RTS used to be one of the most popular genres adored by players. However, any popularity is fickle. After a long break, and in the second part, we will talk about the games that were released at the peak of interest in the genre, about experiments and genre mixes, as well as about possible reasons for its decline. Be sure to check out the first part of the series, in which we talked about the formation of the RTS genre.
After several years of development, the strategy genre was only gaining momentum, although nothing radically new and high-profile had been released for years. And in the early 2000s, the genre, and the entire industry, was hit with a real thunderbolt.
It’s very difficult to praise a game that has been forever etched in the memory of millions of fans as one of the best gaming experiences of their lives. There is a chance of underpraising. Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos (2002) sold its first million copies in just the first month and became the best-selling PC game in history. Dethroning another Blizzard game — Diablo 2.
Warcraft III wasn’t anything revolutionary, and the only innovation was the craving for RPGs.
Heroes appeared in the game as a separate, powerful unit that could still be strengthened with magic items. And this is not surprising because at the beginning of development, the game looked more like an RPG, with a hero who commanded several soldiers, a camera almost over his shoulder, and no base construction. When it became clear that this concept wasn’t working, we decided to go back to the classic RTS, but kept the heroes.
This is what Warcraft III looked like in 1999
Also Warcraft III was praised for its good balance and story. The CGI videos look powerful even today, and in the early noughties they blew my mind. I still remember watching with open mouth how Thunder’s armor moved and sounded when he fought and died in the battle with Manoroth.
Many publications added The Culling mission, in which Arthas cuts out the entire Strathgolme, to their list of the best game episodes ever. And in general, critics were pleased that in the third installment, the series’ plot and characters were fully revealed, and it finally became clear what was going on.
As in the previous installments, the game had a map editor. This familiar element would later influence the entire gaming industry. But in 2003, Defense of the Ancients was just a popular custom map. Although not for long, in 2005, DOTA became a full-fledged eSports discipline. This story can be continued for a long time, but we are talking about strategies now, not the birth of a new MOBA genre.
Command & Conquer: Generals (2003) and The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth (2004)
On the other side of Warcraft 3, in 2003, the Command & Conquer: Generals. The game does not claim to be anything, it is simply a good strategy of its time that has received positive criticism and was liked by players. I’m sure many of you got to know it in computer clubs.
Another game that probably doesn’t deserve to be on this list, but I’d like to mention it The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth (2004). This is one of the few good games under the license of that time. «The Battle for Middle-earth» retold the events of Peter Jackson’s trilogy and even gave players the opportunity to play for the dark side. Yes, the game did not have a good balance, the Rogan’s cavalry destroyed everything it touched, but this did not prevent players from having fun.
The next important, albeit rather relative, was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War (2004) by Relic, the authors of the original Homeworld, mentioned in the first part. The game turned out to be very high quality and interesting, although it lost to Rome: Total War. «Wacha» focuses not on resources but on strategic points, the control of which directly affects the outcome of the battle. Just like Cytron Masters in 1982.
In the release version of the Dark Crusade expansion, the Necron race was a super unbalanced network for the game. They tried to fix it with patches, but at that time the Internet was not widespread, and patches were more often sought on disks that came with game magazines.
But the studio made a real step forward two years later, with the release of Company of Heroes — strategy in the setting of the Second World War. The developers put base building and management on the back burner and focused on the army. As for the technical component, CoH was the most beautiful strategy game of its time and one of the most technologically advanced games of 2006. And simply one of the best games of the year in general, not just in its category. 93 points on Metacritic at the time was no small feat. The game also became the first project to be released under the Games for Windows label, which is already a dubious achievement.
In the same period as Company of Heroes, two games with terraforming mechanics for the surface and units were released. I won’t talk about them anymore because they were made by a studio from the aggressor country. But here they are «Behind enemy lines» Let me recall. We were creating a game for 1C money, which was a common thing at the beginning of the noughties, but by the Ukrainian studio Best Way.
Soldiers: Heroes of World War II, as the game was called in the West, offered a more down-to-earth view of the strategic battlefield. The camera was lowered than in other games of the genre, which made it possible to better immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the horrors of World War II. In general, the game was largely a simulation, especially when it came to technology.
With the release of Warcraft III, the genre reached a kind of plateau and its popularity gradually declined.
Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War (2006)
There were attempts to add fresh blood, one of which was Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War. In this 2006 game, the developers decided to marry the RTS genre with third-person action. For a certain period of time, you can take control of any warrior. At this point, the camera goes down to the selected unit, demonstrating not the best graphics in this mode (a few months later, Gears of War was already released). The symbiosis of genres turned out to be so ambitious that it even ruined the developer’s studio in the final stages of development. After that, the publisher decided to complete the project by another studio.
However, she was not the only one with mixed blood. A little earlier, there were Battlezone (1998), which was more of a first-person shooter with strategy elements than vice versa.
I had an interesting concept, Savage: The Battle for Newerth (2003), in which some players controlled the Global Map like a regular RTS, while others took control of a single unit. The game switched from the third person when moving around the location to the first person during combat battles, turning into a shooter. Battlezone has become somewhat of a cult game, but I’m sure few people know about Savage.
Battlezone 98 Redux and Savage: The Battle for Newerth (2003)
Another interesting and somewhat innovative event in 2008 was Tom Clancy’s EndWar. In this game, the teams voted by voice. And it really worked. Moreover, in multiplayer sessions, a player had a better chance of winning by voice because this input method was much faster than the classic controls. This was more true for consoles, where the game was originally released. Also, EndWar has a rather unusual camera for the genre, which is almost like a third-person view and seems to be glued to the unit. Instead, the strategic view of the war theater was more informational to assess the enemy’s forces and movement. The game was also praised for its good optimization, especially on consoles.
However, the real return of the genre to consoles is due to the authors of Age of Empires, who in 2009 released Halo Wars — a real-time strategy game that is also an Xbox 360 exclusive. And it is a full-fledged representative of the genre: with base building, unit control, and management. Some journalists even compared the game to the original Halo, which proved the relevance of first-person shooters on consoles, and Halo Wars proved that modern RTS can be comfortably controlled with a gamepad.
In the same years, Chris Roberts and his Supreme Commander (2007). The author of Total Annihilation and the cult role-playing game Dungeon Siege tried to bring scale back to the genre. The literally planetary-scale battles with hundreds and thousands of combat units on the map were impressive. Moreover, the camera could be zoomed in to examine each unit in detail, or zoomed out to see the entire battle location. It looks like a minimap enlarged to full screen.
As in the case of Total Annihilation, it was not without technical achievements. The game was one of the first to use multicore processors and support multiple monitors simultaneously.
Supreme Commander (2007)
Despite good criticism, relatively good sales, and attempts to shake up the genre a bit, by the end of the noughties, real-time strategies had finally begun to fade into history, giving way to more dynamic genres. But there was still hope for a return to its former glory.
StarCraft II (2010) unfortunately did not revolutionize the genre. Although it is hard not to note the presentation of the story in communication with team members between missions. A kind of quest interactive movie.
In terms of plot and production, StarCraft II has definitely started to flirt with Hollywood products. Although excessive pathos doesn’t always play in favor.
But everything that happened around the game inspires respect. On the first day, the game sold more than 1 million copies. On the second day, when Blizzard started selling the game digitally, another 500 thousand were added. The game became the fastest-selling strategy game in history and a PC game in general. More than three million players bought StarCraft II in the first month. This is an unheard-of success.
However, the game also holds a not-so-pleasant record for piracy. The most popular torrent distribution was downloaded over 2.5 million times in three months. And this is just one torrent, and how many are there on different resources?
But despite minor problems and some controversial decisions, such as dividing the game into three parts, StarCraft II restored faith in the genre. That RTSs are still with us and ready to fight for the championship in the gamer’s heart, which, in truth, doesn’t have much room. But the sequels buried this hope. Although Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void sold well, the numbers were still inferior to those of Wings of Liberty.
As history has shown, StarCraft II did not revive RTS for the mass consumer, but became the last blockbuster, a farewell gift to all fans of the genre before leaving with its head held high. Leaving the crown of the gaming industry to MOBAs, shooters, and battle royale games. But the genre is not dead.
In the same year of 2010, a few months after the release of Wings of Liberty, Ubisoft released R.U.S.E. In this strategy, cunning and bluffing come to the fore. The game allows you to set up fake buildings or even units, or to dramatically change the behavioral model of soldiers. The illustration of the battle arena was also interesting. All the action takes place as if at a gaming table, with commanders standing in front of it and giving orders. The game even supported multitouch screens and PlayStation Move controls in the PS3 version.
The industry veterans from Westwood, who were at the origins of the genre, already released in 2015 as part of another studio Grey Goo. This is an old-school, classic, and very enjoyable RTS in the Sci-Fi setting. The game was well-received by critics, but I remember its release well, and only fans of the genre remembered it.
Ashes of the Singularity (2016), Dune Spice Wars (2022), Warcraft III Reforged (2020)
We can simply list the releases of the last 7-8 years. Ashes of the Singularity (2016) was more often used as a benchmark than as an example of a good strategy, although the game is generally good. In 2017, we released Cossacks 3 which was more of a remake than a full-fledged sequel. And then there was Dawn of War 3, that disappointedmany fans. In 2018, a generally successful Northgard which sold 2 million copies in two years. Its authors have recently released Dune: Spice Wars (2022).
How can we not mention the dominance of remasters, all kinds of Definitive and Anniversary Editions. Here, Blizzard shone the loudest with their Warcraft III: Reforged. But let’s not talk about the bad stuff.
The last major release in the genre is probably Age of Empires 4 by Relic and Microsoft. The game sold well despite its presence in GamePass, more than 2 million copies.
But why do I call StarCraft 2 the last blockbuster of the genre, a game that was released 14 years ago? It’s simple, and can you remember what other strategy was so much promoted as StarCraft 2, how much hype was around the game and it was, as they say, worth the money. According to unofficial data, the budget amounted to more than $100 million, and it seems that this is only for Wings of Liberty. The marketing was on par with modern Sony games.
No strategy has been promoted as much as StarCraft 2. And in general, it is noticeable that the genre is not receiving big budgets, as it used to be.
The reason that is most often mentioned as to why the genre has disappeared from the radar is the change in the pace of life. People who used to love this genre and could devote dozens of hours to it now have other things on their minds. Therefore, they switched to other genres that give the right dose of dopamine much faster than the generally slow RTS genre.
But I think the main problem is that the genre just didn’t scale well.
The gaming industry has grown a lot over the past 10-20 years. There are an incredible number of new players who are simply not interested in this genre. And against this background, it seems that it is dying. Although, if you look at the sales of games in the early noughties, tens, and modern representatives of the genre, they are at least not declining, and some even show growth. On the scale of the general gaming industry, the real-time strategy genre is not interesting to a wide audience. And, from a once mainstream genre, RTS has become a niche. At the same time, they have not lost their audience.
So what does the future hold for RTS? In general, it is bright. This year, Homeworld 3, a remaster of Age of Mythology: Retold, the already released and successful Manor Lords, which combines economic and classic RTS (the game has a Ukrainian localization). Former Blizzard employees are working on the conditionally free Stormgate, which is very similar to… StarCraft. However, the first reviews of the game are not very positive.
The genre is definitely not dead, although it is unlikely to ever return to the level of the mega-popular mainstream. Unless Blizzard releases Warcraft 4 or StarCraft 3. Anything can happen.