Turn-based gaming: how commercially viable is it?

[slantz]

I can't believe there is so much love for Gladius in this thread. That game was a buggy pile of thought free dung with play mechanics similar to a golfing game.

The 'golfing game' mechanics were horribly lame and broken (see my post above) and were clearly only added to make the game more 'real-time' and accessible. It's pretty clearly tacked on, and anyone even halfway serious about the game needs to turn that thing off and forget it ever existed.

Beyond that, yeah, a lot of the problems you mentioned do exist. I haven't had any problems w/ bugs, but it is a very real issue that near the end of the game, you're forced to do events in various cities in a very specific order, but the game doesn't make at all clear what that order is. And those battles become pretty darn difficult, perhaps because the design had to take into account that broke-ass optional timing/crit system.

But there really is a lot about the game which is kick-ass, and I think people (including myself) were excited about what was done right, and still like the idea of a game that leveraged the good stuff about the game while fixing all of the problems.

It's also one of the relatively few games of its type, so it gets talked about a lot because, hey, you have to take what you can get.

[Qenan]

As far as strategy games go, the popularity of RTS over TBS has to do a lot with the mainstream player who prefer the fast, "actiony" games i.e RTS over the slow, brainy games i.e TBS.
In other words, RTS are more popular than TBS for the same reason than the action genre is more popular than the strategy genre, as a whole.

That sounds right to me. In the old days, a lot of the folks who liked action games went to the arcade.

But I also suspect there is a generational element, and it won't surprise me if 10 years from now the popular strategy format is something else (perhaps as yet unimagined).

[Jab]

I'm still amazed that no one, not even the original creators of X-Com have been able to replicate the same experience and cult status that was X-Com. I'm writing up a blog article now breaking down the game to see what went right with it, and why it hasn't been duplicated.

Re: 3d movement compared to 2d, I agree completely and it's the main reason why I can't play the 3d Fire Emblem games. I just can't get an accurate readout of the battle field compared to 2d since you can't easily see which units are what, and animations and such slow it down too much imo. Silent Storm suffered from this , as the AI could take 20+ seconds to make a move compared to X-Com when at most they would take 8 seconds from my experience.
Like many here, I'm still waiting and hoping for a successful spiritual successor to X-Com.

[malkav11]

Silent Storm has physics. I imagine that right there eats up more processing time than X-Com.

[Ben Sones]

I like having a game that I can just sit down and work at my own pace against the computer.

Oh, I agree--I like both. One of my beefs with the RTS genre is that single-player is often treated as merely a training ground for multiplayer, and isn't designed to have much staying power.

[Foxstab]

You know, if RTSes featured a path-finding/combat AI which was as good as X-Com (taking in that many parameters for calculation for each unit's reaction) it would've probably slowed most RTSes to a crawl.

One of my beefs with the RTS genre is that single-player is often treated as merely a training ground for multiplayer, and isn't designed to have much staying power.

Welcome to the world of FPS games in Y2K.
Actually, quite a few genres at that...(cough, NWN, cough).

[Gendal]

Speeeeeeeed. Just because we like a good TBS game doesn't mean we like waiting a day and a half for our turn or watching stupid combat animations for the millionth time. If I don't finish a TB tactics game chances are I got so irritated waiting for my turn or watching my guys take their sweet time I gave up.

Some absolutely revel in their sloth, like Silent Storm, an otherwise awesome game. Games that let you disable animations, enemy turn movement, etc usually mean I finish them. After the thousandth turn even the slightest delays create an unreasonable hatred in me.

[hahahabonk]

I can't believe there is so much love for Gladius in this thread. That game was a buggy pile of thought free dung with play mechanics similar to a golfing game.

Statements like this are the reason people get cancer. True story :D

I'd elaborate but Hiro says it all nicely in his posts - particularly the whole 'you take what you can get' when it comes to squad-based turn-based awesomeness. They are few and far between.

C.

[Tyrion]

Speeeeeeeed. Just because we like a good TBS game doesn't mean we like waiting a day and a half for our turn or watching stupid combat animations for the millionth time. If I don't finish a TB tactics game chances are I got so irritated waiting for my turn or watching my guys take their sweet time I gave up.

Some absolutely revel in their sloth, like Silent Storm, an otherwise awesome game. Games that let you disable animations, enemy turn movement, etc usually mean I finish them. After the thousandth turn even the slightest delays create an unreasonable hatred in me.

Yeah, TB designers really have to eliminate delays and crank up the speed of actions. That, or go with Combat Mission-style systems where you give your orders then watch lots of cool action happening. This isn't just a minor thing...it's a fundamental reason why TB gaming is considered "slow" and suffers commercially as a result.

The thing is, TB gaming actually has the potential to be inherently FASTER than real-time games. In a real-time game, you're going to have lulls in the action as you wait for your units to move, attack, build, or whatever. Sins of a Solar Empire apparently had this problem (I haven't played it yet). By contrast, a TB game can do all of the slow, boring stuff in between turns. The rest of it happens at the player's own pace, since it's asynchronous. If the player wants to spend a lot of time thinking about a move, they can do that. If a player wants to do some actions quickly, they can do that too (assuming slow animations/delays are removed, as I mentioned earlier).

[TheWombat]

I'm playing Rondo of Swords on the NDS right now. It's a strategy RPG with your typical big-eyed JRPG cast and fairly standard (so far) story, but the combat mechanics are interesting. It's turn based but it integrates movement and combat. You move through an enemy to attack it, and if you move through your own guys you can, if they have the right abilities, get boosts (like support in other games) to your health, mana, crit chances, etc.

A turn thus plays out a bit differently than in, say, Fire Emblem, a game this one resembles in some respects. Using the stylus to draw your movement path (you can use the d-pad too) gives it a different sort of vibe, and the move-through mechanic makes it feel...different...from normal TBS games, for whatever reason.

I'm not sure it's all that fun, yet, but it's interesting....

[Taranis]

Speeeeeeeed. Just because we like a good TBS game doesn't mean we like waiting a day and a half for our turn or watching stupid combat animations for the millionth time. If I don't finish a TB tactics game chances are I got so irritated waiting for my turn or watching my guys take their sweet time I gave up.

Some absolutely revel in their sloth, like Silent Storm, an otherwise awesome game. Games that let you disable animations, enemy turn movement, etc usually mean I finish them. After the thousandth turn even the slightest delays create an unreasonable hatred in me.

Good point having the option to speed up movements and animations is crucial in TB games.

But the one thing that I dislike most about TB games like Civ (and I love Civ) is a reason to finish them when the outcome of the game is already apparent. I hate having to spend an hour or more just hitting the turn button so I can see the victory screen and an entry into the HOF. In RTS's its no big deal because its fun watching your army finish off an opponent and it only takes 10 minutes or so to do, but in TB games it drags on way to long.

This to me this is the biggest hurtle facing TB game designers, making the end game as much fun as the early/mid game. Civ4:BTS tried to do this and did a decent job at it, but its still missing that "just one more turn" feeling of the early game.

[DavidKaye]

Millions of people are playing turn based games on Facebook every day.

[Damien Neil]

But the one thing that I dislike most about TB games like Civ (and I love Civ) is a reason to finish them when the outcome of the game is already apparent.

This is a place where computer game designers could stand to learn from board games. Games like Puerto Rico or Settlers of Catan always leave you wishing the game had lasted just a turn or two more.

[lesslucid]

A good TB game design should be such that, when your position becomes indomitable, the game ends. Making you invade every last city/planet/thing on the map is not a good design. What's good about Puerto Rico and Settlers and the like is that the "tension" over who is going to win the game (usually) never completely goes out of it, even when one person is ahead or a certain outcome looks likely. If the tension is gone, the thrill is gone, and the game should wind up. Like that famous composer dude said, "too many pieces of music finish too long after the end".

[Calistas]

Well, to be fair, one of the genius mechanisms that a lot of Euro games employ is player-decided end-game.

In Peurto Rico I have a mate who always likes to rush for a fill-the-building-board victory. It's very hard to stop and because he's generally filled the board, he generally wins. But it does point to a nice mechanic, that of player controlled win condition.

[Neopythia]

Having a wild-card factor in the game can help. I'm reminded of the board game Supremecy. For those that don't know, it is a cold-war era version of Risk, with a more advanced resource game. Anyway, I was terrible at the game and I would always end up as an obvious loser, even if the final end was a long ways off.

Supremecy had the ability to create nuclear weapons and launching enough nukes would create a nuclear winter. Suffice to say my strategy usually involved becoming a rogue state and acquiring enough weapons to end the world. It became a race to end the game before I ended us all. This sort of dynamic created tension, even if the final ultimate end (Victory by total conquest) was a foregone conclusion.

[slantz]

A good TB game design should be such that, when your position becomes indomitable, the game ends.

Fully agreed.

In my game, I implemented a 2/3 rule, such that whenever one player took over 2/3 of the cities on the map, or when a player's capitol was conquered, the game ended. I had a few players complain, but overall I found it helped "trim off the fat" (i.e. get rid of the uninteresting and uncompetitive parts of the game) which was an improtant design goal.

That philosophy was directly inspired by Rise of Nations, which was the first game I ever noticed that did such a good job of having numerous victory conditions, at least one of which was extremely likely to trigger just as the momentum was shifting to critical mass.

That's the way it should be.

Admittedly, tactical RPG's can't always benefit from this, as they're generally too busy making you plan kills with individual units to allocate xp. This philosophy really only applies to competitive-style games with no persistant characters.

[André Costa]

Mr.Kieron Gillen "just" made a new post on RPS about King's Bounty(and some other stuff).

It looks like it might ease some of the hunger of most TBS lovers.

[Chowhound]

For me, as much as I love the genre, it can be really frustrating at times. Pet peeves:

Too many units to control. 10 to 20 is my max. Any more, and it quickly devolves into a chore.

Superfluous units. Along with the above, this usually means I have pieces strewn about the map with no real purpose because it just takes too damn long to get them into the thick of things. Some games are good because they allow me to plot their path which can take several turns, and let them go. I hate babysitting some group every turn, and will just leave them there.

Not enough RP element. It's TB - so I'd like my units to advance and gain new skills making them valuable to me. I thought Fantasy Wars did this very well. Consider this with leveled units in C&C3 - they mean very little to me, they all get lassoed and sent out to their doom.

MP games take too damn long. A 4 player session of HoMM 3 took over a week to play at about 3-4 hours a day. I like I can get several RTS games in on a single session.

No email play. Hey, it's TB - let me take my turn and fire it off to a friend for his turn. Yes, the games take extraordinarily long, and I know it will because I know it's over email. This is great for the friend or 2 who has the time for a turn or 3 in a day due to other commitments.

[Johan O]

And the 5-billion page thread on Dominions makes it hard to argue that there's no hunger for good TBS out there.
...

Dominions does not generate enough money for anyone to live of it though. So the success, if that is what it is, of Dominions doesn't really say anything about the TBS genre being commercially viable or not. Sweden is not exactly the ideal place to start up small companies though, so what won't work in Sweden might have worked elsewhere.

[malkav11]

The too many units thing is why I can never, ever turn my cities over to AI management in Civ and related games. They just *love* to build superfluous military units. I just need a couple stacks, guys!

[strategy]

Dominions does not generate enough money for anyone to live of it though. So the success, if that is what it is, of Dominions doesn't really say anything about the TBS genre being commercially viable or not. Sweden is not exactly the ideal place to start up small companies though, so what won't work in Sweden might have worked elsewhere.

Dominions may be an excellent game, but it seems to me to struggle with the twin problems of low exposure and inscrutable game play/interface. Both, I suspect, work against a game achieving serious commercial success.

Considering small studios and turn-based games, I have in the past let myself be informed that Slitherine was essentially built on the success of Legion.

[David Erikson]

Dominions does not generate enough money for anyone to live of it though. So the success, if that is what it is, of Dominions doesn't really say anything about the TBS genre being commercially viable or not. Sweden is not exactly the ideal place to start up small companies though, so what won't work in Sweden might have worked elsewhere.

That's seems kindof strange, if you think about it.

For example let's take Spiderweb's RPGs. They are another example of indie niche game that, according to their creator, are very successeful money-wise.

Sure, old school RPGs are different genre from turn-based strategy. But both are very much niche games. Don't get me wrong, I like Spiderweb's games a lot - I've played 3 Avernum games, and I am planning to play Nethergate Resurrection soon. But these games are very similar to many old RPG games. They are well done and well worth its price if you like these types of game (I do). But Spiderweb's games don't excel in any single area, and they is absolutely nothing revolutionary about them - there are plenty of old games as well as indie RPGs that have done very similar things, with various degrees of success. They are just old school RPGs done right, and I am very happy that they exist.

However Dominions games are very revolutionary in many areas. There is absolutely nothing in the past or in the present like them. Master of Magic is the closest game in terms of overall philosophy and game mechanics, but the differences between these two are vast.

So why Spiderweb's games are very successful money-wise while Illwinter's games are not?

Both companies create highly niche games. Both have very low visibility - I am sure that vast majority of computer gamers never heard of either of these companies. IMHO the production values in Dominions are much higher - battle animation, zillion of small but well done unit images, great writing. Both companies employ 2-3 people during game production. Illwinter give much better after-release support - all these patches that keep adding new content and tweak mechanics several years after release. (Spiderweb patches just fix bugs)

Illwinter's fan base seems to be much more vocal and dedicated than Spiderweb's fan base. And that's easy to understand. Even the most rabid fans of Spiderweb's games would unlikely call any of these games "the best RPG ever created", unless they are completely clueless about RPG genre.

Personally I do not consider myself to be a rabid fan of either Illwinter or Spiderweb. But I love both of these genres - turn based strategy games and SP RPG are by far my favorite genres. And I can confidently say that in my 20 years of playing turn-based strategy games, Dominions is the best game in this genre that I have ever played. I can not say the same about Spiderweb games, although I like them a lot.

So why, despite all these facts, Spiderweb seem to be much more commercially successful than Illwinter?

Marketing? Much steeper learning curve? Larger niche base?

Any thoughts?

[Johan O]

Dominions may be an excellent game, but it seems to me to struggle with the twin problems of low exposure and inscrutable game play/interface. Both, I suspect, work against a game achieving serious commercial success.
...

Yeah, I was just saying that the level of success dominions enjoys doesn't really say anything about the commercial viability of TBS'es. Essentially it is a game made as a hobby project, dominions doesn't pay the bills, there isn't even real effort into making it into something that would pay the bills.

[Vic Davis]

And I can confidently say that in my 20 years of playing turn-based strategy games, Dominions is the best game in this genre that I have ever played.

I have to agree. When Dominions 2 came out I woke up about 9 months later and realized I hadn't bought a single new game in all that time. For me this was unheard of. I've still got unopened boxes in a backlog to this day but Dom II totaly absored a huge span of my gaming attention.

[Johan O]

...
However Dominions games are very revolutionary in many areas. There is absolutely nothing in the past or in the present like them. Master of Magic is the closest game in terms of overall philosophy and game mechanics, but the differences between these two are vast.

So why Spiderweb's games are very successful money-wise while Illwinter's games are not?

Both companies create highly niche games. Both have very low visibility - I am sure that vast majority of computer gamers never heard of either of these companies. IMHO the production values in Dominions are much higher - battle animation, zillion of small but well done unit images, great writing. Both companies employ 2-3 people during game production. Illwinter give much better after-release support - all these patches that keep adding new content and tweak mechanics several years after release. (Spiderweb patches just fix bugs)

Illwinter's fan base seems to be much more vocal and dedicated than Spiderweb's fan base. And that's easy to understand. Even the most rabid fans of Spiderweb's games would unlikely call any of these games "the best RPG ever created", unless they are completely clueless about RPG genre.

Personally I do not consider myself to be a rabid fan of either Illwinter or Spiderweb. But I love both of these genres - turn based strategy games and SP RPG are by far my favorite genres. And I can confidently say that in my 20 years of playing turn-based strategy games, Dominions is the best game in this genre that I have ever played. I can not say the same about Spiderweb games, although I like them a lot.

So why, despite all these facts, Spiderweb seem to be much more commercially successful than Illwinter?

Marketing? Much steeper learning curve? Larger niche base?

Any thoughts?

Well I don't know really. I guess a not insignificant part of it is that Vogel lives of his games. If IW had to live of dominions perhaps things would have been different. Other that I have no real idea.

[Jasper Phillips]

Commercially speaking, Dominions main flaws are that it's hard to learn, and single player isn't as compelling as multiplayer. Spiderweb's games have plenty of flaws, and in general I far prefer Dominions, but they don't have these key barriers.

[idrisz]

I'm still amazed that no one, not even the original creators of X-Com have been able to replicate the same experience and cult status that was X-Com. I'm writing up a blog article now breaking down the game to see what went right with it, and why it hasn't been duplicated.

Re: 3d movement compared to 2d, I agree completely and it's the main reason why I can't play the 3d Fire Emblem games. I just can't get an accurate readout of the battle field compared to 2d since you can't easily see which units are what, and animations and such slow it down too much imo. Silent Storm suffered from this , as the AI could take 20+ seconds to make a move compared to X-Com when at most they would take 8 seconds from my experience.
Like many here, I'm still waiting and hoping for a successful spiritual successor to X-Com.

I enjoy silent storm almost as much as X-com, I don't find a problem with AI thinking, never really took that long for me. only thing I had a problem with silent storm is you can order someone tho literally shoot 5 walls and hit someone as long as you have a spotter. basically it come down to a bunch of sniper + 1 scout = FTW.

[Damien Neil]

So why Spiderweb's games are very successful money-wise while Illwinter's games are not?

Attempting to learn Dominions as a new player is somewhat like trying to learn tensor calculus from a geometry textbook while chained to an anchor that has been dropped into the Marianas Trench.

I'm probably crazy, but I suspect this has something to do with it.

[strategy]

Well I don't know really. I guess a not insignificant part of it is that Vogel lives of his games. If IW had to live of dominions perhaps things would have been different. Other that I have no real idea.

That is probably also a very important factor. As a software developer, if one enjoys a non-game development job, I don't think there is much incentive to go full-time on game development (which, ultimately, is just the same job with games)? Dedication accounts for a lot.