Rush, Boom, Turtle: Real-Time Strategy Games, 1989-2009
Real-time strategy games are dead. Long live real-time strategy games.
2/10/2009 6:29 PM | 10 Comments | Page 1 of 2
Real-Time Strategy Games passed away on Jan. 29, 2009 at the age of 20. The genre resided on the personal computer, but occasionally traveled to console systems for business purposes. Its death was brought about by a shift in the market over recent years. It breathed its last when Ensemble posted
their goodbye with the four words "good luck, have fun" after a long bout with console game development.
That was then...
RTSes, as they were known by their friends, were born in Japan in 1989 on the Sega Genesis under the name
Herzog Zwei. They traveled to the United States, shedding their Japanese heritage and German name to become a thoroughly American institution. After an unlikely success as the sequel to an adventure game based on Frank Herbert's Dune novels (seriously, how did that happen?), they enjoyed an early career as a niche genre in a time when all genres were niche. From there, they ultimately became more successful than flight simulators, but not quite as successful as shooters. Much of their mid-career success was due to Blizzard's
Warcraft, which left Real-Time Strategy Games for Massively-Multiplayer Online Games in 2004.
The genre was married many times, briefly to Role-Playing Games (who could forget the whirlwind romance of the Warlords Battlecry games?), sometimes to history (Age of Empires was nothing if not historic and historical), but most often to fantasy and science fiction, which involved a lot of spell powers and tactical fussiness known as "gameplay" or, to later generations, "micromanagement".
There were a few unstable relationships with European designs like Cossacks and others with titles involving World War II battles, and even a dalliance in China called Militarism and one in Brazil called Outlive. We don't talk about those. Suffice it to say, the genre certainly got around. At the height of its popularity, you could even say it was loose. You wouldn't be out of line to call it a cheap hussy.
...this is now.
But after this period of disrepute, Real-Time Strategy Games had recently begun to serve their community in new ways. They will be remembered for the map view in
Supreme Commander and the dual maps in
Dragonshard; the atmosphere and spectacle in
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II and
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War; the bold, imaginative design in
Rise of Nations and
Rise of Legends; the fun-loving, life-of-the-party Command & Conquer series or the justice finally done World War II in Company of Heroes. The genre's most recent marriage was to Action Games, and the result is a large thriving family left behind.
Real-Time Strategy Games are survived by its oldest son,
Empire: Total War, which wants nothing to do with its bratty younger brothers. They include
Dawn of War II,
EndWar, Multiwinia,
Halo Wars,
Red Alert 3 and Stormrise -- some of whom may be bastard offspring, but all of whom hope to carry on the family business, which will proceed with simple peon-less economies, matches that take less than 30 minutes, and plenty of tactical mucking around that would make their father roll over in his grave (speaking of which, many of Real-Time Strategy Games' closest friends hope it will claw itself out of the grave with the release of
StarCraft II).
Services will be held on Ensemble Online, where
Age of Empires III still totally rocks.
