Unfettered Blather

I don’t like games where I am not in complete control. This probably says a lot about me as a person. Your psychoanalysis may go into the comments.

Not being in complete control means there are two types of game that do not appeal to me. Real-Time Strategy and Tactical Squad Based Shooters. Having said I do not like two genres that have exploded in popularity over the last decade is a bit like picking a fight by saying I slept with your mom. For some reason saying I do not like something is taken as critcism by those that do like what I dislike. I would probably get less grief for walking into a synagouge sporting a little Hitler-esque moustache and a swastika.

I’m trying to get Godwin’s law out of the way early.

I’ve made my position clear and I hope you understand that what follows is entirely personal and not an attack on a genre. I’m not attacking your faith, your politics, and sure as hell not your game playing habits. I understand that for some all three of those are the same thing and that I will be treading on hallowed ground. I will try my best not to urinate on the altar, but I make no promises.

Real-Time Strategy, heretofore referred to as “RTS”, has never quite meshed with me. The first RTS game I played was Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Revenge, a follow-up to a turn-based strategy/RPG game Battletech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception. The original game was a more or less faithful interpretation of standard Battletech Rules but had a very limited selection of robots, almost all of them being in the “Light” category. The sequel boasted just about every robot that FASA games had designed up to that point but the real-time system made it nothing like the experience I was looking for. In fact, my impression of the game is that my pilots would happily sit there and be slain by enemy fire if I did not tell them to shoot back. I have experienced a variation on this theme with every RTS I’ve ever played. AI units have generally gotten better, most contemporary games will have them do something if fired upon, but for the most part I am supposed to tell them how to do every little thing.

“Wait a minute!” you cry out “I thought you said you like being in control!” Well, I do, but RTS games are largely about the illusion of control. RTS games are really about strategy while the computer takes care of combat for you. Soldiers die and tanks are demolished, but so long as you protect your resources and churn out more and better units than the enemy you win. Infantry tactics are handled by the computer. Formations are largely handled by the computer. A lot of things are handled by the computer because in real-time you simply cannot give 20 individual orders to a platoon of infantry. Also, many games interpret your commands as mere suggestions and I don’t even want to get into pathfinding so I’ll just say it’s usually about as robust as a child’s bicycle assembled by me at 3am Christmas morning.

Tactical Squad Based Shooters generally have the same problem. Nearly all Tactical Squad Based Shooters, which have no common acronym that I’m aware of so will now be called TacShoots to save me some typing, feature commandoes, counter-terrorists, SWAT teams, or some variation on the elite heavily armed badass. Why someone felt the need to mix it up with First-Person Shooters, or FPS from now on because I’m really not continuing to type that over and over again either, to include teammates you control I’m not sure of. I guess it would be fine if they did anything worthwhile but most of the time they stand idly by while a terrorist unloads a machinegun in my face.

While TacShoots have indeed gotten better over the years they have by no means addressed some major issues. Issues like why is it my elite team members can’t hit the broad side of a 747 while all terrorists were apparently on an Olympic sharpshooting team? Also, I’d like to know how my team mates were selected for an elite team of badasses if they have so many insubordination issues. The tutorials and manuals should not say I give them orders, it should be I give them suggestions. That way when I tell them to do something it will not be a shock that the team has met in committee behind my back, reached a consensus, and decided that maybe my course of action is not best for the group. Summary executions should not result in mission failure.

I’m also going to point out that a lot of TacShoots like to claim they’re more interested in “realism”. I don’t know what “realism” means to these developers. I am trying to figure out which organization in the world is so criminally incompetent that they would send in a squad of troops to combat about a battalion of bad guys. For added realism, they need to make sure that everyone in charge after the mission is over is fired, arrested, or fragged. See, I wouldn’t mind “realism” so much if it were fun. “Realism” is usually interpreted as “I can punish the players mercilessly and then just say I’m making the game realistic! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Length and volume of evil laughter may vary.

All that said, none of it was my point. Gotcha! I’m not really biased. I already have religion, so I feel pretty agnostic to everything else. Especially gaming. When I find a game like the Warhammer 40,000 Dawn of War series or Rainbow Six Vegas 2, I am quietly surprised. I love that someone has made a RTS or TacShoot that is so good that even someone who doesn’t like those genres will still want to play them. Although these games still suffer from the problems I previously described, they are good in spite of them. To be honest, part of what makes them so good is the developers seem to understand the common problems and at least tried to minimize them.

Every game type will have in built limitations. Over time we’ll find ways to overcome them. I like it when developers don’t just succumb to the weaknesses of their genre. There is a podcast featuring one of the Ironclad employees who helped make Sins of a Solar Empire. He discusses the issues with pacing an RTS of that scale and how important it was to them to get it just right. They understand how frustrating this aspect is to people who don’t play RTS. People who don’t like a genre could represent a lot of potential dollars if you start to addresses the problems of your genre. Games should be evolving, not stagnating. There is no game that isn’t potentially mass market, only developers without imagination.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.