Turn-based gaming seems to have fallen out of vogue in the last decade or so. Western developers, especially, have shifted their RPGs and strategy games to increasingly actiony and real-time combat. I get the impression that there’s a general perception that turn-based games don’t interest the public, and that TB gaming is an outdated, stale style that just doesn’t sell.
My question is: is this perception based on reality, or is it mostly baseless? Is TB gaming really moribund, or is it viable and not being properly exploited by developers? If possible, I’d like to keep this discussion focused on the commercial viability of TB gaming and not on the design merits of TB systems, because I think the latter topic is involved enough that it deserves its own thread.
Here’s some evidence that I think would be helpful for answering the questions:
The most popular Japanese RPGs are turn-based. Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Shin Megami Tensei, and of course, Pokemon–these are turn-based (or close to turn-based) series at their hearts. They have large mainstream appeal in Japan, and some of them have the same in the West. When they’ve moved away from TB systems to real-time systems (like in the case of FF12 or the various SMT/DQ/Pokemon spinoffs), they haven’t sold as well. Dragon Quest 9’s developers briefly toyed with a real-time system until the public’s reaction made them revert to TB. When it comes to JRPGs, TB is not only commercially viable, it’s more viable than real-time systems.
Turn-based strategy games can be successful. Civ 4 is one of the highest-profile successes, but you also have stuff like Galactic Civilizations, Advance Wars, and smaller successes like the variety of TB portable games and European stuff like Dofus and Heroes of Might and Magic 5. These games don’t get many development dollars, are often on the PC (which, as we all know, is d0med), and are generally low-profile, and yet manage to do well.
Many of the popular real-time games are increasingly incorporating TB elements. The likes of EA and THQ have gradually injected more TB stuff into their real-time series–look at the expansion for the latest Command and Conquer and Warhammer 40K games. Hybrid games, like the Total Wars, have done well as they’ve beefed up their TB components. Clearly, a series doesn’t lose sales as it becomes more turn-based.
Ultimately, I think that developers and publishers should re-evaluate the market for TB gaming. Of course, Western-developed TB games sell less than real-time games at the moment, but how much of that is because there just aren’t that many high-profile, big-budget TB games made? I wouldn’t be surprised if TB games sell proportionately higher than their real-time equivalents.
All the TBS examples of commercial success you cited were for existing franchises that were born during the glory years of TBS games. They are basically household names for gamers, and continue to sell on that recognition.
A publisher going out on a limb with a new TBS franchise is an extremely risky endeavor, especially a western developer.
Take Gladius for instance. It’s the last “big budget” western TBS franchise to be created, and it bombed completely. It was also a damn good game… just no one cared.
Our only hope is from Japan, and to a lesser extent Eastern Europe. Japan produces some amazingly good TBS games, such as the recent Jeanne D’ Arc… not to mention Disgea and all of it’s NI ilk. These also sell very well, or have low manufacturing runs to coincide with their niche status.
Eastern Europe continues to churn out TBS, but 90% of it is total shit. I imagine a lot of publishers look at the constant retail failures of the imported TBS shovelware from this region and get very nervous about attempting it themselves.
Nothing against turn-based games but some of your evidence is strange. FFXII made something like the equivalent of FFX in its first week, and I’m sure has outsold most of its “turn-based” predecessors.
And you probably shouldn’t list spin-offs as selling less than main franchises because they were real-time. They’ll sell less regardlessly.
Also, I don’t think real-time games are necessarily not as commercially viable in Japan. When you look at series like Valkyrie Profile and Tales of, they doing pretty well against games not called “Final Fantasy” or “Dragon Quest”.
FFXII actually sold less than FFX (and FF7, and FF8, and that’s with a much higher console userbase and after no main-series FF game had been released for a while)–you’re thinking of how FFXII’s first-week sales almost matched FFX’s first-week sales. Worldwide, FFX is still ahead in sales by more than a million.
You’re right that spinoffs will usually sell less regardless. I’d like to compare the sales of the TB spinoffs to the RT ones, but I can’t find good numbers. From what little info I do have, though, the SMT turn-based spinoffs (like Persona) have consistently done better than their real-time counterparts.
If you’re right, and the TB successes only keep selling over the years because they’re well-known, it’s evidence that weakness in sales of TB games is a marketing issue, not a problem of basic appeal.
However, there have been plenty of more recent, successful TB games. Beyond the NIS stuff you mentioned, there are games I don’t know much about (and therefore didn’t list) like Monster Hunter, Super Robot Wars, etc.
New franchises are risky, period. I don’t see how TB franchises are any worse in this regard–in fact, because the field is relatively less crowded, the risk might be even lower. Gladius, by itself, isn’t good counterevidence. It was a five-year-old, underpromoted, Western-developed RPG that wasn’t made by Bioware or Bethesda. I doubt its failure had anything to with being turn-based.
Yeah, Western publishers aren’t going to bother until a genre-reviving megahit comes along that they can copy (and who knows when that’ll happen, if ever).
Speaking from the Gamer perspective (I am one!), I think it’s just the natural evolution of game design. I think gamers get bored waiting for their turns, and would rather be constantly engaged. This doesn’t apply to all gamers, of course.
As gaming tech has improved it opened up more possibilities for designers. Maybe it was technically difficult to make an engaging real time strategy 15 years ago? As designers had more power to play with, they came up with better ideas.
Personally, I used to play a lot of Final Fantasy, Shining Force, Heroes of Might and Magic, and other games I’m forgetting. While I have fond memories of those games, I’ve abandoned them in favor of RPGs like Mass Effect, and strategy games like Warcraft or Sins. My girlfriend is playing Lost Odyssey right now and the menu driven combat bores me to tears. It’s old, uninspired gameplay and the genre as a whole has moved beyond it in my opinion. I tried to play HOMM4 recently with some friends and waiting for everyone to take their turn was incredibly tedious. We went back to Starcraft.
…Or have lower budgets, to coincide with their respectively smaller audiences. This is a trick that American developers have trouble mastering, but there’s nothing inherently magical about it. There’s no reason why an American game developer can’t make a profitable turn-based game. They just probably can’t do it on a C&C3 budget, and so most of them don’t bother trying.
I suspect that the audience for turn-based strategy games is probably not any smaller than it was in the 90s, and may even be larger. It’s just that other segments of the industry have grown even more, so it now seems like a smaller piece of the pie by comparison.
Gladius is a poor example IMO b/c it had a feature that stopped it from being “fully turn based” in my view: that damnable reflex based power meter thing. Although the game allowed you to play with the reflex-based portion turned off, the game balance was pretty crushing without it. Most encounters were designed in the expecation that you would boost your attacks with the power meter. For me at least, it was not the fact that Gladius was turn based that turned me off but rather the fact that it had an unavoidable action element, which IMO did not mesh well with the overall turn based gameplay.
I’m definitely of the opinion that there is still a market for turn based games but the games have to good games first and foremost. I think one market weakness of a turn based game is that if the core design is poor or flawed, there is not a lot of flash and action to obscure that. Unlike a mediocre FPS, RPG or RTS which can sometimes impress just with eye candy or story elements, a turn based game is going to sink or swim based on gameplay, full stop. So that may well be one reason why turn based games are less of a sure thing than some other genres. I mean with modern resources anyone can toss flashy graphics and high res action into a game. But deep, well balanced, strategically and tactically interesting gameplay? That requires inspiration.
Yeah, I don’t dare start one until I’ve got at least three months or 1,000 posts under my belt.
As for turn-based games, no fast-paced, real-time game has ever held my attention and kept me playing for as long as a good turn-based 4x.
Case in point, I once played a marathon session of SMAC with my neighbor, wherein neither of us left the computer – not even to eat or go to the bathroom – for 16 whole hours. All other functions ceased but trying to unite Planet under our banner.
If you ask me, the balance was pretty good without it.
The balance was completely and totally fucked with it on, such that even if you were supposed to have a 1% chance of hitting normally (i.e. heavy vs secutor), all you had to do was press a button at the right time (a quickly acquired skill), and you’d get a deterministic crit every time. That made the game so easy that there’s no point in even playing.
It was a hard game with those microgames off, playing in full turn-based mode. But it was by no means impossible.
It was an okay game. If it was really “big budget” you’d think they would have put a little more polish into the presentation, which sucked. I don’t disagree that new turn-based franchises are a hard sell, but Gladius isn’t the best example because it was so bland and unengaging on the surface.
