05-13-2023, 10:50 PM
We've been enjoying discussing them lately so let's have a thread.
I started with Age of Empires 1 and have been fascinated ever since. Fascinated, but I haven't enjoyed every development and still mostly enjoy games from around that time, for reasons I've gone into in various other places.
This is still fascinating to look at for me in a way newer games don't really match. When I was very young this wasn't a "game". I didn't know mechanics, I didn't know how anything worked. I had a few caveman looking guys, a little patch of gathered stuff, and ominous darkness in every direction. I couldn't even find the tutorial at one point, so all that there was was this vague notion that somehow this could be directed and mastered. I put "Strategy Games" in quotes for the Thread Subject to cover this. That the field is really far more diverse than the language assigned to it can cover. Even within single games there are a variety of experiences offered, and somewhat deliberately.
Age of Empires is a good example. Because it's built robustly and thoughtfully enough to function as a competitive "game", a competitive challenge with lots of nuance and room for experimentation and mastery. Especially the second game. But it's also built to serve as a foundation for solitary experiences which are aesthetic rather than competitive, using the same parts which form the competitive game. If you push every part of this game that exists to its limit, you can get a very compelling experience. Age of Empires 2 is still popular online for a good reason. But for most of the game's players over its history weren't into that. They were into something more like what I was doing with the first one when I was very young. The game has "Campaigns" for you to play. Constructed scenarios built around stories, history, cool presentation, and letting you see and play out cool things.
Like I've written about Bungie's Myth and a few other strategy games I really like, the main appeal was really something more like a little simulation of war, or an interactive and self-generating dynamic war movie playing out inside your computer. The fact you could try to develop a capacity to play as a kind of skill was just a bonus, and a really niche appeal.
This little video is a great display of the primary old appeal of both Age of Empires and strategy games in general. It's the updated version of the game, I can't find the original, but the point still stands. Compare this to how the game looks played competitively online.
I don't have anything against these people, I actually play the game online sometimes too and greatly enjoy it, but my point is that these might as well be different games. It's like what happened to Halo and Call of Duty. Two games in one, but we call them the same thing and their parts overlap and sometimes get in each others' way, so we struggle to describe what we like in them.
Something I've tried to explain on /vst/ a lot of times (in vain because nobody on 4chan actually likes video games, they're just a posturing tool) is that "strategy games" declined and died, especially the old conventional "rts" games, because they failed to recognise their broad appeal, the fact that they offered a foundation for multiple different kinds of fun. The public faces of these games tend to be their long running competitive scenes. The idea is that it's best to become the next Starcraft. But the real base of their popular rolling support was people not really into that. People who bought Starcraft mostly bought it for giant soldier guys fighting bugs to some crappy warhammer ripoff story. People bought Dawn of War because it's fun to set up Imperial Guard heavy weapon teams and artillery at choke points against the AI.
Starcraft happened to become beloved by some strange people as a "game", a platform for competition, so they built a sequel, which could still be both, but was largely focused on that, and they succeeded again. Dawn of War also built a sequel, which could be played as both, but largely focused on being a competitive game this time, and it didn't endure so well. Then they doubled down with Dawn of War 3 and created something almost solely designed to be a competition, and it died out the gate almost instantly.
The half of "strategy games" that people seemed more into was pretty much allowed to die at the bleeding edge. And then by some strange twist reconstituted itself in sort of sometimes playable indie games which completely give up on the hybrid thing and seem mostly built in the self conscious Doom: Eternal style and Paradox style of trying to make you feel like you're seeing something crazily complex by playing them. Banished, Going Medieval, etc, they're sort of like why I liked Age of Empires 1 but feel like they were just built to be broken.
This looks okay. It's not Rimworld at least (I hate Rimworld). I might play this game if they ever finish making it. Ideally a company with money and standards would be doing this, but they're all too busy wasting their time and money trying to become repeat Starcraft.
Sorry about that negative tangent, but I wanted to get us rolling and this is sort of always on my mind. On the more positive side, as you can pick up from above I love games about cool stuff happening on a large scale and simulation. Not too interested in the game part. Strategy games are dead, long live strategy games.
I'll make more kind of general posts in this thread in the future if I can be bothered. I have more thoughts. Big games, turn based, Paradox, etc. Some of you already saw my Total War posts, I'll link those here too: https://tunisbayclub.com/index.php?threa...post-21011
Please feel free to talk about whatever. I'm just trying to get us rolling.
I started with Age of Empires 1 and have been fascinated ever since. Fascinated, but I haven't enjoyed every development and still mostly enjoy games from around that time, for reasons I've gone into in various other places.
This is still fascinating to look at for me in a way newer games don't really match. When I was very young this wasn't a "game". I didn't know mechanics, I didn't know how anything worked. I had a few caveman looking guys, a little patch of gathered stuff, and ominous darkness in every direction. I couldn't even find the tutorial at one point, so all that there was was this vague notion that somehow this could be directed and mastered. I put "Strategy Games" in quotes for the Thread Subject to cover this. That the field is really far more diverse than the language assigned to it can cover. Even within single games there are a variety of experiences offered, and somewhat deliberately.
Age of Empires is a good example. Because it's built robustly and thoughtfully enough to function as a competitive "game", a competitive challenge with lots of nuance and room for experimentation and mastery. Especially the second game. But it's also built to serve as a foundation for solitary experiences which are aesthetic rather than competitive, using the same parts which form the competitive game. If you push every part of this game that exists to its limit, you can get a very compelling experience. Age of Empires 2 is still popular online for a good reason. But for most of the game's players over its history weren't into that. They were into something more like what I was doing with the first one when I was very young. The game has "Campaigns" for you to play. Constructed scenarios built around stories, history, cool presentation, and letting you see and play out cool things.
Like I've written about Bungie's Myth and a few other strategy games I really like, the main appeal was really something more like a little simulation of war, or an interactive and self-generating dynamic war movie playing out inside your computer. The fact you could try to develop a capacity to play as a kind of skill was just a bonus, and a really niche appeal.
This little video is a great display of the primary old appeal of both Age of Empires and strategy games in general. It's the updated version of the game, I can't find the original, but the point still stands. Compare this to how the game looks played competitively online.
I don't have anything against these people, I actually play the game online sometimes too and greatly enjoy it, but my point is that these might as well be different games. It's like what happened to Halo and Call of Duty. Two games in one, but we call them the same thing and their parts overlap and sometimes get in each others' way, so we struggle to describe what we like in them.
Something I've tried to explain on /vst/ a lot of times (in vain because nobody on 4chan actually likes video games, they're just a posturing tool) is that "strategy games" declined and died, especially the old conventional "rts" games, because they failed to recognise their broad appeal, the fact that they offered a foundation for multiple different kinds of fun. The public faces of these games tend to be their long running competitive scenes. The idea is that it's best to become the next Starcraft. But the real base of their popular rolling support was people not really into that. People who bought Starcraft mostly bought it for giant soldier guys fighting bugs to some crappy warhammer ripoff story. People bought Dawn of War because it's fun to set up Imperial Guard heavy weapon teams and artillery at choke points against the AI.
Starcraft happened to become beloved by some strange people as a "game", a platform for competition, so they built a sequel, which could still be both, but was largely focused on that, and they succeeded again. Dawn of War also built a sequel, which could be played as both, but largely focused on being a competitive game this time, and it didn't endure so well. Then they doubled down with Dawn of War 3 and created something almost solely designed to be a competition, and it died out the gate almost instantly.
The half of "strategy games" that people seemed more into was pretty much allowed to die at the bleeding edge. And then by some strange twist reconstituted itself in sort of sometimes playable indie games which completely give up on the hybrid thing and seem mostly built in the self conscious Doom: Eternal style and Paradox style of trying to make you feel like you're seeing something crazily complex by playing them. Banished, Going Medieval, etc, they're sort of like why I liked Age of Empires 1 but feel like they were just built to be broken.
This looks okay. It's not Rimworld at least (I hate Rimworld). I might play this game if they ever finish making it. Ideally a company with money and standards would be doing this, but they're all too busy wasting their time and money trying to become repeat Starcraft.
Sorry about that negative tangent, but I wanted to get us rolling and this is sort of always on my mind. On the more positive side, as you can pick up from above I love games about cool stuff happening on a large scale and simulation. Not too interested in the game part. Strategy games are dead, long live strategy games.
I'll make more kind of general posts in this thread in the future if I can be bothered. I have more thoughts. Big games, turn based, Paradox, etc. Some of you already saw my Total War posts, I'll link those here too: https://tunisbayclub.com/index.php?threa...post-21011
Please feel free to talk about whatever. I'm just trying to get us rolling.