Mostly, I hate the entire idea of dividing games by how time moves. There are better ways to understand game design than whether or not you have time to make a sandwich before you are overrun with Cossacks.
But then Tom Chick writes:
Real-Time Strategy Games are survived by its oldest son, Empire: Total War, which wants nothing to do with its bratty younger brothers.
The Total War games do not belong on the RTS family tree properly understood. The are descended from a shotgun wedding between Civilization and Risk, and are more appropriately seen in the Lord of the Realms branch of strategy game design. Adding a real time wargame to a turn based strategy skeleton doesn’t make it an RTS any more than giving experience points to units in Civ IV makes it an RPG. Resource collection, unit building, upgrading structures – all this is done in the turn based part of the Total War.
A good weekend project would be a diagram showing the strategy family tree. Anyone up for it?
How time moves is an important matter to me. I can understand why it might loom large in how the genre is divided. I prefer time to reflect on strategy, while I am perfectly happy to handle tactics in real time. That is why I like the Total War series so much. It allows me to do just that. If a game is identified as an RTS, I assume that the strategy and tactics will be combined on the same level.
Having said that, I would take issue with Tom Chick describing Total War as an RTS since the strategy part is actually turn-based.
I’d be curious where the guys at Creative Assembly would fall on this issue. I’m guessing they’re be totally comfortable characterizing the Total series as RTS.
Just because you have a strategic wrapper doesn’t change the fact that the central gameplay concept is managing soldier during real time battles. If you’re going to argue that it doesn’t qualify because the strategy part is turn-based, you’re going to then have to explain to me what you could call Rise of Nations and Legends, Universe at War, EndWar, Warlords Battlecries II and III, and Battle for Middle Earth II, all of which have turn-based strategy parts. :)
Hey, I never said this was easy. But I do think that putting the Total War games into the Age of Empires bucket makes no sense since it is really nothing like those games at all. Plus, I can win a Total War campaign spending 80% of my time in turns. I don’t want this to be a an issue of punching a time card, but that proportion should be lower.
The main gameplay mechanics of Rise of Nations and all the rest take place in real time. For those games, the turn based stuff is really a sideshow for traditional harvesting and fighting.
If you fight a battle in the RoN Conquer the World mode, you will build soldiers and cut wood just as you would in a random skirmish game. The battles in Total War really aren’t like that, and are much more optional in the strategic layout than the real time encounters you find in Dawn of War: Soulstorm, Empire Earth III or Battle for Middle Earth II.
As I said, I’d rather be rid of the whole real time/turn based thing altogether. After all, Civ has more in common with EU than it does Risk, and EU more in common with Total War than it does Starcraft. Over on Qt3, I threw out the phrase “action strategy” and I think that is really what the harvest and conquer games are all about. When I write my book, I’ll use that term.
Oh, I’m well aware of the difference among various strategic wrappers, but the strategic wrapper was your criterion, not mine. Now you’re insisting it’s the *size* of the wrapper.
It seems to me your objection is entirely arbitrary. The kernel of the Total War games is the real time battles. That makes them very much a part of the RTS genre and I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that’s exactly as the guys at Creative Assembly intend.
RTS is a big umbrella. If you’re going to single out particular titles and insist they don’t belong for this reason or that reason, you’re going to be very busy. Surrender, Troy!
Even if you accept that the kernel of the TW series is the battle engine – something I am willing to concede at least from a marketing and spectacle perspective – here there is little of the stuff that I consider part and parcel of the RTS experience. Units are not built in real time. Forces are not assembled in real time. There is no time pressure in the management of multiple strategic aspects – only the usual wargame tactical stuff. Those skills and mechanics that make the traditional RTS such an attractive and thrilling design are nowhere in the battle engine.
If your criterion for an RTS is a strategic game that has some real time elements, then fine, paint with a broad brush. That’s your prerogative as it is mine to insist on some sort of line.
You’ll end up comparing such apples and oranges that an obituary for the genre becomes impossible. Whereas I’ll just end up alone with a caliper for measuring who is more real time than whom.
Surrender to Action Strategy!
The computer gaming world would be a lot better off if all these classification terms were thrown out to prevent all the semantic debates.
It’s interesting how in the tabletop world genres are defined with a broad brush, with maybe a sublevel or two added on (e.g. it’s a grand strategy wargame as opposed to a tactical wargame), but for the most part people don’t care what the game is classified as, yet in the world of computer gamers what type of game it is can lead to flame wars to end all flame wars.
Yeah, this is semantic, but if you are going to say a genre is dead than you need to know what is what.
And genres do matter for marketing and expectation purposes. Romantic comedies, mystery novels, technopop…games are different of course.
In the table top world, you do get debates. Is this an auction game or not? What makes a card driven game a card driven game? These debates center on mechanics and how important they are to achieving victory.
Most people really don’t care, I’m sure, just as I am the only language purist in the strategy world.
I’m with Troy on this one :)
I think the main difference between, say, Age of Empires and TW isn’t the turn based element, but the lack of resource collection/unit building during the real time element. I am with Tom in that the main component of TW is the real time element. But, I am with Troy that it is a very different game from a traditional 4X RTS like Age.
“The computer gaming world would be a lot better off if all these classification terms were thrown out to prevent all the semantic debates.”
Why? Then a lot of game blogging wouldn’t exist! Just because none of this really matters doesn’t mean people don’t enjoy talking about it.
“Now you’re insisting it’s the *size* of the wrapper. It seems to me your objection is entirely arbitrary.”
His objection is his objection. If he wants to create an arbitrary system and defend it, that seems fine to me. FPS games involves the collection of resources (ammo and health!) while playing the game in real time. And to win you have to use a lot of strategery. If someone wrote an article saying that FPS games should be called something else for this and that arbitrary reason, I bet he or she would get paid for it, which is my arbitrary criterion for an article being legitimate.
Did Bruce just come in here with an “It is what it is” comment? Because that’s just like him.
Troy, Creative Assembly’s Total War games have been classified as real time strategy games since their inception. You’re the outlier for insisting they don’t belong, and you’re even running counter to what the developers themselves intend. You’re of course welcome to make your case — It is what it is — but have fun being the voice crying out in the wilderness. For once, I have The Establishment on my side. I refer you to It if you have any complaints. :)
“Action Strategy”? I’m not done with “Real Time Tactical” yet!
If Total War games are classified as RTS, is Star Control 2 an arcade-style action game? I wouldn disagree. Is Xcom a turn-based tactics game, despite the fact that the player will spend a great deal of time in the geosphere and base management portions of the game?
The simple fact of the matter is that there are 2 different games linked to each other in the Total War series. One is turn-based, and one is real-time.
I will never understand the obsession with trying to squeeze every game into existing genre classifications. It must be a game reviewer thing.
The broad game classifications I find to be terribly annoying. Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron are usually classed “Real Time Strategy”, but they have so very gameplay style little in common with C&C or Empire Earth etc, the more standard RTS torchbearers. Our Supreme Ruler 2010 and SR2020 games are also labeled RTS, again with very little in common with the 4X style of game that is generally associated with the term.
The moniker “Strategy” alone is even worse, for example as used in some of the “Best of” awards recently doled out by the unimaginative press. Games like EU and SR2020 often find themselves in the same basic categories as “strategy shooters”, basic RTS games, RPGs, and wargames – very strange bedfellows indeed.
“so very gameplay style little in common” should be “so very little gameplay style in common”
And I probably should have thought of a better term than “gameplay style”, but you get the point.
The RTS and turn-based strategy labels are useful for the majority of gamers – useful, in the sense of being quick guides to what to expect. I find definitions interesting to read about but I’m ok with the rather broad categorizations as they are. I’d say the Total War games are turn-based because the majority of my “thinking time” is on the turn-based side but if someone’s more interested in going from battle to battle, then it may be he consider’s it an RTS.
Agree with the above. This is not splitting hairs. Saying it’s about ‘semantics’ does nothing to close the debate: there’s informational advantage in a terse term like ‘action strategy’. However, it would be interesting to learn what Troy would call a straight TBS like Armageddon Empires (thought strategy?)
At this point, it seems reasonable to make a distinction between the terms “real time strategy” and “RTS.” The first is a generic gameplay descriptor. The second, even though it’s derived from the first, carries with it a host of other connotations about the gameplay model.
“At this point, it seems reasonable to make a distinction between the terms “real time strategy” and “RTS.””
This might seem reasonable to those inside the industry, but I’m not sure average gamers would understand this.
“I’d be curious where the guys at Creative Assembly would fall on this issue. I’m guessing they’re be totally comfortable characterizing the Total series as RTS.”
I’m sure they are very happy with the “RTS” label. Not only do they likely consider it accurate, but it has much more marketing cachet these days than the turn-based games played by old guys like me. When I play, however, I enjoy the strategy layer every bit as much as the battles that punctuate my inexorable conquest.
“… you’re going to then have to explain to me what you could call Rise of Nations and Legends, Universe at War, EndWar, Warlords Battlecries II and III, and Battle for Middle Earth II….”
I would call them “games I have not played.” :) They were marketed as RTSs, and as I have limited time to play games, I didn’t pay much attention to them. I just don’t enjoy games that insist on tactical decisions while I”m trying to manage my production, economy, etc., so I own only a few RTSs and rarely play those. No matter how much they might streamline interfaces or how many build orders I might memorize (the opposite of strategy to me), it could never give me the pleasure of sitting back in my chair and considering which general to make King of Jerusalem.
The TW games are RTS games. Just because they are manageable, slowly moving, regiment/company based RTS games shouldn’t cause the series to lose the classification as an RTS game. BTW I really like typing “RTS game”.
It’s a genre. You can call it a hybrid or a “realistic” RTS game or even a fast paced wargame but the basic idea of dudes moving around a battlefield killing each other in real time is most certainly there. Myth was an RTS game, but it was nothing like WarCraft.
I guess I don’t see what the big deal is.
“the basic idea of dudes moving around a battlefield killing each other in real time”
I have always understood the basic idea to be that this happens while the player must also build bases, produce units, and gather resources on the same map. Total War games place all those activities in the turn-based part. I realized that RTS games are in the process of stripping out a number of those activities and focusing on just the combat. I realized that WCIII did this to provide variety, but the big missions still involved the more traditional gameplay. Not only does removing these elements mean abandoning a number of things that TW still includes (on the strategy map), but in the process, it seems they are becoming something else.
Again, Bungie’s Myth didn’t have any base building. Hell you didn’t even build units if I recall. You had your guys for the mission and off you went. Did anyone ever call that anything but a real time strategy game? And that was what …1998?
Wouldn’t E:TW be the youngest sibling in this analogy, in comparison to its brethren in the RTS genre? Unless of course, we are using the Benjamin Button aging process.
Commentors have highlighted that on the whole, RTS, accurate or not, has been a term to describe a wide range of games, and the TW series is essentially a sub-genre of it. I agree with Tom, that from a marketing perspective (which from the way I read it, is the crux of his argument), advertising TW as an RTS is advatageous in that it appeals to the same group of consumers that purchased/played AOE, C+C, Starcraft, RON, etc.
Troy’s argument, which is a fabulous one to explore, is a macro argument (I think Tom’s falls under the micro level)
So yeah, I’ve been calling Myth a “Real Time Tactical” game for the last ten years–the term still hasn’t caught on. At least “tactical shooter” seems to have gained some traction, but I digress.
I wonder when Pong came out did anyone refer to it as a real time tactical paddle simulator, or were they content to just call it a video game?
Ah, the good ol’ days when video games were just video games…
“Again, Bungie’s Myth didn’t have any base building. Hell you didn’t even build units if I recall. You had your guys for the mission and off you went. Did anyone ever call that anything but a real time strategy game? And that was what …1998?”
It lacked the main map that the TW series features, though, which makes it the delicious hybrid of Civ-style and RTS-style gaming.
I just got back into Supreme Commander, playing the campaign with the mindset of a TW commander.
I took great joy in ignoring the urgent calls to “review my objectives.”
Shut up – I know I have to blow up the enemy robots, but first I’m going to assemble a massive shock and awe force that smacks right into the unit cap.
And why the heck does the Cybran leader and every second sentence with “Oh yes.”???
It’s so creepy.
So in conclusion, TW is definitely a delicious hybrid in reality. Marketing people will call it whatever they want, but if you’re smart, you know that “Hybrids” are totally the “in” thing these days.