Again, people are citing individual turn-based games (and old ones–MBC came out in 2002) as evidence that turn-based gaming as a whole can’t succeed. The fact that MBC had little marketing, or 2D graphics, or an initially dull-looking concept couldn’t be the cause for its lack of success–it has to be because it’s turn-based.
Too bad it wasn’t released on XBLA, though. Other TB games (like Catan) have done well there.
For what it’s worth, I make a living by making commercial turn-based strategy games for the PC. They are definitely commercially viable, if you know your audience, keep your budget and team small, and try to do something interesting.
Real time strategy introduces a whole slew of problems that turn based just doesn’t have, and you can get away with a fraction of the art requirements when doing something turn based. They are also easier to debug :D
I also like doing turn based strategy because its a relatively popular genre for people still playing non casual PC games, and the PC will always be my platform of choice (as long as people still buy games on it).
I know quite a few indies doing turn based strategy games. You won’t see us on the cover of magazines, but we are paying the bills, and continuing to make them. You just need to google more to find us :D
Including bodily functions.
NB: your anecdote != data.
Well, not breathing or anything like that, but just about everything else. We started around 5:00 PM and didn’t finish until after 9:00 the next morning.
TBS is not viable.
End of thread.
I racked up a huge debt trying!
Depends what you mean by viable I guess, theres definitely still a market for turn-based games but a market that will support high-profile, big-budget games? I don’t think so. Comes back to being realistic with your expected sales and budget before you start development.
If you take advantage of digital distribution there really shouldn’t be any genre boundaries, every game has a chance to find its market as long as its developers give it a chance with proper expectations.
I think there’s a basic assumption in place for a lot of people that turn-based gameplay is somehow “old” or “dated” when it’s really a completely different approach to gameplay. It’s true that real-time has become more technologically viable nowadays, but just because it’s possible doesn’t mean it’s appropriate.
On the other hand, recent years have brought some turn-based tactical entries in completely off the wall series. (Who on Earth would have predicted a CCG/tactical Metal Gear game? Or an R-Type turn-based strategy game?) That’s a trend I’d like to see continue.
Yes! Nobody plays chess any more.
Or cards.
The Battlefront team did extremely well with turn based gaming, pushing it to where it needed to go in a tactical wargame - that is, a WEGO system.
And wargames are a good example of where turn based is still strong, even tho in my mind it shouldn’t be. WEGO or realtime, anything else is so artificial in a war setting that I feel myself being jolted out of the historic flavour while I watch the other army do stuff without any response from my guys.
31 posts in an no one’s mentioned Total War yet? Or does that not count since it’s RTS battles with a TBS world map.
+1
I really enjoyed Gladius with the meter thing off. Was a farce with it on for the reason Hiro mentioned. Once I had the meter down I never missed and always did critical damage, while the enemy could rarely hit me. You actually have to outwit and be tactical with it off and the game really shined that way for me.
Total War was mentioned early, like possibly in the first post?
In a sense I’d say the problem with turn-based games is that the games that are out there already satisfy most of what the audience for them want. I guess this applies more to turn-based strategy games than turn-based combat in RPGs… but, consider the amount of time one can spend playing Civ or SMAC or GalCiv or the like, if one enjoys that kind of game. People relate stories like the one above of spending days, weeks, months, &c, in the thrall of a single game. Whereas, no matter how much you like Half-Life 2, say, you can play the whole thing through in a matter of days and then if you’re a real fan you might play it through again a second or third time. If at that point a game comes out which appears to be kind of like HL2, but not quite as good you might be genuinely tempted to go and get it, and genuinely feel like you got a decent deal out of it if you play for 12-15 hours and complete it. (I’m pulling these numbers more or less out of the air because I don’t play FPSs myself). But if a game comes along which from the reviews appears to be kind of like GalCiv2 but not quite as good, why would a GalCiv2 fan bother with it?
I guess I agree with the person above who said that the market for TB or TBS games is absolutely as big or slightly bigger than in the past, and merely in relative decline. But the other problem faced by someone wanting to make a game in that arena is that in general your audience is not “hungry” for new product. The two ways you might be able to have a successful game is to do something similar but “better” (ie more polished, more complex, more options, more of “something” that’s already in the majors) than the existing “genre kings” (which means you’d better have a big budget and a lot of talent on board - and a lot of patience) or you can do something innovative that caters to some niche within that audience who are dissatisfied with some aspect of those “genre kings”, but of course then you’re talking about a smaller market (which means smaller budgets, less polish &c) and the risk that your innovation actually doesn’t “work”.
If you’re willing to spend the time scouring the net for them, I think you’ll find plenty of attempts in this second category, and many of them are excellent and many of them are “interesting but flawed” and I’m guessing that a decent proportion of them are financially successful, at least sufficiently so that the studios keep on keeping on.
oh… yeah… nevermind.
The thing is, yes, Civ IV and GalCiv II and other 4X games and the like can occupy months or years, if you let them. But they are a special subclass of turn-based game that’s designed to be near infinitely replayable. There are far more games out there with turn-based gameplay that are very much finite, play-once-or-twice experiences. It’s true that they take longer than the average shooter, but they’re still done at some point. Examples include pretty much every JRPG with turn-based combat, most strategy/tactical RPGs (Nippon Ichi offerings aside), a whole bunch of PC RPGs of yesteryear as well as a few European and/or indie offerings more recently, many war games, etc.
It’s like saying that shooter fans aren’t hungry for new games because some people obsess over Counterstrike for years.
As far as strategy games go, I think the popularity of RTS over TBS has a lot to do with AI, or more specifically the lack of its improvement. With a few exceptions, the AI in strategy games hasn’t improved a lot in the last 20 years. In that environment, RTS games actually give the AI an advantage as it forces the human player to limit the amount of time they can think about what they are going to do. Having less time, the human player is challenged more than they would be if they could indefinately plot their moves.
I doubt AI has much to do with it. RTS AI ranges from good to terrible, and the only consistent advantage RTS AI has over humans is its ability to focus on more than one thing at a time. It doesn’t always plan well and isn’t as flexible at changing resource collection priorities.
I think that multiplayer is the big reason why RTS games have “won”. The games are short, so you can play multiple sessions in a night, and generally have very easy ways to measure success and failure. Turn based games have, for some reason, moved towards being these huge epic experiences that take many hours in single player; there aren’t many half-hour TBS games. So trying to make a quick and interesting multiplayer experience is a big challenge. As the internet and MP gaming became more ubiquitous, the rise of the RTS was predictable.
You certainly can sell TBS games, and it’s possible that some breakout Civ of the future can emerge. But we’re pretty much stuck with mid-level titles, some really big franchises and lots of turn based wargames.
Troy
Now that you mention it, Troy, I can only recall one or two RTS matches I’ve ever played that dragged on past the usual duration, and those few occasions in which they did were usually the result of a design flaw in our custom maps. I screwed up on a Warcraft 2 map, once, and through the ill-considered placement of rocks turned what should have been a relatively straightforward battle with a strong naval component into a 6-hour trial-and-error session.
Generally, though, they (RTS matches) do tend to be quite a bit quicker.