14 DAY TRIAL // According to one leading strategy game developer, the only thing keeping the genre from being as popular as first-person shooters is the problems that gamers still face when it comes to understanding and using the interfaces companies create.
Greg Wilson, who is a producer working at Relic and is working on Company of Heroes 2, told MCV Pacific that, “People love playing that kind of game. I think the success of Starcraft II, or really even Starcraft I, shows us that it’s possible for these kind of games to take off and be exposed to a broad market type of consumer.”
He added, “And I think that with the new advances in technology (all these touch-devices on slates and tablets that they’re talking about for the new consoles) RTS games will be able to break into that kind of mainstream because it’s really the interface that’s so challenging for people, what with so many buttons to press, left and right clicking, trying to manipulate the camera, multiple units to control, and that’s in addition to all the gameplay elements they need to master.”
Wilson expects to see gradual improvements in the coming years, as developers make more efforts to move the strategy control scheme to consoles, and a broader market will soon be available to the genre.
The biggest issue, even for big strategy series like Total War, is that it’s very hard to translate the experience that hardcore gamers get using a keyboard and mouse to the standard controller of the home console set.
A change might happen this year when the Nintendo made Wii U launches, with its tablet like controller, which could allow strategy games to be controlled via touch.
Company of Heroes 2 was officially announced earlier this year and gamers will probably get access to it during next year, exclusively on the PC.