A Blast from the Past... on real-time strategy clones, "me-to" developers, and Fashion Designer Barbie

Real Innovation

By Mark H. Walker

I’m writing this a scant couple of weeks after the auditory cacophony known as E3. No doubt you've read about the greatness that is the Staples Center, scantily clad and heavily makeup-ed models (who know nothing about the games they're pimping), and all the gee-whiz, super-polygon, over-under bitmapped technology that woos us all. It was pretty cool, but it was also disappointing.

Cool that the industry is doing so well, cool that despite the power of the latest generation of consoles, PC gaming is alive and kicking, but disappointing in the lack of strategy and war game innovation that I saw. Like I've said before, personal computers do war and strategy gaming much better than consoles (but perhaps not as well as the iPad -Mark circa 2013). So, if PC gaming is to thrive, war and strategy gaming is one area that must grow. There’s evidence of that, especially in European based publishers. CDV and 1C focus —almost exclusively— on war and strategy gaming. And Ubisoft, although certainly not a major strategy publisher, does include a healthy dose of realistic shooters, such as Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, and Splinter Cell, in its arsenal of games. No, it’s not the amount of war and strategy games that disappoints me, but rather the type.

Let me explain.

If I saw one real-time World War II based strategy game at E3, I saw a hundred (okay, maybe just ten). I’m not going to name names because it isn't a publisher specific glut (actually I didn't name names because the magazine's editor wouldn't let me -Mark circa 2013), but rather an industry wide epidemic. There were real-time WW2 games with color coded Shermans, real-time WW2 games with semi-realistic gun penetration and armor values (who cares?), real-time WW2 games with Eliza Dushku (i.e. killer) graphics, and real-time WW2 games with Call of Duty style cinematics.

Each producer, developer, or public relations guy or gal wanted to impress on the press just how incredibly different THEIR real-time strategy World War 2 games was. “See, we put a .50 machine gun on the Sherman,” or “Look, this technology lets us stuff four gillion polygons into this soldier’s butt —I mean the animation of his butt, people. But they all looked the same to me. The games, not the soldier’s butts.

But you want real innovation? I want to see a publisher take their Eliza Dushku graphics, realistic armor and penetration, and Call of Duty cinematics, and make the definitive, drop dead fun TURN-BASED strategy game. It could be done, and it could sell. But you’ll never know till you try. Who wants to give it a shot?

I wrote this piece for PCGamer in June of 2005. Interesting how it still applies today. It's also interesting how Sid Meier and Firaxis did put Eliza Dushku-level graphics in a turn-based strategy game. It worked out pretty well for them. The game is X-Com: Enemy Unknown. By the way, in June of 2005 I was playing Domination, Silent Storm, Chaos Gate, Flashpoint Germany, and Fashion Designer Barbie.