Too Many People Play RTS Games The Wrong Way

This genre needs a rebrand

I’ve never been a fan of motorsports, largely because growing up I wasn’t really exposed to it. I played a good amount of racing games as a kid, but that never sparked a broader interest in real-life racing. I’d say my view on the subject for most of my life drifted somewhere between apathy and confusion, a world of sporting that I knew existed but that I didn’t quite understand, nor did I care enough about to go and find out.

All that changed when I watched Drive to Survive, a documentary series on Netflix. I streamed the show on a recommendation from my boss, who claimed that it converted him into a big fan of Formula One. I was skeptical; but it wasn’t long before I discovered what he was talking about.

Each season of Drive to Survive follows a single season of Formula One, weaving together storylines of the different F1 teams as the season unfolds. The show is notable, among other things, for focusing on narrative drama over more traditional aspects of racing, like automotive design. It’s a show, at its core, about the people of F1.

And it’s really good!

I discovered that it’s possible to enjoy F1 without knowing too much about racing - and that actually, this is not uncommon. A large number of fans are primarily interested in the teams and the characters and watching cars go vroom, and not the technical details of racecraft. And to my own surprise, I now find myself tuning into the sport regularly, catching the qualifiers and watching the races and laughing at the memes on the Internet.

A Misunderstood Genre

The “Netflix effect” of Drive to Survive is interesting because the perspective the show offers on Formula One was already common among F1 fans. It’s not like the sport was comprised entirely of oil-soaked motorheads until Netflix came along and said, hey, look, storylines. All the show did was present this way of looking at the sport in a way that non-racing fans could appreciate and connect with. And this translated into strong positive impact on viewership; in one season, 34% of viewers became F1 fans after watching the show. ESPN viewership of the sport in the United States has more than doubled since the documentary debuted.

I sometimes think real-time strategy, too, could benefit from someone coming along and simply showing people how to enjoy these games. To illustrate what I mean, let me use this thread from the game development subreddit as an example, entitled “What is the next evolution in the RTS genre? Or is it simply dead forever?”

I’ve written about the is-RTS-dead argument before, and I’m not here to rehash it. What I want to point out here is the running theme of misery highlighted in the top comments:

RTS games were never great in terms of playstyle accessibility. There's a tension between players who want to play "Simbase" and effectively make it a citybuilder, and competitive players who hammer away at the mechanics like an action game or RPG, often leaning on a mix of rote build orders for various scenarios and high APM.

I think there is a large demographic of people who are enticed by the fantasy of being a commander of an army, but dislike the micromanagement that's the main focus of most RTS games.

As someone who played a ton of SC and SC2, I think its really tough. Those games are extremely intense and mentally exhausting, even compared to something like LoL.

I feel that the persistent references to APM, micromanagement, and mechanics are really only applicable to the competitive mode. The underlying assumption seems to be that’s where RTS players generally spend their time. But I don’t think that’s right, and I think it points to a broader problem in this genre: many people just don’t get how to play these games.

Play the Campaign

The most appropriate way for most players to play real-time strategy games is to jump into non-competitive game modes - namely, the single-player campaigns, custom games, and co-op (in games that offer it, like Age of Empires II or StarCraft II). These offer an exciting mix of strategy and execution, enabling players to flex their short- and long-term thinking skills while enjoying the moment-to-moment tactile wonder of directly controlling their economy and military.

Veterans of the genre actually understand this quite well. A couple examples:

• StarCraft II - the most esports focused RTS on the market - saw about 80% of its players largely stick to the campaign.

• At any given time, there are about 16,000 concurrent players on Steam playing Age of Empires II: DE, but only between several hundred to a couple thousand ongoing ranked competitive matches. Everything else is casual. (Sadly, I’m unable to directly source this one anymore as the relevant source broke earlier this year).

The average RTS fan is actually pretty casual - statistically, they’re likely to be a campaign player with little to no experience with 1v1. They probably don’t use very many hotkeys, their APM is in the low double digits, and their understanding of the meta likely doesn’t go far beyond that rock-paper-scissors unit chart that comes with most games. And this is all perfectly reasonable and normal and good.

Unfortunately, whenever folks talk about real-time strategy, the focus too often falls on competitive multiplayer. And this is something I’ve observed for years - not just on Reddit, but even on ostensibly neutral platforms like Wikipedia. Real-time strategy is the only video game genre I’m aware of that has its own criticism section - as though one can criticize an entire type of game. And that criticism heavily features mechanical requirements.

At times, the disconnect between reality and perception is almost comical - like this excellent video taking pains to highlight that the author “sucks” at StarCraft, before (accurately) noting that the games have never stopped people like him from enjoying them.

Competitive multiplayer has a kind of monopoly on the mindshare of how people think about these games. And I think that’s a problem. I think it’s challenging for real-time strategy to reach new audiences if those audiences misunderstand how to enjoy RTS games.

The Netflix Effect

I make the comparison with Drive to Survive mostly in jest - if I were to make a documentary series on StarCraft, it would be about GuMiho’s one-man journey to blow shit up with battle mech, not the ins-and-outs of Jim Raynor’s political beliefs. But I think it’s a useful framing. There is a broad misconception that real-time strategy means esports and ranked competitive multiplayer, and I think that materially affects people’s ability to discover and enjoy these games.

I’ve spoken before about my belief in the power of patient, concerted influence and direction. I think this is an area that could benefit from it, and the nice thing is that it’s not exactly rocket science; I think we can all point to things that we misunderstood, or even disliked, until we learned how to properly enjoy them. In the case of RTS, I would encourage everyone in this space to evangelize the same basic set of facts: modern real-time strategy games do not have substantial mechanical barriers-to-entry. Most RTS fans play non-competitive modes. The competitive side of the game is really fun, but it’s only a small minority of players.

And where I think this can really move the needle is adoption by RTS developers. RTS games should be more opinionated about how they’re played, by being intentional in pushing players towards non-competitive game modes. For example, the classic UI design - a series of menu buttons, like single player, multiplayer, or options, placed side-by-side - suggests a certain neutrality that is inappropriate for the vast majority of players.

The more we match players with the gameplay they’re likely to enjoy, the more likely those players are to appreciate and stick with the genre. Maybe in the future they’ll decide to make the leap to competitive. But we should discourage them from doing so on day one.

Until next time,
brownbear

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