In an interview with MCVUK, Christoph Hartmann, the president of 2K Studios, was asked about why X-Com was being turned into a first person shooter, instead of using the IP as God intended – a tactical strategy game.

The ‘90s generation of gamers all love Xcom and we own the IP, so we thought OK, what do we do with it? Every studio we had wanted to do it and each one had its own spin on it. But the problem was that turn-based strategy games were no longer the hottest thing on planet Earth. But this is not just a commercial thing – strategy games are just not contemporary.

I use the example of music artists. Look at someone old school like Ray Charles, if he would make music today it would still be Ray Charles but he would probably do it more in the style of Kanye West. Bringing Ray Charles back is all fine and good, but it just needs to move on, although the core essence will still be the same.

That’s what we are trying to do. To renew Xcom but in line with what this generation of gamers want. The team behind it is asking themselves every day: ‘Is it true to the values of the franchise?’ It’s not a case of cashing in on the name. We just need to renew it because times are changing.

I have to be careful how I write this post (can’t really offend anyone) but since people are going to ask me about this on Formspring or on the podcast or over Twitter, I have to comment. And I can’t lie to you guys.

First, it is clear that 2K is trying to cash in on the name recognition, and there’s nothing wrong with that. When they acquired the IP, there could have been rules in place that required they use it or the rights would revert to the previous owner. There is no reason to use the X-Com brand name on an alien shooter unless you want to exploit the nostalgia that people my age have for that name and series. It is a perfectly sound business decision to just slap the IP on a shooter, and I’d rather someone came out and said it. This makes financial sense.

Second, I think there is only a small risk of brand confusion here. When people my age say they wanted a new X-Com game, I doubt that any meant that they want a box or desktop icon that said X-Com. There are a thousand good names for an alien killing FPS – X-Com was chosen because it is a recognizable brand name even if the new game has nothing in common with what gave the brand power to begin with. For this audience of a certain age, there will be no escaping the question of why 2K is taking the brand in this direction. There will, of course, be thousands of people who will buy the new X-Com without having any connection or nostalgia for the name, which, let’s face it, is a pretty good name. For these people, the game has to stand on its own through marketing since the name creates no warm fuzzy feelings. As far as 2K’s future is concerned, it’s these new gamers that really matter. The X-Com name creates the media buzz, gets the game on all the websites and some cover stories, and then new gamers keep the IP going with an entirely new meaning. Tactical strategy X-Com dies.

Third, and most important for the purposes of this blog, Hartmann is absolutely right that strategy games aren’t contemporary insofar as AAA budget development is concerned. The budget problem is a big one facing the industry at large. As companies expand and the gaming dollars are harder to grab, the top publishers are playing it safe, spending money not to stand out but to blend in. Since the biggest sellers of the last few years have been military shooters, publishers tend to feel justified spending tens of millions of dollars chasing these “sure things”. Of course, this means that all the AAA strategy customer dollars are left for a handful of titles to scoop up; Total War, Starcraft, Civilization, maybe Dawn of War. It doesn’t help the genre that PC gaming dollars are scarcer than console dollars, both because strategy gamers will stick with one title longer than gamers would with a story based shooter and because Steam sales have encouraged PC gamers to wait for a big discount.

Of course, I think that strategy games in general are very contemporary – probably one of the most contemporary genres because there has been more experimentation and originality in the genre in the last five years than I have seen in most other major genres. Part of this is because the explosion of new platforms in the last decade (consoles, handhelds, cellphones, Facebook, browsers) has opened a space for thinking about strategy games in new ways, leading to a feedback to the PC where the open architecture lets designers go nuts. Look at the small science fiction subgenre – Gratuitous Space Battles, AI War, Sins of a Solar Empire, Distant Worlds, and in a couple of months, Sword of the Stars II; each of these is distinct and unique and original in core design. There are only so many ways to capture a flag, but apparently many ways to capture a galaxy.

I guess it comes down to what it means to be “contemporary”. If you are talking about the contemporary bottom-line (“What will the most people pay to see?”) then Hartmann is right on. As gaming became a mass audience affair, the tastes of the gaming population changed and those tastes leaned to shorter games with multiplayer sessions you could wrap up in an evening.

But, for me, the question is what is the spirit of contemporary game design all about? I am not arguing that what is popular is bad, or that 2K is wrong to make the choice that is making. But I think there is genuine enthusiasm in both the games media and the gaming audience for games that let you do things you didn’t do before. Increasingly we are seeing talented AAA designers and developers breaking free from the established publisher model and setting up their own studios because they want to experiment and they want to recreate the feelings they get when they play boardgames or arcade games with friends.

That is the contemporary side of gaming that I would invest in. If I had money.