RTS Game Design Issues

I am a huge fan of RTS games and have been disappointed to watch the diminishing reach of this once popular genre. 

A few of my colleagues at PWS share my enthusiasm for the genre and we conducted an informal yet extensive survey of people, who match the profile of probable Strategy Game players, but were not playing contemporary real time PC strategy games. (We also collected feedback from disgruntled real time PC Strategy players).

We found a lot of consistency in terms of why a large number of players found the contemporary real time PC strategy game experience dissatisfactory.

Two of the Key Issues are elaborated here:

Writing a Mystery Game

A New Knowledge base article series titled 'Writing a Mystery Game' has just been published by me on the 4Di Blog.

This article is meant for Teachers and other designers who wish to design an engaging learning game. One of the ways to generate audience interest in any narrative is to add intrigue and mystery into it.  

Click here to read the article

Three simple Steps to your first 3D Game

The first in the series of Knowledge base articles introducing the process of multiplayer interactive serious game design. The articles are available for review and discussion on the Playware blog at the web address  www.4Diplay.blogspot.com.

This first article deals with the conceptualization and design planning stage and helps you get started with the initial documentation you need to flesh out your idea. 

Click here:

Three Simple Steps for designing your first 3D Game

Or paste this URL into your browser address bar:

http://4diplay.blogspot.com/2011/09/three-simple-steps-to-your-first-3d.html

Courage Vs Power (Game design Blurb)

Powerful is easy, to make a Player feel powerful in a game is easy. Give him enough extra Hit points or Armour or Attack or strategic bonuses and you have him taking down enemies five times his size. Agreed balancing the whole environment to make it just challenging, enough to be exiting, requires skill. Yet on the whole, making a player feel powerful is, by far, easier than making him feel courageous.

Sniping rules, in almost all games sniping / guerrilla warfare will win you the day. This is because you are able to take away a percentage of the enemies with little risk to your own self. Therefore telescopic rifles, silenced guns and other long ranged or stealth weapons are popular. Even in RTS games the race is to get your enemy at a disadvantage like getting at him early before he has resources, technologies and troops often is enough to win you the match.

We (Game Designers) tend to overlook the moral aspect of what we are doing. It is complicated to incorporate things like honor and courage into a game and therefore we simply set them aside with the explanation: who wants to be educated while playing games.

Courage and honor, Stuff that heroes are made of, are mostly ignored in the video game world for a quick design fix. Players like to win and to make them win we make them strong and make them act ruthlessly.

Few games like Sega’s Virtua Cop actually incorporate the justice shot (shooting in the wrist or knee to disable rather than kill) that police forces around the world use in real life. In war games we have to utterly destroy our opponent and that means wiping out entire towns and killing off all his villagers, a far cry from reality we are striving towards where despite Fidayeen attacks American soldiers maintaining peace in Iraq do not open fire on civilians.