Real Time Strategy Innovation (cont'd)

Good Game Design

by Brad Wardell - January, 2001

One additional apect of Mobilization is that there would be no rushing. Oh, you could try, but you would just die. That�s because you don�t have helpless units standing around the buildings waiting to be slaughtered. If you�re going to attack, you better attack in massive force because the units in the buildings have a significant home field advantage and would chew up any half-attempt.

And along that line, when you do click on your buildings, you can see how many people are inside of them. If things are becoming grim for your empire, you can send those farmers, shop workers, scientists, etc. to the front (i.e. send the old, then the kids, etc.), sacrificing your future possibly but also quite possibly saving your present.

The overall goal was to create a game that was extremely easy to play. From a new user�s perspective, there were only a few different types of buildings in the entire game. Directing units was straight-forward and the types of paths to victory were varied since you could take the population path and overwhelm your enemy in numbers. Or you could take the technology path and overwhelm them with lots of advanced weaponry. Plus there are infinite combinations in between quality and numbers expressed in a very simplified user interface.

And while not possible with the TA engine, we also wanted to provide for joining games in progress in which AI players could be replaced by human players who joined later. But that�s another issue entirely.

We had gotten pretty far in our discussions to the point of outlining detailed design documents, budgets, and proposals to Cavedog from GT Interactive and Stardock. Unfortunately, things didn�t work out. GT Interactive had financial problems and was eventually sold off and Cavedog disappeared as well. It would have been very interesting to see how different the strategy game industry would be if the TA engine were a licensable property.

Still, even without it, we plan to try to make Mobilization on Drengin.net (www.drengin.net). It won�t initially have a 3D engine or fancy graphics, but I think there are enough players out there who want to see more focus on strategy and less on clicking that they would forgive us for not having a 3D engine.

What are your views? Post a message here at Quarter to Three or visit news://news.stardock.com/stardock.games.drengin to discuss.

Brad Wardell is the Project Manager of two ongoing Stardock games:

The Corporate Machine, a business strategy game due out December 11 and Galactic Civilizations, a turn based strategy game due out late 2001. Stardock�s website is http://www.stardock.com. Brad Wardell�s website is http://people.mw.mediaone.net/bwardell. He is also the Product Manager of WindowBlinds (www.windowblinds.net) and DesktopX (www.desktopx.net).

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