The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO
The RTS genre will never be mainstream unless you change it until it's 'no longer the kind of RTS that I want to play,' says Crate Entertainment CEO
Real-time strategy is a "nerd genre," says the developer, and he's happy to make one on those terms.
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.
89Hell, 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.
53Generals was really fun. The C&C series really started to decline once EA went balls deep on what was left of Westwood studios for the games after that.
3D is great. I just don't trust most AAA companies to make a decent RTS these days.7Definitely! 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.
7
That doesn't really contradict their premise about making modern RTS. StarCraft and Age of Empires 2 are ancient at this point. An entire generation of kids has grown up since they came out.
I don't think the fact that you could make a successful mainstream RTS way back then really says much about whether you could make one in 2024.
15Or 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.
12A 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.
9I mean, StarCraft was mentioned in the article. He just doesn't think RTS is big enough for AAA dev companies when they're all trying to sell tens of millions of games
That's not to say RTSes can never be any kind of hit: StarCraft 2 sold many millions of copies, Bruno noted, and Crate Entertainment only needs to sell a million to make "an OK return," he said. The series has also been an esports phenomenon. But for a company like Blizzard, he doesn't think that's enough anymore, which is why the developer stopped making new RTSes, or at least seems to have for now.
8fact is nothing ever seems to be enough for these companies now.
they will sometimes make a smash hit and proceed to pump it full of microtransactions, then lay off half the staff.
also selling tens of millions of games is unrealistic when the hardware people run them on went through years of terrible availability, and they keep pushing the requirements.
im honestly stumped on what the fuck they are expecting at this point.
7
To Tiberian Sun and StarCraft were my obsession for years. SC2 was pretty awesome, but I would not trust Blizzard to make another good RTS at this point.
5How about ex-Blzzard people? Stormgate is coming.
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Are we going to pretend Age of Empires 4 doesn't exist? The last expansion outsold every single one from AoE2.
3I didn't realize that it sold so well! That's good to hear it is successful. I'm not over the moon with the game, but I did get 30 hours or so out of it, and don't think it's bad at all. My biggest annoyance was that it felt too similar to AOE 2, which I saw as the superior game at launch. Still, that's a bit of bias from an old gamer, lol. I think it's fun!
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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."
2I mean, StarCraft was mentioned in the article. He just doesn't think RTS is big enough for AAA dev companies when they're all trying to sell tens of millions of games
That's not to say RTSes can never be any kind of hit: StarCraft 2 sold many millions of copies, Bruno noted, and Crate Entertainment only needs to sell a million to make "an OK return," he said. The series has also been an esports phenomenon. But for a company like Blizzard, he doesn't think that's enough anymore, which is why the developer stopped making new RTSes, or at least seems to have for now.
1Okay so the lesson to learn from the mainstream success of StarCraft is to put sexy submissive and breedable murderous bugs in your game
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The problem with modern RTS games is that developers don't really make proper RTS games. You don't see C&C or SC anymore, instead you get a mixture of tactical missions, RPG levelling and other shit. I don't want to play stealth infiltration missions and level up my hero, that's not RTS.
26Yup, if I want to level up my units, I'll research upgrades for my units. That requires resources, not combat. I honestly never saw the point of a mechanic or medic in C&C, because if I won a battle, I would usually go on to destroy their infra, not heal up to go again.
Starcraft got this right.
One thing that may be interesting here is a "drill" feature, where you lock up a unit for some time and expend some resources to get a higher tier unit. That way you can spam units early on and replace them later for cheaper, but the total cost would be higher than building that unit initially.
7I bought the C&C collection because I loved it when I was younger. EA fucked up C&C3 with an update that turned it into a constant zerg rush by the AI and Red Alert 3 has the same bullshit AND a shitty AI co-commander blowing through resources while doing fuck all. There's no strategy, just frantic clicking and attack alerts.
5Warzone 2100 did the RPG elements as much as was needed in a RTS. Sure individual units gained XP,.and they carried over from one mission to the next. You could also recycle units to upgrade their chassis. That was it. You could also just churn out basic troops and just throw away armies if you wanted.
1Wasn't that going on as far back as WC3? If I wanted an RPG I would have bought one.
1Yeah, that's why it's not on my list. The first two games were better.
0
The RTS genre will never be mainstream
StarCraft: exists
Lmao what the fuck is this guy even talking about
24Starcraft hasn't been mainstream for over a decade.
25Which one? Sc1 is still a mainstream game in Korea played religiously. Sc2 on the other hand is losing players since it didn't hook people the same way (impossible to do, people only have one childhood to waste nostalgia on). That's understandable though since there hasn't been new content for it for a long time.
And then you find out that a premium mount in WoW made more money than the entirety of Wings of Liberty and you kinda understand why they haven't made a new one.
5
Grandpa...
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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.
18Battle 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.
17And you cannot play it anymore due to the BS drm crap. I don't need a remake, just let me play it somehow
Games of that era are also just to big to easily pirate. A SNES ROM? Ezpz. But a full DVD game? Not without torrenting
7I think this is all you need nowadays, it’s one click install I think. https://www.moddb.com/mods/battle-for-middle-earth-patch-222/downloads/patch-222
Hell, I will give it a go myself tomorrow
10I played it quite recently I think the community has solved that problem, even online iirc it worked. Don’t remember the links though. It’s still fun and a good escape when warhammer gets stale.
I do remember it was bashed for drm on release though. I also remember these things called no-dvd cracks you pulled form the shady websites with disgusting porn ads to not have to have the disc in your drive at all times. Also avast antivirus shenanigans. I wouldn’t say it was good old times but it all had certain flavour though I probably wouldn’t want to go back in time haha.
Gaming is generally in an amazing place now with an exception of few things lost along the way one of which is aaa RTS and another early Bethesda rpg genre, they totally changed their games starting with oblivion.
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Oh yeah bfme is a real gem
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C&C was mainstream. Fuck you EA.
15Ages ago.
2
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.
10And 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.
6Can you recommend any that have good single player campaigns? I've no interest in competitive multiplayer
2
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.
6Have you tried the new one?
1Huh, 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.
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Permanently Deleted
5I don't think that is an accurate reading of what he is expressing. Crate (his company) is a smallish indie studio that makes high quality games (in my opinion) and supports them long term with both paid DLCs and free updates.
He made that statement when talking about Embracer Group that was looking to buy Crate. When he told them "we are currently working on an RTS" they said "Why don't you make something multi platform and a different genre instead?" (i.e. a cashgrab) to which his reply was "you can't buy my company, fuck off".
RTS are inherently limited to PC. RTS are not popular as eSports anymore. His company is making one not because they want a short term profit, but because he thinks they could make a great one for a niche target group that will stay loyal for a long time (e.g. their 2016 game Grim Dawn just got a massive free content update and a new story DLC in February this year).
23
Last year brought us Baldur's Gate 3.
In what way can "nerd things" not be mainstream?
5TIL that BG3 is an RTS. I thought it was just an MMO or a DotA/LoL predecessor.
-1Woosh
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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.
4Unless 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.
4Fair enough.
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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.
2I 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? 🤷🏻♂️
2Halo Wars made a dent. It had marketing.
5
Rts is mainstream, it's called dota and league.
2Those are bastard offspring of rts
21Those are not the kind of RTS I want to play...
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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?
1The 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. I think what's missing is the qualifier "will never be mainstream across all major continents again"
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Look at every mainstream game and youll easily see why RTS games could never go mainstream. They're all the same, like the wall of Buzz Lightyears in Toy Story. Over the shoulder camera, action adventure. Batman, God of War, Resident Evil, the list goes on. None of these were mainstream games until they all started looking and feeling the same.
-6This is demonstrably false. I mean, if "mainstream" means "successful to broad audiences", that'd be games with crafting/building elements (Forntite, Roblox, Minecraft, The Sims), sports games (FIFA) and a bunch of competitive games (League of Legends, CounterStrike, CoD). Plus a couple of outliers, too (Mario Kart, GTA V, Animal Crossing). Batman, God of War and RE do... fine? They do fine. But they're not the "mainstream" of the gaming industry, they are games for a specific slice of players, they would need 10x the reach to compete.
RE4 Remake sold what? 5-7 million units? Mario Kart was breaking 50 million last year. People don't have a grasp on what games are actually popular.
15Youre saying that RE4 remake sold the same number of copies as Anthem. So either Resident Evil, a franchise that is basically a household name since the 4th game with multiple movies, is not mainstream, or Anthem is? Resident Evil is equally as mainstream as Mario or Minecraft is, because becoming mainstream does not only depend on sales.
If someone who didnt play games saw you playing a certain game, would they think you were a nerd for playing that game? Generally, that is a good metric to measure what is mainstream or what isnt. People will look at a game like Stellaris and instantly think only a nerd would play it. And I mean, yeah, only a nerd would play Stellaris. But they wouldn't think that only a nerd would play Resident Evil, and they would probably be able to guess it was Resident Evil, despite themselves not playing video games.
Regardless, my point still remains that I agree with the CEO of Crate. RTS cannot be a mainstream genre without losing its core identity that makes the RTS genre different from other games.
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Other than the slightly similar camera angle - and emphasis on slight: those games have very different styles of camera - those are completely distinct games.
I get the idea that you're not a fan of those titles for their design choices which led to mainstream success, but holy crap give them an iota of credit.
3They're not dissimilar. Each of them before maybe 2016 had very different styles of camera and gameplay. Most notably, Resident Evil played nothing like God of War. They looked completely different and shared no similarity other than basic features such as being a video game, or requiring player input to move the player avatar. But now, they have the same camera, their control schemes are largely the same, and they both heavily focus on action and spectacle.
My point is that mainstream wants basically everything to be the same. Same controls, same camera, same graphic style. It's why an RTS could never work for mainstream. You can't have an RTS that gives you effective control without a top-down camera. You can't have an RTS that has action combat without slowing the game pace down to a literal crawl.
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