Electronic Arts (EA) is already preparing the Command & Conquer (C&C) franchise for the future vehicle for software proliferation: digital distribution. Kotaku, meanwhile, says that some fans are skeptical:
News of the transition was sending fears of a Facebook-ized, watered-down C&C among some series fans.
And yet C&C always was watered down, offering little more than eye-candy to recent sequels. The good news is that EA CEO John Riccitiello hopes to change that, and bring more innovation to the real-time strategy (RTS) genre.
“…I have a shared vision that the RTS category is due for fundamental innovation and not just cooler graphics,” Riccitiello said. “We’ve gotten to the point where you can see the particles around individual grenade explosions inside rooms where windows fall apart. That was never what made RTS good. That was just sort of eye candy on top of a very traditional game mechanic. From when Red Alert and Starcraft sort of defined the genre, it hasn’t moved.”
While Riccitiello’s take on RTS games mirrors our own, his seniority is at question when he uses Red Alert and Starcraft as examples of genre-defining games. In reality, predecessors Command & Conquer (yes, the original), Warcraft, and Warcraft II, solidified the genre that Dune II built. And really, nothing fundamental has changed since then, either. And that portends danger for developers not willing to let go of the tried-and-true method of simple throwing a new unit or two at a player each level, while making them rebuild from scratch on a new map. The repetitive play is what kills the genre in one game alone, let alone when looking at new RTS games.
“Some of what Facebook does, in terms of letting you collectively experience things, have not been stitched together by the game industry in terms of lessons learned there. You start applying that thinking to a C&C franchise you get something pretty special.”
This is where Riccitiello’s price as CEO may be worth it, because at least Riccitiello is looking at some aspects of what make Facebook games, and MMOGs, so alluring. If RTS games are meant to illustrate a greater struggle, then the thousands of players participating in battlefield combat should be able to assist one another, participate in local battles, and change the tide of war one small step at a time. In many ways, this mirrors the idea of Warhammer Online’s Realm vs. Realm PvP scenario, but at a less granular level.
If there’s a clear disadvantage for one player to effectively handle a large army, compared to many players handling less units at a more focused level, then new aspects in RTS titles emerge: buildings alliances, strategies, and resource flows become important. And ultimately, the complexity of individual units can grow, because with less units, players have the ability to use more unit abilities in order to create battlefield synergy, whereas in purely single-player games, players must first be concerned with amassing large armies and rushing the enemy head-on.
Adopting certain key aspects of social and multiplayer games can be a good thing for the RTS genre, as long as it’s done right and with the intent to grow the genre “up,” rather than “out.” That is to say, adopting the wrong aspects of social games will result in a watered-down RTS experience that may be more accessible to non-gamers, but at the expense of the RTS faithful. Maintaining the complexity of strategy and risk-taking, however, and adding on top of this formula a perpetual battlefront that all players share, will only satiate RTS gamers more.
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