Is there a market for old-fashioned RTS games?

d000hg · 2014-01-21T14:51:16

I came across my ancient 4E4 entry yesterday and it resurrected my interest in creating a top-down, classic RTS in the vein of Warcraft II, C&C:Red Alert, Total Annihilation, etc (because that's what my 4E4 entry was). I don't play many games these days but I always wanted to create a game like this, to add the features I missed as a player. These games were the last RTS I played in a big way and I know things moved on a lot, but to me this was a classic era. Do others see it that way? So anyway a question to the indie people here mainly, but also to game players who are more in touch with trends and what's popular - is there a market for a game such as I describe? Would it have to be ground-breaking in other ways, or like Diner Dash games is there a market for Yet Another RTS? I see that RTS isn't really a casual game genre, you have to invest time, it's also not the kind of game you can sell for $2 in my opinion. I was also wondering about iPad, it seems to me a classic RTS would transfer reasonably well to touch-screen. All thoughts welcome :)

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Started by d000hg January 14, 2014 09:25 AM

32 comments, last by d000hg 10 years, 3 months ago

d000hg

1,208

Author

January 20, 2014 10:20 AM

I have to respectfully disagree with you on that. I would personally be put off playing an older game since low-res, pixelated graphics annoy me, but I know enough not to base my decision on that since lots of people love playing games from their younger days. However, games like C&C & WC2 are nearly twenty years old (holy crap how did THAT happen?!) This means that not only are there game players today who weren't playing games when WC2 was released, there are people who weren't even born when these games were already retro classics :) If those game aren't being marketed and sold anymore, people have to go out of their way to find they exist and then find an old copy floating around, and get it to run somehow.

I actually think something like WC2 re-released with token polish as a cheap RTS could sell. Not topping any lists, but of course we're not trying to be a best-seller - a few thousand sales is wonderful.

Anyway, that's my opinion, I'm happy to agree to disagree. I don't plan to make a total clone, my motivation is to make an RTS which I want to play, but my thoughts are more incremental than massive genre redefinitions. Well - I have much bigger plans for a half-dozen RTS games, but making a "bog standard one" would seem a better bet first.

Ravyne

14,306

January 20, 2014 08:17 PM

My point is not necessarily that you have to capital-I "Innovate", and certainly not just for the sake of innovating -- Its more that I think one needs to go into an endeavor like this with an open attitude about what might really need to change for the better, not just superficial things, but more central things as well. And not just things that might really need to change, but also things that might be changed to make a game that's substantially different than what's come before it but still capture the essence of the games that inspire it. Challenge the assumptions; if the assumptions are true, let them stand, but you can't know without first asking the question.

If you're making a game to scratch your own nostalgia, then fine, accept that it will have limited appeal to yourself and others who are similarly nostalgic. But nostalgia itself cannot appeal to new players -- if the mechanics you remember fondly are strong they will appeal to new players, but if they appear limited or outdated to anyone who lacks the reference point of the original games, they won't -- younger gamers today grew up with different expectations. Their generation views NES games not much differently than I view Pong or early Atari games -- that is, not very appealing from a player's standpoint, and not from an aesthetics standpoint alone, although that's part of it--because the scope of what I'm accustomed to being able to do in a modern game is so much different than the scope of those older games.

You also have to be aware of what the competitive landscape is today -- there may not be any WC2-likes on the market (I think, more likely, there are and they simply go unloved for the reasons I mention) but there certainly are 10s of small-to-medium-sized games that fit into the RTS umbrella genre, most of which are reasonably polished and are free, freemium, or inexpensive to buy. Regardless of whether any other offerings compete in however narrowly a niche you'd like to carve out, you're still competing for those same eyeballs and dollars. That's why I'm saying that its more important to create a great game than to hold unflinchingly to the tropes of the past.

throw table_exception("(? ???)? ? ???");

ambershee

532

January 21, 2014 09:48 AM

They were the last big games before everyone went 3D, so they run in 640x480 or something like that which puts many people off, myself included. I reckon a spruced up Red Alert would still be fun, sort of like they did with Dune2000.

I'd actually like to jump in and point out that because they weren't 3D,they have actually aged much better. The Command and Conquer games will happily run at whatever resolution you give them, you just see more of the playable area because it's sprite based and isn't scaled. Playing at 1920x1080 is perfectly viable, though you'll have a good portion of the playable area visible at a time (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!)

d000hg

1,208

Author

January 21, 2014 02:51 PM

They were the last big games before everyone went 3D, so they run in 640x480 or something like that which puts many people off, myself included. I reckon a spruced up Red Alert would still be fun, sort of like they did with Dune2000.

I'd actually like to jump in and point out that because they weren't 3D,they have actually aged much better. The Command and Conquer games will happily run at whatever resolution you give them, you just see more of the playable area because it's sprite based and isn't scaled. Playing at 1920x1080 is perfectly viable, though you'll have a good portion of the playable area visible at a time (which isn't necessarily a bad thing!)

I don't mean that 3D is the issue, just the resolution. Most of those games do not let you change resolution IIRC, certainly not all anyway. Back in the days those games were current, you could level the same complaint about Dune2 which ran at 320x240 or something equally awful.

I found most of the early 3D RTS games were pretty terrible, with the exception of Total Annihilation, which was basically a classic RTS with 3D graphics rather than a "3D RTS".

Is there a market for old-fashioned RTS games?

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