Top 10 PC ►STRATEGY◄ Games to Watch in 2016!

Gamereplays Article: The History of Real Time Strategy

Not new-news as such, but I wanted to point readers and RTS nerds to this fantastic article by a fellow going by the pseudonym ‘Phantom’, over at gamereplays.org. However, it’s also an open document, that is, it is open to editing and contributions by anyone interested in RTS. It’s an ongoing project to document the history of the genre. So go check it out!

A snippet from the introduction:

RTS User Interface Tools

Many moons ago, I blogged about how RTS game designers should be learning from user interface design by searching far outside the narrow box of traditional games. For example, back when I blogged about this, many advanced shaping, drawing, formation, layout and grouping tools had been widely available for years for industrial use in popular apps like Photoshop. The first decent implementation of this sort of UI approach came about two or three years later, when I had all but stopped RTS blogging.

Chris Taylor came out with Supreme Commander, and with it had forged the now iconic strategic zoom. A feature that had been used for years (albeit much more crudely) in graphics and design applications, et al. It changed everything for RTS — we now had space, vision, a sense of awesome scale.

Starcraft 2 Patch 1.4 PTR (Luke’s Thoughts)

First off, this is by far the best SC2 patch to date. It seems to address with little ambiguity some of the biggest concerns voiced by the SC2 community to do with balance issues and gameplay dynamics. It is a bold and daring patch, and Blizzard, in my opinion, should be commended for listening to the players, filtering reasoned criticism from the noise, and then patching the hell out of their precious RTS baby.

Nerfs and buffs a plenty!

Apologies (and Explanations)

Firstly, welcome and/or welcome back! Sincere apologies go out to you the readership for the lack of content from our team this past year, but in particular from myself who is supposed to co-ordinate this stuff for you. But fret not RTS lovers, for the site is not yet lost to the wolves.

The short and straight of it is that I bought Starcraft 2. Yep, that’s about it. The longer waffle-rant would be more to do with work and general “life stuff” that takes hold but is incredibly boring to blog about — so I won’t!

OK, so Starcraft 2. It came. It saw. It conquered. I guess one could proclaim that the future of RTS gave birth to its long-prophesized prodigy child. ALL my spare time has hitherto been a mixture of aforementioned “life stuff” and various pragmatically-oriented projects, each competing fiercly with SC2 game-time. It’s such a fun and incredibly deep, dynamic strategy game that it’s blown my mind infinitely more than I could have ever predicted.

But this I vow to you, dear readers and fellow bloggers: more RTS coverage and articles. More rants and crazy ideas. More speculations and analyses. Just more stuff in general!

Stay tuned and thanks so much for your valuable time and saintly patience. Happy gaming!