Old school RTS, indie opportunity?

Casey — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 01:42:02 +0000

I read this article the other day about the paradigm shift that Real Time Strategy (RTS) games are currently undergoing and I think that it is a bit unfortunate, but I think most everyone has seen it coming. Consoles are becoming more abundant and with it a huge market. The PC has been the leader by a long shot in these style of games, but with the ease of PC piracy I can’t say that I don’t blame the developers for trying to move away from it. The move to a more console friendly RTS game has really been a move to less resource management and more focus on building units quicker and getting into the action which ultimately means a simplification of the game leading to quicker campaigns and skirmishes. This makes sense as well for the console since the majority of best selling console games are action oriented and once you bring online multi-player into it, it would be hard to sustain a single game for even three our four people for a traditional style strategy game that would often last friends of mine and I hours for a single skirmish. While this move to a more console friendly RTS is going to attract more gamers and most likely introduce the style to younger players, it is also going to open up a market for the more traditional game style. I think this is a great opportunity for the indie developers out there to fill in the need for more traditional turn based games. I grew up playing quite a few RTS and Turn Based games, my favorites among them being Total Annihilation, Age of Empires, Civilization and Lords of the Realm II, and for the most part haven’t really found much that interested me in this genre of late.

I have been playing a lot of Gratuitous Space Battles but that doesn’t really fit into either mold very well. If you are a stats junky though, I would highly recommend it. I have also been playing Battle of Wesnoth on the iPhone over the last couple of days and am really enjoying it. I steer away from a lot of the social “strategy” games, as I can’t stand knowing that I am supporting a bunch of people who aren’t into games, just making a buck so maybe I’m missing something there, but from what I’ve seen I don’t think I am.

With the work I’ve been doing with the XNA framework on the Xbox360, I can’t help but wonder if a classic strategy game could be successful? It would require a well thought out control scheme that would probably be very different from what we would expect, but I believe that there is definitely a market for it as you can only stand so many platformers. I wonder what would a successful execution look like? What kind of control scheme would work well? How stats heavy can you get with a console audience? As with all games, it would definitely be a balancing act, a difficult one at that. You would want to keep it fast paced enough for online play but not at the sacrifice of the traditional RTS values. I can see game configuration or having various game play types like those that are common in the FPS world, would be a definite need here.

Getting my ass in gear

Casey — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 02:45:21 +0000

I have never been someone to set New Year’s resolutions or to really write down my goals. For the last few years, the only goals on my mind have been to finish school, get rent paid and try to have some fun. That isn’t to say that I haven’t had any long term plans, but that my priorities were different. One thing that has always remained constant however, is my love for games and the technical challenges that they present.

Now that school is behind me and I’ve been working steadily since graduating, I’ve started to think again about my short term and long term plans. A friend of mine that I graduated with, (and who were also laid off just before graduating), decided to form an LLC just before Christmas with the intent of creating games and hopefully starting a profitable company. So, in order to keep on track, I am setting the following goals for 2010 for myself:

Spend more time with my family
Get a game accepted to XBox Live Community Games
Participate in every Ludum Dare 48 Hour competition
Start keeping a Design / Idea journal
Play more games
Post at least one blog entry a week

Nothing on this list is insurmountable or too difficult too acomplish over the course of the year. The most difficult part will be balancing my work schedule, since I do mostly contract work and work from home quite a bit, I often work too many hours. Over the next couple of months I am going to have to readjust this schedule and make sure that I am leaving enough time to put into the company and not go insane.

Don't go insane.

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Old school RTS, indie opportunity?

Getting my ass in gear