Arathain

Not directly related to matters discussed, but I wanted to bring folks' attention to the Heroes of the Storm finals. I haven't had a chance to watch all of it, but this match was completely fantastic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9AlHhgvF-k Cloud 9 face a fairly conventional comp (Chen notwithstanding), but theirs is anything but conventional. As a viewer, it took me a ways into the match to appreciate what they were doing, but it took DK just as long, and they had no idea how to handle it. Special highlight- the camera pans across the Cloud 9 players right before the final draft pick, and their faces are a treat. They knew they had won before they even went in.

As an aside, I tried Grey Goo over the weekend. I didn't have very long to give it to grab me ( a couple of missions), and it utterly failed. Primary issue- none of the units it gave me did anything interesting. Infantry shooting yellow streaks. Small walker thing shooting yellow streaks. Bigger walker thing shooting yellow streaks. Some vanilla artillery and anti-air. Enemy units seemed to do much the same, but I couldn't get much of a clue as to their identity from their appearance, so I just A-moved at them. The other units that I might build seemed equally vanilla. I'm spoiled by Relic RTSs, where every unit brims over with identity, personality, and above all possibility. Heck, even the original Command and Conquer had the grenadier guys and cool stealth tanks. If you're going to give me a toy box full of boring toys I don't really want to play.

I think multiplayer RTSs are a young person's game. They require a lot of commitment- time upfront to learn, and then further time to hone and maintain those skills. They need a lot of energy to commit to each individual game as well. I'm in my mid-30s, with a job and kids yadda yadda. Time and energy are precious to me in a way they never were in my teens and 20s. After a full day, or during rare free time on a weekend deciding to work up the intensity and focus is a big decision, and if I can't choose to do that regularly, I may as well not bother. The thing that Heroes and League and the like have some of that competitive intensity, but not as relentlessly as a true RTS. There are ebbs and flows, laning and ganking, teamfights, retreats, regrouping. Time to catch your breath, and times when you don't need a quart of adrenaline.

I've played Origins fairly recently- I'm not sure it's a better platformer than a comparable 2D Mario, say. Still, what blew me away about it was its aesthetic completeness. Every aspect- animation, sound, music, pace, character, everything blended into and informed everything else. The game gave me a wonderful rhythm and invited me to play in it. Good stuff. Actually, I remember I played it not too long after completing Transistor, which has a similar aesthetic completeness to it.

Thanks for this. Company of Heroes doesn't get talked about enough. While Dawn of War 2 was my multiplayer RTS of choice I always felt CoH was a richer game, and a design masterpiece. I never did pick up CoH2, as the unlockable bonuses and commanders put me off getting it, and I no longer have the time to devote to learning and playing online RTS. Company of Heroes is a wonderfully watchable game, and I don't often see that talked about. It was the first game I ever found myself watching on Youtube, with Bridger's wonderful Tales of Heroes series*. It's an easy game to follow as a spectator because the flow of battle and the basic mechanics are very comprehensible to the viewer, but there is endless room for nuance and skilled play. It looks fantastic as well, and the spectator gets to appreciate the crumbling, changing battlefield even better than the players. As you said in the podcast, it's like a birds' eye view of a war movie. There's an alternate universe out there where CoH became the dominant RTS in e-sports. That's a fun thing to speculate about. No discussion of a Relic RTS is complete without talking about sound design, which you also touched on. More than any other game I can think of, I can tell what's going on in a game with my eyes closed. Each unit has an impressive range of situationally appropriate voice responses. Units will tell you their situation, so if they get in trouble when your attention is elsewhere you only have yourself to blame. Each weapon has a distinct sound when it fires. The amount of personality they've crammed in is impressive as well, and listening to German officers chivy along nervous Volksgrenadiers and British Tommys mock each other is amusing and atmospheric. *I'd recommend any of series 8, but my personal favourite is this one: which showcases some delightful post production editing using the powerful replay feature. War movie indeed.

I tried to play Rise of Nations within the last year, with the re-release on Steam. I found the whole thing pretty bewildering, even though I'd played it when it first came out. There are so many choices to make at any given moment- there are multiple resources, there's a building for each resource type on top of the resource collectors, each of which have several upgrades, there are multiple military buildings with unit upgrades, there's the advancement tree... On top of this I should be expanding and scouting and grabbing special resource nodes let alone fighting battles. Figuring out how to expand without constantly choking on some resource or another, or falling behind militarily, would take flippin' forever, and more dedication than I have time for. I think the trick to the action RTS is how to make units interesting and distinct without major overlap, while maintaining faction identity. Relic's Dawn of War 2 and Company of Heroes are the gold standard for me, but the Starcrafts and C&C: Generals also do a great job. You have to move beyond 'this unit counters this one' towards 'unit X beats unit Y in these circumstances, but Y can hold its own in these other circumstances.' Then build up relationships within the faction: 'Y beats X when unit Z is in support'.

I think CoH and DoW justify their low unit counts by having the units themselves be detailed and rich in tactical possibility. Time spent microing would be well rewarded, but since combat was slower than in SC you'd have more success positioning and attacking thoughtfully, rather than being able to do things fast. The challenge comes from being able to manage the whole map at once with the potential for multiple skirmishes- I've heard Relic games described as having a high thought-per-minute barrier rather than an AMP barrier. I loved the no-base approach in DoW2, because it let you spend all your time with what I believe to be the most interestingly designed units in a RTS.* We're just expressing different, but perfectly legitimate preferences here, of course. *Seriously, I could write an essay on the Heretics, the basic starter unit of Chaos.

Great points, Adam. I came away from your post feeling much better about the whole thing. Well done. I bought Starcraft 2 a couple of months ago. My RTS diet previously had largely consisted of Relic games, namely Company of Heroes and Dawn of War 2. I played the original SC campaign back in the day before multiplayer was ever something I dreamed of doing, so playing the SC2 campaign is nice, in terms of soaking in the familiar atmosphere and polish. Since I haven't gotten though Wings of Liberty the missions are indeed well designed. I can't imagine ever touching multiplayer, though. I have some idea of what that would take, and that makes me want it even less. Keeping mental track of a bunch of different timers so I remember to build workers every 20 seconds or whatever the heck it is, or making use of chrono-whatever and injecting hatcheries... bleh. No. Heaven forbid you could queue anything up! Using the available usability features would be awful. Why is having to build another stupid supply depot every three units a neat thing to do? it isn't. I bet this is satisfying when you get good, because mastery of something hard is always satisfying. I'm sure for the pros it's like conducting an orchestra while playing four of the instruments yourself. Getting there sounds like a horrible chore, and I don't have time for my games to be not fun before they're fun. Relic RTSs in multiplayer are very challenging and tricky to master, but I didn't find them a chore to learn to play. They were fun from the start onwards, because everything you did was about getting to the core of the genre- getting your little dudes and tanks to have dramatic battles. You're sending out a scout squad to capture a flanking point while setting up defensive guns. You're calling in reinforcements for your retreating units, or pulling back those scouts who ran into unexpected resistance. You're microing a tank to get its frontal armour into the line of fire while its gun keeps firing. No supply counts. No fiddling. I think Lords Managements are doing something similar by taking the tedious verbs out. Even laning, the chore part of a Lords Management, is inherently fun, since getting your farm on while performing the intricate laning dance with your opposition is comprehensible, enjoyable, and deep.

Football Manager is indeed in there- a besuited man driving a car with a soccer ball shaped helmet spouting cliches. Company of Heroes 2 sends General Winter in a T-34. Just to really mash in as many odd gaming licences as they can there's a Team Fortress 2 character as well- Pyro drives a kart, while Heavy gets a hovercraft and Spy the plane. It's actually a really fun kart racer, and it's visually stunning.

But how do you know you're on the most efficient path? For all David knows high level, well equipped Caberjacks are even better than Hunters. If I don't level all the classes how will I know what's good and what's bad? One clearly has to Try All The Things, with the added benefit of Playing With All The Toys. Man, Dune 2 was so good and fresh and exciting that we put up with that interface.

I'm fascinated by David's approach to strategy games, because it is so different from my own. He actively searches for the path of least resistance and follows it to its conclusion, even if it means leaving half the game lying in the dust behind him. I view strategy games as big toy boxes, and I want to take each toy out of the box so I can see what it does. So the all sniper XCOM army, or presumably the all ranger party in Massive Chalice, has no appeal to me, because I'm leaving so many toys in the box. I bet David completes a lot more games than I do, though. I think some of this attitude came from my introduction to strategy- Dune 2 and Command & Conquer. Those games would dole out a new unit for each mission, and it was a big motivator to me. What cool thing am I going to get next? It's also a personality thing, since I like variety of experiences rather more than I like winning, at least when I'm playing against an AI.

I specifically meant it had no competitor in terms of online viewership. It's tough to stream Magic on Twitch, and other digital CCGs lack the audience, and as pointed out in the previous post, the watchability (watchableness?). HotS has to take viewers away from other similar games, or bring new viewers in. I think it will find a solid niche for itself, actually. I'm more convinced the more of the Heroes of the Dorm finals I watch. Boston College vs Arizona State game 1 is on Youtube, and I think it's an excellent showcase for the skill of its players. Edit: Oof, game 2 is great too.

It's a salient comparison, although Hearthstone had no direct competitor, so one wouldn't expect their paths to be the same. We'll see. Come back to the question a few months after general release.

I think that's true. There's always something fundamentally satisfying about the top-down, ordering units about experience, but classic RTSs are so demanding to learn to play that they no are no longer able to appeal the the broader audience gaming has, vs the more limited audience of the late 90s, early 00s. I'm not sure why HotS should be considered a worse spectator experience than LoL or DOTA. It gets to the exciting parts faster, and you need far less specialised knowledge to understand what's going on. It also has a clear and distinct visual style. I've been watching some of the Heroes of the Dorm college tournament and really enjoying it. I think it's just a young game with a smallish player base that will grow notably on release.

Thanks for the interesting discussion. I've been playing a bunch of HotS recently and having a blast. I played LOL lo, many years ago when the world was young (before season 1), but quit because the length of matches couldn't be made to fit in my life. This is much more friendly. I'm not sure the whole 'lane pusher for casuals' thing holds too much water. All games in this genre are deep and complex, and HotS is no exception. It's just removed a lot of the arbitrary complexity that Dota in particular somehow thrives on, thus lowering the barrier to entry. David was worried players might get a ways in before realising it's not so casual after all; I don't think they'll ever be fooled. You have 5 vs 5 extremely diverse characters on these dynamic maps where everything keeps changing. This is intense and difficult right from the start, just not unmanageably so.* I think the curve is sufficiently sloped that you'll realise how much you have to learn as you go, but because you kind of get it it'll be fun while you do. Heck, if you never want to delve into exact timings and golem strength you don't have to, and be comfortable with your skill ceiling. I also hear complaints about the monetisation, but I haven't found it burdensome. While playing matches doesn't net you much gold, the dailies add up, and there are a bunch of gold rewards as you level. Any character you level to 5 gets you 500 gold, so you can cycle through the ones that are free. Without being able to play a whole lot I have a stable I'm pretty happy with, including a 7000 gold and a 10000 gold character. There will be a point where income from leveling will drop off, but a that point I'll have played for dozens of hours and will be happy to drop a little money on a character I fancy. It's not Dota generous, but it's fine. For my own picky sake, Zagara is pronounced with emphasis on the second syllable. Same with Tyrande (Tie-ron-duh). Zagara might be my favourite so far. I love getting in a lane, dropping down some fresh decor, and having a party with all my family. Don't like it? Talk to Ms. Hydralisk here. Getting a 3+ Maw timed just right so the Banelings and the Roaches arrive just as they pop out is the best feeling. * Here's the new player experience. You stomp out the gate as Raynor, knowing at the very least what your buttons do. You opponents in lane are a tank and a big cow. Sometimes the cow wears a squid hat. Every so often the announcer yells at you and you all rush to a spot where a lot of flashes and explosions happen and you die. At one point you clicked on a thing that seemed to want to be clicked on and you were a dragon for a bit. You got to summon a spaceship a couple of times, which seemed cool.

This was a very good episode. Austin was a thoughtful and interesting guest, and I look forward to more from him. Thanks also to David for providing a really nice jumping off point. While I really like 4Xs, my secret confession is that I have only ever finished one game. Of anything. I think it was Civ 3. The RPG analogy worked perfectly for me. I love character creation and the scope of possibilities way more than I like the fiddly business of managing a large empire. For me, though, with no real interest in an end game, character creation is founding cities. I love exploring the map and picking out my city spots. I like the tension of getting the good spots before the other civs do, and figuring out exactly which tiles my future city could grow into. Even if... well, even if it never actually does. My ambivalence about the mid game might stem from a strange curse I seem to have. Something about the way I play seems to make the AI passive. Across multiple games. I want to trade and form alliances and get dragged into wars and have all those fun interactions. But in games I play no one seems to want to attack me, or ally with me. Also, none of the AI seems to want to interact with the other AI either. You get peaceful, but ultimately boring games.

Oh man, the music gave me shivers. Some of those town tracks were just great pieces. I loved HOMM2 back in the day. It had so much personality, which was odd, given it's what I call a kitchen-sink game (as in everything but the...). I think very strong faction design let it get away with its incoherent diversity- your army would at least fit thematically with itself. 3 was a better game, I think, but it didn't have quite as much charm. Still great, though. Rob, I thought your point about the game working as a whole experience because no one element dominated was insightful, and kind of fascinating. I don't know how the heck you're supposed to apply that to game design. "Alright team, we need to design tactical combat, but we can't make it too deep and interesting, or it'll distract from the strategy layer. Aim for mundane."

I think people are being too hard on John Walker. While I can agree that might not have been the best way to open an interview there's a fundamental honesty to it. He told PM how the whole thing was going to go. He put his feelings and intentions out on his sleeve. It reads like an interrogation rather than an interview, and that's hugely uncomfortable, but it's not an interrogation. PM is sat in his own studio for two hours talking on his phone, and it's JW who winds it up at the end. He could at any point have hung up, politely, abruptly, or anywhere in between, and no one would have blamed him for doing so. He talks because he wants to, or perhaps because he has to because of who he is. Note also that the interview is presented as a transcript, and seems to be unedited. There's no deception or spin from RPS. I don't mind PM overpromising on gameplay features. I don't mind delays, up to a point. I didn't mind Curiosity, as strange and pointless as it is. The whole thing with the God of Gods and revenue sharing I don't know what to think of. i do mind when 22cans takes a great deal of backers money, promising a PC-focused development without a publisher, and within months is apparently focusing on mobile and getting a publisher (source Rich Stanton's Eurogamer article). This isn't about the vagaries of game development. This is deception at worst or disregarding promises at best. I also take issue with PM claiming that creative projects are these wild, unpredictable things, that cannot be tamed by budgets or schedules. It's true that things happen, things don't work out and things run over. But good project management isn't invalidated by these things, it mitigates them! His attitude disregards the countless excellent games, movies, TV shows, books, whatever, that release on time and on budget, or that run over and get back on track efficiently.

Even, for example, promising a Linux version that the chosen engine explicitly doesn't and couldn't support? Can't we have accountability for that? Or when an industry veteran claims a project will take 7 months and ends up taking multiple years? Or raising money promising you'll avoid a publisher and getting a publisher a few months later? I think the Gamasutra response posted above, and many of the comments, were generous. It's not asking all that much for 22cans to do better.

The interview is a very difficult, uncomfortable read. But while there's no doubt John was aggressive, I think it's being over-emphasized. Notably, Molyneaux does almost all the talking. John is.. well, honest about how he intends to conduct the interview from the off. PM talks himself in these lengthy, confused, rambly circles. He contradicts himself even in the course of the interview. His astonishing lack of competence is bizarre and surreal. Dismissing that good project management in game design is even possible is an insult to all well organised projects.

On racial representation in games: the cast discussed the problem inherent in development teams dominated by white Western men appropriating perceived tropes from other cultures to make their game seem exotic, leading to broad insensitivity in representation. On the other hand we have a problem in which white men are making games largely featuring and about white men, thus making other groups feel less welcome in gaming, and denying them the comfort and thrill of being represented in our gaming spaces. Statistically speaking, if this is to improve noticeably, some white men are going to have to make a bunch of games not about white men. How do we reconcile or balance these opposing problems?

The DS titles I spent by far the most time on were Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and Zookeeper. M&M:CoH stands next to the first Puzzle Quest as the monarchs of the puzzle-RPG genre. They're the reason I keep trawling the genre, and keep being disappointed. Clash's battle system is unique and brilliant, and has you combining coloured units to launch attacks and build walls. The way the varied units interplay is inspired. It's available to PC as well now, so no excuse to not try it. Zookeeper is a match-3. Not even a very complicated one, compared even to Bejewelled. But it has this neat feature that a lot of them don't have- you can continue to make matches even as other matches are animating, so if you're fast, you can keep these big chains of matches going. Add the tactility of the DS and you have man hours of my life vanishing. I found myself in a unique situation, actually- the game has a 6 minute time trial mode that you can unlock. That is the entire game for me. Once I got a score of 5.9 million. I didn't even think it was that great a run. I thought I could do better. I never ever could. I still pick it up now and again and chase 6 million for a while.

I played quite a lot of both Left 4 Deads. The single biggest change for me, and the reason I couldn't go back to the first one until they'd updated it to include the new stuff, was the addition of the Spitter special infected. As often happens in multiplayer games, an optimal tactic had arisen to handle the big horde events that were otherwise the highlight of the game- corner stacking, or Shiva stacking. All four players would gather in the same corner, models all clipping into each other, mostly just spamming the melee attack and shooting a bit. This was perfectly safe no matter how many zombies came at you- the only thing you'd break it up for would be a Tank. It was boring as all heck, but in that strange way optimal behaviour has of trumping fun, it was all anyone wanted to do. The Spitter spat a blob of acid from range that would pool on the floor, doing damage to anyone standing in it. Problem solved. Fun restored. I did miss Louis, though.

Supreme Commander vs. the AI is glorious for professional turtles. Sit back behind your carefully layered and overlapping cannons guarded by point defense and anti-air, screened by fighter and gunship patrols. Build vast spider robots and nukes. Win at your leisure.

I don't think it's about ego. He's been intimately involved in producing some of the best games of their respective periods. Balancing Brood Wars, for crying out loud- considered by many the most balanced and competitive of all e-sport games. He wouldn't have gotten where he was without some belief in himself. It's easy to understand why newer players don't like rushing. In the brutal atmosphere of competitive RTSs it's logical to seek security, and some space to think and act, especially when you lack confidence. But you do get past that, and you come to understand the key role rushing plays (countering econ boom strategies) and the tradeoff involved in turtling (sacrificing flexibility and map control). It's a better game out the other side. i was interested in the issue heroes introduced to WC3, where you were disincentivised to split your forces. The multiplayer RTS I spent most time with was Dawn of War 2, which also had powerful hero units leading your forces, which operated similarly to those in WC3. In that game resources came from capturing distinct points on the map, rather than harvesting . This meant you were often splitting off units to go capture a point, or raid a generator farm, and spontaneous meeting engagements between your forces would be happening constantly.This very much leads back into attention as a resource, since the easiest way to lose a squad was to forget about it and miss the sound cues in the heat of action elsewhere. Losing a squad was a heavy blow in that game. Abilities could also factor into attention-attrition in interesting ways. A few units could throw a grenade for generous damage. If you saw the throw animation begin you had a short window in which you could get your squad out of the way of the grenade before it went off. But this would mean you'd have to watch that unit whenever it was in combat- in essence, they were attention sinks that could distract you from whatever else might be going on.