Real-Time Boredom
I usually don’t dive into a computer game and play it through to the bitter end. In order for that to happen, a game must be a chameleon, constantly changing and offering me new and challenging game play. And Dune II had that in spades. I still recall with great fondness the time I first started playing it. This wonderful game mechanic called “real-time strategy” was a fascinating new genre for computer games, and it kept my officemate and I engrossed way beyond our normal lunch hour. What a grand feeling of accomplishment we had when we finally finished the last storyline of the third house (Dune II let you play three of the factions found in the book - Houses Atreides, Harkonnen and Ordos)!
Dune II was probably the only game to both create a genre and exhaust its possibilities. It had every archetype for your prototypical RTS game:
- Resource gathering (harvest that spice, boys!)
- Tech trees
- Base and unit construction
- Special mouse UI for selecting and grouping units
It also laid the groundwork for your basic RTS strategy:
- Gather as many resources as you can
- Build up some defense to fend off the opponent’s early excursions into your territory
- Research as fast as you can, to…
- Build units as fast as you can, to…
- Amass a grand army to send a tidal wave of force against your hopelessly outgunned opponent
And we played it through, puzzling out each unit, trying to find the optimal spot for defensive emplacements, and how to concentrate our forces. It was a breath of fresh air in computer gaming.
And there it should have stopped, as Dune II, in 1992, created, defined, and exhausted an entire computer gaming niche. Instead, the real-time “strategy” genre exploded into the behemoth it still is today. Four of the top 15 games on Gamespot’s PC Top Rated Games from the last six months are real-time “strategy” games - Star Wars: Empire at War, Rome: Total War Alexander, Take Command: 2nd Manssas, and The Lord Of The Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II. And I simply do not understand it.
I just spent the past couple of days trying out some of the more highly rated RTS games from the past few years, just to see if things really have changed. I played some Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Act Of War, and even Warzone 2100, only to find the game play as stale as it ever was in other classics of the genre I’ve tried like Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command and Conquer. You still have pretty much the same game structure, followed by pretty much the same strategy as you had in the first RTS. They look a lot prettier, and have some advanced UI components (like grouping, waypoints and the like), but still in the end, it all boils down to building up a huge army to crush your hapless computer (or human) opponent. Been there, done that, have already thrown away the t-shirt.
There’s only been a few interesting twists on the formula that I have run across in the fifteen years since I first played Dune II, but even those haven’t been strong enough to overcome the feeling of déjà vu all over again.
* Battlezone put you in the thick of the action, and really made it feel more like you were an involved commander rather than some god-like figure telling your loyal subjects where to go and what to do. It was fun driving the various vehicles and the UI was easy and yes, even realistic. And so I made it about halfway through the game before the RTS ennui set in and I gave up.
* Dungeon Keeper did for RTS games what Wizardy 4: Return of Werdna did for that seminal RPG series - put you in the shoes of the evil side. It also added cool traps to put down and the ability to play as one of your loyal subjects. This was fun for about 1/3 of the game and then the “Oh yeah, this is an RTS after all” feeling set in and I moved on.
I’ll give Act of War some points for feeling different, but maybe that is only because I haven’t really played any other of the realistic ones set in the current time. It seemed to tell a pretty interesting story, but by the time I got to the fifth or sixth mission, any new joy I got from it was washed away in the tidal wave of stale gameplay.
I love how reviewers of these games stretch to find new stuff to applaud, yet in the end even the most rapturous of reviews admits the main strategy is to amass a honkin’ big army and squash the opponent, clicking as fast as you can to build up resources and troops. How many different ways can you do that?
My advice is to pick one of the RTS games, play it for awhile and then just move on from the genre. The whole set of RTS games reeks of the worst kind of “me-too”ism, copy cats of a game written before many of these designers stopped playing Candyland. I guess I can understand the jaded music reviewer, who hears the same rhythms a million times and writes a lone cry in the wilderness against it, realizing that new ears think it is the greatest thing since ABBA As for me, it will take a few years before I can get over the icky feeling of playing the same game for fifteen years and try out the latest RTS star, only to run away in horror yet again.
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29. July 2006 at 22:35
I have many fond memories of the Battlezone remake. That game was way before its time.
31. July 2006 at 03:55
I love your musing!
I think that people like playing “more of the same”. If they like something, the often want more, and it isn’t limited to games. Thats why we had about 5 superman movies before they came out with the latest sequel. Or game related: why we have uncountable mega-man games.
2. August 2006 at 15:04
Two comments, first, you seem to have completely left out the single reason that the triple A RTS genre contains some of the most repayable games ever created. Because the RTS rule sets are so complex and unpredictable, new multiplayer StarCraft strategies still emerge to this day. I would argue that the single player portions of any given triple A RTS game are merely the tip of the iceberg in play. Sure, an AI player doesn’t make any mistakes, but it also doesn’t have any new ideas. Complex strategies and other human elements like intimidation, feinting, or misdirection become absolutely essential in the multiplayer RTS. Like chess, skill sets between players vary hugely, and a partner that compliments your strengths and weaknesses is becomes essential in 2v2 play, adding yet another layer of complexity. Also, I challenge anyone to find a video game that can go head-to-head with StarCraft for total all-time hours played :)
My second comment has to do with genre itself, since we have been fascinated with genre as a species since the invention of the entertainment medium and the memorization of vast epic storypoems like Beowulf. We’ve always created a story type and then copied it thousands of times. You could even argue that the original epic story poem form survives today in the form of movie trilogies :) We see this type of genre based art everywhere: television, music, painting, and written fiction. Each genre across every medium has its own language of symbol and metaphor that comes with it allowing simultaneously for compression of storyline and familiarity of experience. Consequently, it makes sense that this ancient tradition has appeared in the most recent form of story-telling, games. This is why you keep seeing the same RTS gameplay (with slight variation) attached to thematically different stories. Expect more RTSes. New genres are quite rare in artistic history and most are brought about by the invention of entirely new artistic mediums.
3. August 2006 at 09:38
You say RTS’ have complex and unpredictable rule sets. That may be so, but my problem is that, in the end, the One True Strategy always works - build fast and send out waves. There might be fancy trappings to it, but it still boils down to exactly the same game play.
Sure, the games in the genre tell different stories, but if the game play is the same, it’s still boring. I come to a computer game not expecting stellar story telling as much as an entertaining few hours. And that’s a good thing, because storytelling isn’t usually a strong point of a computer game.
3. August 2006 at 10:48
Apparently you’ve never experienced the SCV rush of StarCraft or the self cannibalizing ghoul rush back in the early days of Warcraft 3. That was just my point that with the human opponent there is no One True Strategy. Playing against an AI, yes, the waves of units will always win, but I hope you don’t try that one on me ;) In StarCraft for instance, you better be thinking in terms of terrain height advantage, potential choke points, ambush spots, supply line logistics, cloaked units, pincher attacks, unit counters, diversions, feints, and plain ole turtling if wanna make it past a 1000 ladder score :)
13. August 2006 at 20:25
I suppose our best strategy might be to hope that upcoming games like Supreme Commander give us the options we so desperately crave.
Total Annihilation was always the game to play for me. It had everything. You could pump out dozens of units, and it would work for a time, but once you’re figured out, you’d start to hit Dragon’s Teeth. (Constructable obstacles). These would slow you while longer range weapons picked away at you.
You could catch enemies coming out of choke points, and smash into them with two different forces, or leave mines and static weapons to slow them up.
Resources were infinite, so there wasn’t the ‘OMG I’ve got to gather everything I can before it’s gone so they won’t get it’ kind of thing. The game mainly focuses on not leaving the enemies production alone. Lesser mines were fantastic targets, because they were often far flung, and if you knew in advance which were choice targets, you could hit those that were producing more than others, and starve his production. There were only two resources, and while you could convert energy into metal it was costly, and not viable.
I rarely consider StarCraft to be a good Strategy, but the DA, or Siege Tank Pull is fun. Find a choke point with cliffs, and either pick up opposing SCV’s, or have a team mate send you some Siege tanks. Use a pair of arbiters to cloak the tanks in Siege mode. Defend as you will, but only defend the choke point with marines, or a couple of Zealots. Let the enemy slaught all but one or two, and back the rest in. As the enemy comes in the Siege tanks open fire. Make sure you stasis field any detectors, Or your siege tanks will die.
22. October 2006 at 22:22
I know what you mean - the games all boil down to the same mechanics. But the idea of controlling a huge Star Wars fleet, or a Lord of the Rings army is just too compelling to turn away from!