? I’ve no interest in competitive multiplayer
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I think someone should reboot the Dune RTS game from like 30 years ago. I played it as a kid on my Sega Genesis, and right now it’s a ripe time to do it. Interesting parts:
- feels like C&C, but with spice worms
- lots of factions, but could stick to three: Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino/Emperor (optionally add the Fremen as a fourth)
- cool, unique tech and setting
So, here’s what I suggest:
- copy C&C gameplay with updated graphics, and swap units appropriately
- add spice worms as a “random” event based on greed (keeps stronger players in check)
- balance like in Starcraft - harkonnen are like Zerg, corrino/empire are like protoss, and atreides are like Terran; Fremen faction could work like Zerg, in which case harkonnen works more like Terran
I think that could sell well.
Have you tried the new one?
Huh, it actually exists! That said, from one of the reviews:
Feels like a tablet or phone game. Your PC will be insulted. This is one of those games that make you think you played it ten years ago. Actually 30 years ago, Dune II back in 1992 was a better game and was groundbreaking at the time. This is not on any level. 5 units types per faction, that’s it. No ground vehicles to speak of that you can control.
I’ll probably be disappointed.
That review is bullshit. It’s not going to tax your machine, but that’s a good thing. The unit type thing is also missing that not the entire game takes place on the battlefield, there’s multiple layers to it and you almost never win through pure domination.
EDIT: Also, ground vehicles? This is Dune, you can’t cross sand in a vehicle, and they couldn’t go up cliffs. No, instead you airdrop, which is way more flexible.
K, I’ll watch some gameplay footage then.
Battle for Middle Earth was my favourite game ever probably or at least among top 3. Honestly between the 4x warhammer total war and rts bfme I think bfme was slightly more fun.
It’s a real shame the genre is so forgotten.
RTS is more organic genre without incessant thinking about numbers and save scumming while 4x always feels like Math.
Every game session of RTS game is slightly different even with the same map and enemy parameters providing for a way more replayability value and unpredictable chaos that you need to manage in real time. It’s much more engaging this way.
It’s still about numbers under the hood but more organic while 4x feels like an excel spreadsheet sometimes. There are less solutions to victory, sometimes even only one proper, predetermined before playing and that’s boring.
Another gem was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. They made 2 sequels but none captured the gameplay of the first one. For some unknown reason they scrapped everything what made the original good in the second game, making it completely different. The third one was an attempt to go back to the mechanics of the first one but it was mediocre.
TF is crate ent. on about? They’ve not even made an RTS, let alone one with love and care out into it? They’ve got an RPG* (grim dawn) and a city builder (farthest frontier) on steam. Neither come anywhere close to what an RTS is supposed to be, and like others have said, Dune (don’t know the specific name), C&C, warcraft and StarCraft we’re all impressive mainstream games, all RTS.
Haven’t read the post, but what if kind of detached world do they live in?
The first sentence says they’re working on an RTS currently. Even if they weren’t, the CEO is probably allowed to share his opinion on RTS games even if he hasn’t made one, just like all of us can.
Really shortsighted view of it. Just because you make a new RTS that is more generally appealing is not going to change the existence of those that preceded it or their fanbase.
For a moment, I was swapping 4X and RTS in my head, making me absolutely agree that it’ll never be mainstream.
Yeah, I don’t know enough about RTS games to make a claim, but I’d like to think games like Civilization are well known enough to make them mainstream.
Unless I’m missing something new in later civs, the civilization series is missing the “real tine” part. Unless we’re talking about the fact that it takes place during real time periods. Hah.
Fair enough.
Last year brought us Baldur’s Gate 3.
In what way can “nerd things” not be mainstream?
I haven’t seen an RTS with enough marketing to promote itself that actually was like how the best RTSs were back when it was a popular genre. Perhaps devs should try going back to what they were like when they were good? 🤷🏻♂️
