The Future
of Strategy Games
Three sessions were held,
some discussion repeated, and some was unique per session. The following
is a consolidation of the discussion from the 3 sessions.
Future impact of multi-player and on-line on strategy games
A lively discussion in all 3 sessions. The model of Ultima Online, which
fundamentally altered the nature of on-line role playing games, was
discussed in relationship to strategy games. A few folks mentioned a
few obscure, largely failed, massively multi-player strategy games.
The consensus was that there would not be a major hit in this category
for strategy games for at least the next two years. Some folks pointed
out that persistent worlds are very difficult to balance, especially
for strategy games, as those who've been playing longer tend to have
so much power as to be able to obliterate newbies with ease. Some suggested
the way to achieve massive multi-player is with a hierarchical system
of generals, captains, lieutenants, and so on, but others objected,
saying that everyone wants to be the general.
For more typical strategy games, there was consensus that alliances
had to be more important, and some suggestion that non-violent multi-player
strategy games might have some appeal.
Broadening the market
We discussed ways to reach beyond the core 20-40 year old, hard core
gamer, male, who constitutes the vast majority of the current strategy
market. It was pointed out that Age of Empires had nice appeal to women,
in part because the game accommodated building as an alternative to
fighting. According to some, women like building, and less violence
than men.
Reaching newbies boiled down to simplifying the games, and where possible,
using broadly recognized licenses (board games such as risk, or popular
licenses such as Star Trek).
Reaching the console market was largely dismissed as not worthwhile,
though Koei was held up as an example of a company that makes successful
strategy games for consoles (Romance of the Three Kingdoms).
Graphics - 2D vs. 3D, etc.
There is a lot of movement towards 3D in strategy games (with more support
than last year's roundtable, which also addressed this issue). In general,
people recognized that 3D and bigger graphics budgets in general are
coming, but there is a niche left for small budget, shareware type strategy
games. While the participants at the RT were not necessarily fans of
3D, they generally agreed that the public demanded it.
AI - Does it really matter to the public
The question was raised as to whether or not high quality AI is really
recognized and desired by the public. The different sessions had somewhat
different responses, one session advocating strong AI, the other saying
it wasn't particularly necessary, or in some cases even desirable (people
want to beat up on the AI)
Geography and game development
At the final session, one individual was curious where the strategy
game developers were located. A straw poll was conducted, and there
was pretty wide distribution, with about 30% in California, 20% elsewhere
on the west coast, and the remainder elsewhere in the US and across
the world. The issue of working remotely was raised, with most folks
thinking it a bad idea, but a few supporters backing it.
