Every now and then I like to plan a bit ahead. Look over the release schedule, line up ideas for Three Moves Ahead, try to angle for high paying interviews and features (and the occasional review) and just get a sense for where the year is going.<\/p>\n
I will not have time to play all the big strategy games this year in nearly the depth I will want to. Look at this list.<\/p>\n
Napoleon: Total War<\/em> (out) And, of course, this list is full of sequels and franchise stuff. Only Elemental<\/em> is original, and Stardock’s Brad Wardell has been leaking tidbits left and right on his Twitter feed<\/a>.<\/p>\n I can’t remember a year this busy with major strategy releases, and, of course there are tons of minor ones. Rise of Prussia, Greed Corp, Toy Soldiers, Conquest of the Americas<\/em>, expansions to Tropico<\/em> and Field of Glory<\/em> and Majesty 2<\/em>…and god knows what else Matrix games and HPS Sims will release this year.<\/p>\n With all these big titles coming out, this could be seen as a do or die year for AAA strategy games. I’m writing up a conference call I did last week with EA’s Jonathan Bass, the design lead on Command & Conquer 4<\/em>, and like many RTS designers he’s thinking long term about the state of the genre and how to both find a new audience to justify development costs and not lose whatever audience he already has – as the lead on a major franchise, he’s felt the fanbase pain.<\/p>\n But what if sales are underwhelming? What happens to Gas Powered Games’ Kings and Castles<\/em> if Supreme Commander 2<\/em> doesn’t perform up to expectations? The Command & Conquer<\/em> team was already gutted by EA, so I think that that publisher needs big numbers to justify a presence in the genre. Yes, Stardock and Ironclad have shown that you can make a great strategy game or two without sinking millions and millions of dollars into it, but there is a AAA mentality that assumes you need AAA budgets for AAA publishers. (Soren Johnson talked a little about this in his podcast appearance.<\/a>)<\/p>\n That is business stuff, however, and I’m not really a business reporter. (If there’s one thing gaming journalism really needs, by the way, it is a qualified and knowledgeable business reporter. Someone who can read an SEC statement and knows the difference between a merger and an acquisition. But I digress.)<\/p>\n As a gamer, this is a big year and I only hope I have time for half of it. Tom Chick was right – we will not be running out of things to say on the show in 2010.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every now and then I like to plan a bit ahead. Look over the release schedule, line up ideas for Three Moves Ahead, try to angle for high paying interviews and features (and the occasional review) and just get a sense for where the year is going. I will not have time to play all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-Ay","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2267,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2266\/revisions\/2267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nSupreme Commander 2<\/em> (out, but not at my house yet)
\nCommand & Conquer 4
\nElemental
\nStarcraft 2
\nRUSE
\nDawn of War 2: Chaos Rising<\/em>
\nCivilization 5<\/em> (assuming it isn’t delayed)
\nVictoria 2<\/em><\/p>\n