Memorial Day and Strategy Games: No Sacrifice At All

Memorial Day is your typical American holiday. Though officially devoted to honor the sacrifices made by those citizens who have died in battle, it is mostly devoted to barbecues and beer drinking. It is the unofficial start of summer.

In a twisted game-framed idea, this is a lot like strategy and war games. Even though they often deal with the most serious issues that face mankind (war, peace, imperialism) they never ask the player to connect with those digital people "dying" for the cause.

In short, the soldiers who die for us in our games are expendable; a series of red-shirts who make no difference to us so long as the game ends in a victory. Whether the game is a long hard slog that is a war of attrition or a quick zerg-rush strike that ends the war in a moment, the casualties mean nothing to the player.

This, of course, means nothing in the short run. Digital dudes are digital dudes. But I wonder if it does give strategy gamers and wargamers a peculiar idea of what it is like to send men into battle. In a game, no cost is too large and the best strategy is the one that works.

I think that there is room for a strategy game that makes the gamer think seriously before committing men to battle. In this imperfect world, wars sometimes must be fought and many men and women obey orders and die for what they are told is a worthy cause. Strategy and wargames have none of this sense of sacrifice. There is never any onus on the player to minimize casualties or weigh the propriety of a war. Armed conflict is not only a legitimate option, but often the most efficient option. For all the grognard complaints about realism in games, there is rarely any critique about how realistic the cost of war is.

I hope you had a nice Memorial Day and took some time to move beyond the burgers and beer that have come to typify this holiday.

Another reason to hate E3

I wasn't at E3 this year so I learned about what was going on the same way that most of you did. I read the major gaming news sites, kept an eye on my favorite forums and kept checking Gametab for anything new.

E3 has become such a huge press event that it puts the week before and after into a nether region of press coverage. Before E3 it's all about "What we are looking forward to E3?". After the event, it is all "Whither E3?" and "Ten cool things we saw at E3."

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for reviews of Supreme Ruler 2010 and Imperial Glory - two strategy titles that show a lot of promise in this dead zone of game releases. I depend on reviews to guide my purchases (I am not a first day buyer i most cases) so the lack of coverage of recent game releases really cuts into my routine.

And, my most reliable source - word of mouth - is further limited because nobody is hearing about these games through game site coverage.

It's not like there was a lot of surprising news coming out of E3. New consoles were launched with the specs that had leaked a few days before. Few new games were unveiled. The only uniformly positive buzz is about Spore. And everyone says that there are too many people there who don't belong there.

I say leave a few people at home to man the store and keep the review updates going. Both Imperial Glory and Supreme Ruler have been out for a couple of weeks now, and Gamespy and Gamespot likely got advance copies. I want to know what their reviewers think. I need to buy another game. Help me.

Rome: Total Modding

Rome: Total War is one of the biggest strategy hits in the last five years. Every serious PC gamer I know has played it and, aside from the usual hardcore constituency who play a game for 50 hours straight and wonder why it starts to get easier, the praise is near universal.

It has spawned two very successful mods. The Rome: Total Realism mod tries to make the game more historically accurate by recasting all the factions and redoing the map. There are more cities, historical limitations on barbarian expansion and more realistic recruitment of Roman legions. It is a labor of more than love - it is a serious obsession. It's a great mod in many ways, and should keep the grognards happy for now.

Historic Battles includes more of the great battles from the period, as created by a modder who goes by the handle of Ninjacool. The battles have huge unit sizes to give them that epic feel, but it does create a bit of slow down on some machines. The battles don't quite look right all the time, but Rome itself had Trasimene look nothing like Trasimene. So this is not a major problem. All the usual suspects are in the mod. Gaugamela, Cannae and my personal favorite Pharsalus are the highlights.

The latest Rome patch (1.2) included a battle editor, and I think I will soon put my limited modding skills to the test with my own historic battles. The editor itself is not very user friendly, and is even more cumbersome in many ways than the baffling scenario editor that came with the Great Battles series. (That editor, though, spawned some amazing user scenarios, so if you have the Great Battles Collector's Edition, don't forget to download some of those at Wargamer's file depot. )

So, with some time and talent, I think we might see some more professional quality work from all the modders out there. Creative Assembly has been very supportive of the modding community, a trend in gaming that we in the "press" can encourage by getting word of this body of work out.

Will Wright on Spore

If you haven't seen Will Wright's GDC talk about Spore and content, do it now. (registration required). It's an hour long, but well worth it. Watch it to the end. Then come back.

Done?

The highlight, of course, is the demo of Spore and it does not disappoint. I haven't seen any game so original since, well, The Sims.

But the point is a return to algorithmic programming with no loss of data for the player and this is done through player creation based on simple systems.

Though the idea of having other players' animals being pulled into my ecosystem is a little odd, the challenge of infinite content is met through the compression of the data into a small rule system. Wright says that the player creations will run around 1k in size - an amazing saving of space and necessary to make an ecosystem look real and convincing.

And then the game changes to a RTS civ management game. And then to SimCity. And everything is done through simple rule sets and an amazingly obvious editor.

I don't think I have ever seen a tech demo that promised such emergent gameplay. Though the Civ bit looked uninspired and, frankly, a little dull, the development of an authentically foreign culture and truly original world - for minimal cost in space and processing power - with a focus on light and player driven gameplay.

His concept of player experiences being the better story than anything scripted by the designer is not new. I think that strategy gamers have always understood this.

But if you compare the demo of Spore, a game still many months off, with the glorified cut-scenes on display for the new consoles at E3, there is no question what the most important presentation there was. Wright's GDC presentation didn't get the attention that it deserved in the gaming press at large and most of the E3 coverage has been about the new hardware in the pipeline.

But this - Spore and games like it - this is what I live for.

Carnival of Gamers

The Carnival of Gamers is on at Tony Rice's Buttonmashing. A bunch of gaming blogs have gotten together to show what we have out there. I read two or three blogs daily, plus a few more a couple of times a week.

Sample the menu over there and fill your belly with some interesting perspectives on the industry and the hobby we love. My contribution was my recent column on Gamer Shame,

Gamer Shame

Womengamers.com recently posted an article by Fizgig (pseudonym, of course) about being afraid to reveal to your hobby to you colleagues and friends. “Why don’t I tell people at the university where I work that I play videogames?” Fizgig wrote. A university teacher, she would hide her hobby. (At last week’s E3, ESA chief Doug Lowenstein brought this article to the attention of the industry at large in his State of the Industry Address.)

Fizgig focuses on the shame of women gamers, but there is still a prevailing fear among adults that games are not a serious hobby and a waste of time. She makes a connection between the objectification of women in the industry and the corresponding resistance of women to share their interest in gaming.

But, as she notes, her own fiancé was reluctant to reveal his interest in gaming. Gamer shame is an equal opportunity disorder.

I have been “out” as a gamer for a while now. And Fizgig is on the way there. She doesn’t go into people’s reactions to her hobby, but I can guess. Most people are genuinely interested.

At the high school where I finished interning, about half of my department gamed in one fashion or another. There was one teacher who was a serious flight sim nut. Another was your standard console gamer. A third confessed to playing a lot of Rome: Total War. One female teacher took the trouble to explain that she had no games on her computer because she wasted too much time on then.

And the age range of this group is from early 20s to mid 40s.

My other non-gaming friends find my hobby (and the fact that I occasionally get paid to write about it) interesting, but in general just another hobby. They put it on the same level as watching movies or reading mystery novels. It’s a harmless distraction of no real importance. I am not a freak – though their lack of gaming knowledge does limit the types of conversations we can have about the subject.

In short, I think that the fear of ostracism, mockery or pity is pretty overblown. There will always be those snobs who think gaming is pointless, but these are the same people who don’t watch TV and talk about it endlessly. Games have been part of the background of my generation for as long as I can remember, so it’s not like you are unveiling that you are a LARPer.

Games may not be mainstream yet, but they aren’t in the shadows. Gamers shouldn’t be either.

Everyone's Doing It

Gamespot has some screenshots of the upcoming XIII Century: Death or Glory. You can read more about it at 1c Games headquarters.

Gee. Epic battles, a Risk-like strategy game, 10 playable factions, sieges...didn't I play this before?

Creative Assembly has a good thing going. A distinctive look and complete command of the sub-genre. They had large battles and a strategy overlay that was finally perfected in Rome.

Immediately, after Shogun was released, Magitech released a similar Japanese themed game called Takeda. They shortly after did a Rome themed one, Strength and Honor, which is still awaiting its US release. The Magitech games put more energy into the strategy than the battles, and they had a lower budget look and feel. (They are now at work on Takeda 2).

But now we have Imperial Glory, a Total War type game set in Napoleonic Europe and soon we'll have XIII Century, which will have customizable units. Legion: Arena looks to have a Total War vibe to its battles, though we'll have to wait until Xmas to see how they stick a strategy engine to it.

In short, Creative Assembly's trademark style now belongs to everyone.

This is nothing new. Civ sparked clones, as did Command and Conquer. All the great strategy originators had to see their own Eureka moments copied or bastardized by less talented developers.

Now, XIII Century could be a great game. It could be the 3D Medieval: Total War.

But after seeing a Rise of Nations campaign map tagged onto Cossacks II and Rise of Nations borders in Empire Earth II, I wonder why anyone wonders why strategy gamers are a little jaded.

Underdone Strategy Settings

As wide and deep as the strategy genre is, you would think that we would see more variety in the settings for the games. The push for a familiar world to put the player at ease means that most games just repeat the same moments over and over again. Games with a broad historical sweep aside, strategy games today generally fall into four major groups:

Roman
Medieval
World War II
Cold War gone hot

There were once lots of Civil War battle games and games that dealt with Napoleon, but the golden age of wargaming is long past. So these settings, though still popular with players, are a little out of fashion. As ancient themed games have grown in popularity, these early modern and modern themes have faded.<

The Age of Discovery is also a common them in games, but is not a perennial favorite like revisiting D-Day is.

I have a few periods that could use the attention of a talented designer. I am not suggesting that people stop making games about familiar or popular topics - I need legions to command - but would a little change hurt?

Ancient Middle East - Besides Chariots of War, no other game has really dealt with this fascinating period. Though the tech tree would be simple, and largely focused on organizational stuff, the diplomatic setting is complex and deep. You could plop the player in as the King of Assyria, armed with the greatest military force ever seen or as the King of Judah, caught between Assyria and the Egyptian superpower to the south. There is probably a good Christian/Jewish religious game in here somewhere. Can you keep your faith and your kingdom?

Renaissance Italy - If you want diplomatic wheeling dealing, this is the setting for it. The Merchant Prince/Machiavelli games dealt with some of the scheming that the author of The Prince was talking about, but put some foreign and military policy in there. This was a cockpit of all kinds of fun. If Paradox is smart, they'll package the Machiavelli variant with their Diplomacy game now in production.

Exploration - Someone on another forum had this idea, and I think it's a good one. Let the player be an explorer in the opening of a great Continent. Randomize the world setting, put strategic decisions in his/her way (negotiations, supplies, speed, competition for renown) and let people act out their inner Livingston.

Creation of China - the Shogun Era of Japan has been done a few times, and Koei dealt with the early Chinese empire way back in the Golden Age of strategy gaming. The success of recent Chinese movies with the expansion of Qin as a backdrop may mean that there is an audience for this kind of historic strategy epic.

Trade Empires - Yeah, Frog City already did a game called this. But someone should revisit it and make it fun. Add multiplayer. Maybe if Frog City wasn't too busy making a GTA drug lord ripoff, they could do it.

Ideas are a dime a dozen in the game industry, and I am sure that smarter people than I have proposed ideas similar to these to their bosses. None of these ideas is purely original, just underdone.

And, familiar settings means a ready made audience. Which means money. Most great games are variations on a theme - nothing way out in left field.

But take this chance to pitch the strategy game you want to see. Maybe somebody will listen.

Default Powers in Discovery

It's funny how strategy games tend to follow each other as if there are default settings for what these virtual worlds are supposed to look like. I've already mentioned for the trebuchet moved from an obscure medieval weapon to being something that strategy gamers expect. Age of Empires II made this siege device a household word.

With Age of Empires III only six months away, it is a good time to take note of how it too is using the default understanding of what distinguished the major colonial powers from each other.

The first game to distinguish the great European powers of the Age of Exploration was Sid Meier's Colonization, a popular strategy title that never reached brilliance, but was certainly enjoyable. In the New World of colonization, the four European powers had four different advantages to give them an edge over their rivals. Riven by religious strife, England produced immigrants for the colonies at a faster rate. The French got along better with the Natives and could expect more peaceful relations. The Spanish were conquerors and so they got an attack bonus when attacking a Native village. The Dutch had the early commercial advantage of a second ship and more stable prices at the home port.

So, the template was set. The English are better colonizers, the French and Indians get along better, the Spanish kill people more efficiently and the Dutch are business geniuses.

Though it is hard to point to conclusive evidence that game designers take their ideas from other people, Interplay's Conquest of the New World Deluxe Edition implemented similar distinctions between the major powers, even throwing Portugal and a native race into the mix.

England gets ship and artillery bonuses - different from Colonization.

France gets better relations with natives - the same.

Natives get more movement and more gold.

Holland collects interest on gold mines - more commercial stuff.

Portugal gets movement bonuses - probably reflecting early exploration.

Spain gets better infantry and better explorers - a military bonus, but most of the powers get some sort of military bonus.

So we have some similarities and some differences. Most of the cultures get some military bonus of some sort, so Spain isn't too special except for that it applies to the plentiful infantry. England's naval bonus makes sense. France is, by now, firmly pegged as the friend of the Indians and the Dutch like money.

What will we have in Age of Empires III? The May issue of Computer Games Magazine had a thorough preview in which some of the distinctions were laid out. The English get a new citizen with every house - back to the big populations of Colonization. The French get along better with the Indians - again. The Dutch can build a special commercial building. The Portuguese start with two town center building units. The Spanish get more frequent shipments from home. A new culture - the Germans - can recruit mercenaries more easily.

The replication of many of these powers and distinctions in games from three different developers that cover the same era is quite astonishing. If you compare the Romans and Greeks in Age of Empires and Rise of Nations, you will find fewer resemblances I bet.

This fact implies that there is an understanding of the differences between most of the European colonial powers in America. Take the French native relations bonus. Given the relatively limited French colonization in the Americas (they claimed a lot of land, but didn't settle much of it) the lack of sustained French-Native warfare shouldn't be surprising. Beyond the French alliance with the Huron, it is hard to come up with strong evidence that the French and Natives got along better as a matter of policy.

Similarly, the Dutch commercial empire so strongly reflected in these games subsumes the Dutch wars of conquest in Asia. The impression of the Dutch as money smart traders is likely reinforced by English perception of The Netherlands as more of an economic than military threat like France or Spain.

Interestingly, the Spanish seem to be a mystery for game designers. They get a strong military bonus versus natives in Colonization, a general infantry bonus in Conquest of the New World and will be more a standard default power in AoE3. They had the largest empire in the New World, intermarried with natives, exacted slave labor, engaged in extensive missionary activity and yet this great power comes away as undistinctive.

I wonder if the so-called "Black Legend" of Spanish imperialism - the widespread belief that the Spanish were more cruel and vicious to the conquered people of America than other powers - has something to do with the indecision to label the Spanish. Game developers tend to resist ascribing morally objectionable powers to historic empires, for very understandable reasons. But, aside from Colonization, no game maker who has dealt with this period seems to recognize that we remember Cortez and Pizarro for a reason.

If I've forgotten any game that addresses these issues or you want to contribute your own thoughts on this type of historic stereotyping, please weigh in.

Enthusiasm waning

I love the anticipation part of gaming. Waiting for the game, consuming all the news, checking forums and screenshots. All this stuff is what separates the serious gamer from his casual friends.

Sometimes things take a long time, though, and my attention is drawn to a shiny new bauble. Or disappointing news comes out and the zeal wavers.

Take Legion: Arena for instance. I had expected this to be released this spring, but it now looks like fall is more likely. With Legion II also in development, the late release of Legion: Arena makes it more likely that Slitherine will miss the Xmas target for its grand strategy game.

And then you are hit with the news that Legion: Arena will only come with Romans and Gauls and that there are no immediate plans to expand the army list.

I understand the reasons, but I don't have to like them. Yes, lots of wargames are released with limited army lists, but the idea of improving my Roman army by beating on the same hapless barbarians time and again isn't exactly inspiring. The "hundreds of missions" sounds great, but if the only reward for beating back Helvetians is that you get to beat back more Belgae, it will be hard to keep going.

Legion: Arena has the potential to be one of the most original and creative wargames out there (obvious similarities in look to Rome aside) but the army customization will only be a huge draw if you get to customize more than just some Roman shields.

The Mcneils are champion tabletop wargamers who could put their DBA/DBM skills to use in making that world of historic gaming alive in all its variety. Instead, new armies will depend on the reception of Legion: Arena. A practical decision, but still disappointing.

Games for the Masses

Ron Gilbert has an interesting post (leading to interesting comments) over at Grumpy Gamer.

The gist of it is that complexity and immersion - hallmarks of games designed for the hardcore audience - are not the way to go if you want to bring in the casual gamer.

It brings to mind a conversation I had with a casual gaming colleague. A World War II buff, I recommended Hearts of Iron II to him. He's a smart guy (though lots of idiots play Hearts of Iron) and Paradox did a great job making the interface and manual user friendly. Recent patches (or "enhancements" as Paradox has taken to calling them in an Orwellian twist) have made it a better game in some ways, though the focus on finding more portraits is misplaced. But I digress.

I showed him my review in CGM and told him a bit about the game. The first question he asked, though, was "Is this one of those games that takes four hours to play?" I meekly told him that, yes, four hours would be a minimal investment. And that it would take him a while to figure it out, because as user friendly as Hearts of Iron II is, it involves a considerable rethinking of priorties from the flight sims that were the staple of his diet.

Maybe I should have steered him towards Combat Mission - a first rate war game that really gets battle right and is pretty easy to understand - but I do want to share my love of grand strategy with people who I know would love it too.

If they could find the time.

One reason I don't play shooters is that I am terrible at them. I appreciate the lighting and the pretty pictures, but the skills required to actually be good at them have advanced to the point that the idea of me picking up Half Life 2 and playing through it without using God Mode is absurd. Or maybe they haven't. But all the talk about strafing, back tracking, puzzle levels, real physics and the like is hardly encouraging to a guy who just wants to run down hallways and kill things.

Fighting games are all about combos, and MMORPGs encourage power-gaming and a serious time investment. Who has time for this once they have a house and kids?

Not every game can be Tetris, but the distinction between complex and complicated has been blurry for a while now. Some gamers rejoice in the "leetness" required to be a good gamer and have no real desire to see the hobby move out of the niche that caters to their interests so well.

But a lot of innovation can come from stepping back and deciding what the core of your game is all about. There is a discipline in simplicity and user friendliness that I think is being lost in the rush to make the next super toy for the hardcore.

Hardcore strategy gamers don't mind micromanagement. Flight sim nuts like realistic controls. But both genres will find themselves on the margins forever if they don't take steps to move beyond their core audiences.

Many gamers sneer at The Sims though it is the best selling game in history. There we have innovation, player control, non-linearity, customization...all the stuff that gamers say they love. But it was too simple, too repetitive and too girly for the "real men" who play computer games.

I'd trade the next five WW2 RTS games for a single game as open and free as The Sims. And there is an audience for that kind of simplicity and joy. But, instead of welcoming these new PC Gamers with more games that appealed to their not-hardcore tastes, we got a series of new shooters and MMOGs.

Look at the recent E3 coverage. Almost all the big stories were about the technology - technology which seemingly only serves the purpose of making things look pretty when they explode. Almost every tech demo on the Xbox 360 or PS3 was about killing things, outracing things or watching men furrow their brows in determination. The Killzone 2 movie seemed to be about all three.

Meanwhile, mass market hits like Age of Empires and resident geniuses like Will Wright had to struggle for coverage. Part of this is the decline in the PC share of the market relative to consoles, but some of it was likely due to the same-old-stuff in the Age series - though you rarely hear a similar media complaint about Madden Football - and the just plain weirdness of Spore. Give gamers what they say they want - innovation - and the coverage is minimal. Give gamers what they buy - predictable formulas - and they yawn. But show them a machine that will allow more immersion (i.e., photorealism) and more things shooting at them as they run and its front page news everywhere.

This is a bit of a ramble still fuelled by my friend's trouble getting a huge hit to run on a standard laptop not designed with gaming in mind. But the fact that games in general have still not made the entertainment section and are stuck in a weekly tech section of major newspapers (and otherwise never seen) means that gaming is now and will remain a hobby for the young and idle.

And as an aging gamer with ever more committments, this really bugs me.

Games that Never Were: Sid Meier's Dinosaurs

One of the great might-have-beens in gaming history is Sid Meier's Dinosaurs. Meier has an amazing track record of innovation and creativity, but lately Firaxis has been dipping into the wayback well a bit too much for that reputation to stay golden. But, shortly after Firaxis was formed, Meier and company said that they were working on a game that would allow the player to control a race of dinosaurs. The concept was original, the development house fresh and over the next four years information was leaked to press on an irregular basis.

Then production stopped with next to no information about why.

It died the way the lived - a mystery.

The first developer diary comments on Dinosaurs came out in late 1999. Apolyton has archived at least some of the information if not the diaries themselves. As you read the summaries, it becomes clear what one of the big issues with Dinosaurs was - uncertainty.

The idea of controlling a race of dinosaurs is, on its face, intriguing. But I struggle to think of how this gets turned into a game - or at least a game that looks like a Firaxis game. The concept of controlling a race automatically leads one to think Civ-like turn based gaming or Age of Dinosaurs real time. But you can't have tech research, can you? Do you use evolution or resource management as expansion and improvement routes?

By February, the thinking was that the player would control the dinosaurs and try to help them survive in a hostile environment. Does this mean that the giant lizards would become pets of the player? What would "winning" look like?

After the demise of Dinosaurs, Meier showed three different versions to an audience at the Game Developers Conference in 2002. One was turn-based, another real-time and the third - of all things - a card game. He confessed that though each of the game designs had merit, none of them were very fun for very long.

Dinosaurs is a curious object of study because its end was unexpected. There is a certain confidence in the Meier name - that he can make anything fun if given time and the team to do it. And Meier never said that Dinosaurs was dead forever - he says that the original design for Civilization wasn't very fun other. But there are no signs of it being revived.

Dinosaurs is, in many ways, testament to the power of the human imagination and how our abilities to translate our imagination into a product or game. All frustrated artists know how this works. The picture on the canvas never matches the one in our heads.

It's not that Firaxis didn't have any ideas of how to make a Dinosaurs game. They had lots of ideas. But there wasn't a single idea that Meier and his team felt worked as a good game.

Every bad game I have ever played has had some idea why it was supposed to be fun. Even my own personal bete-noire Superpower has enough of a glimmer of live to make me think "I know what they are trying to do here." Firaxis got to the point with Dinosaurs, it seems, where they weren't sure what they were trying to do. They wisely stopped production in mid-2001.

So it went on the back burner, and we got Sid Meier's SimGolf, Civilization III and Pirates!. Not a bad trade.

But a piece of me wants to see Firaxis dare to fail again. Remaking classics has some risks, but the Civ franchise is a license to print money. I will buy Civ IV the day it comes out. I think I'd rather have a T-Rex in their somewhere.

CivAnon - seek help!

Check out CivAnon, a support group for those of us who get too addicted to Civilization every time a new one comes out.

Don't forget to click on the "Civil Unity Group" banner on the bottom left for some fun at our President's expense.

It's a clever little marketing site that earns nothing but goodwill from the users, and yet makes very few clear claims about Civ 4 itself.

Spore comes to life

Will Wright's latest big idea now has its own website. You can see a cute Flash movie and some screenshots at spore.ea.com.

The screenshots all look very interesting, though it is quite hard to figure out what the hell is going on in most of them. We have a city, a creepy-crawly bug thing, a global view and something that looks like it was snapped with a microscope.

Hopefully some helpful hints will be coming out soon.

Portico in LA Times Online

I don't toot my horn often, but I'll do it here.

Your lonely strategy scribe was referenced in a LA Time Online piece on gaming blogs and their reactions to the goings on at E3. Specifically, they referred to the pieces done here and at Gaming Politics on Doug Lowenstein's speech.

Now that the ESA has made Mr. Lowenstein's speech available, expect further commentary once I've had a chance to digest it.

Stardock unveils new title

Gamespot has a report on Stardock new strategy game Society.

Society promises to be something we haven't seen done well, a MMORTS. And success will depend on how much you can rely on other people within your empire.

Though details on how the empires will be compiled and how much control your allies will have over your own resources remain unannounced, this is quickly becoming a title to watch for the next year or so.

ESA head thinks games need new direction

BBC reports that ESA head honcho Doug Lowenstein thinks that games are too focused on the same demographic that they have always focused on - men in their 20s and 30s. The industry needs to do more to broaden its appeal if it wants to move beyond a niche entertainment industry, Lowenstein argues.

I'll go one better.

The industry is marketed towards men in their mid-teens and early twenties. Games require more attention and more hand-eye skill than ever - so only those with more free time can get the most out of them, and they stick to the old stand-by of blowing things up or kicking ass. Preferably with a half-clothed anime model somewhere nearby.

Think of all the gaming magazine covers or exclusives you have seen in the last year. How many were for shooters?

Why is G4 running a poll on Videogame Vixens? (this is me gagging.)

The thing is, I don't think the industry has any desire to move beyond its comfortable young male demo. They have perfected marketing to this group, they know what sells and there are few surprises. Let's face it; when you were 16 you only had one or two things on your mind and I doubt Psychonauts would have scratched that itch.

Casual gamers are usually older, have more idiosyncratic tastes and don't follow the marketing. If they buy a game it is usually an established franchise or something they learned about through word of mouth. If these people don't read game magazines or Gamespot, how can you market to them?

If you have a marketing division, you have to give them something to do. And that means finding the ready made audience for ads, bright lights and shiny objects.

The Holy Grail is a way to convert casual gamers into hardcore gamers, i.e., marketable eyeballs. But this is much easier said than done.

The generation going through high schools now (which has zero trouble getting its hands on M rated games, btw) is the industry's best chance to date at converting women and casual gamers to the seductive power of gaming. But, like Lowenstein, I see little effort to make this shift.

Do they resist because they have no ideas? Because it is hard? Because they like the boy's club they have set up?

And Lowenstein is saying nothing that is surprising to developers or publishers. Speak to them and they all say they want to broaden the appeal of the hobby. But Lowenstein is preaching to a choir that will say "Amen" but not sing for their supper.

E3 look at Gaming and Education

Gamasutra has a report (reigstration required) on a panel discussion led by UC Irvine's Patricia Seed on the place of computer games in her university history courses, specifically Civilization.

The most interesting point in the report comes from high school history teacher Jeremiah McCall. He says that asks students to consider what aspects of a game are accurate and which are for gameplay value only. Somehow this leads to an ability to think critically about biases in sources and the contested nature of history.

I'm skeptical about how well this works. Criticizing a game and its oversights is very different from reconciliing different eyewitness accounts of the Boston Massacre.

Seed offered a course at Rice called "World History Through Games". The course focuses on Age of Empires and Civilization and how they portray historical progression. There are also sections on European board games and how they use history as a backdrop for competition. This sounds like an exciting course, and something appropriate to the university level. I have long wondered what impressions of history are conveyed through games and such a course is a fine companion to the usual university stand-bys about history and Hollywood.

But do the students learn about history or just about how history is used or manipulated? Once you know that you need access to fresh water to grow your city or that iron is kind of important, where can we move there learning wise? This is a very different matter from actually teaching historiography or in-depth analysis of a particular issue.

As you can tell, this will probably be a constant theme of mine in this blog since historical strategy games are supposed to be something more educational and intelligent than Painkiller. I have my doubts that this is actually the case, but if people keep saying it I will keep writing about it.

Civ 4 interview at IGN

Steve Butts of IGN has an informative interview with Firaxis' Barry Caudill. We finally get some information on how the religion dynamic will work and some not so thrilling news about the addition of more movies.

The big news items are that eras are gone and so are governments. Now you government structure will be defined along five civic criteria: Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion.

The graphic rewrite looks significant and will be more user friendly from the main screen.

Why I hate PC Games

The title exaggerates, of course. As a strategy gamer, I haven't many choices and I have been gaming on a PC for as long as I have been gaming seriously.

But today I had to help a friend with a problem.

He is a casual gamer. He likes games and plays them quite a bit, but doesn't read about them, can't troubleshoot them and asks me for recommendations. The other day he asked if he should buy Rome: Total War or Pirates! Since he was already committed to buying Imperial Glory later this week, I suggested Pirates! It's a different game than Rome and Imperial Glory and would show PC creativity at its peak.

Today he IMs me. Pirates keeps crashing and he doesn't know why. "It meets the system requirements", he says. I have to tell him that listed system requirements are usually no better than a guess and often lowball, but yes, his system should handle Pirates just fine.

So I ask him about his video card. He has no idea. I show him where to find this information and he tells me has Intel integrated graphics. Yes, this is a laptop.

I don't want to tell him the bad news (that this could take a long time and still not work) so I tell him to update his drivers. In other words, I find the driver website, point him there and tell him what to do.

Then I ask if he has patched Pirates! He has no idea what I am talking about.

Don't be hard on him. He's a very smart guy. A successful professional, a risk taker who is midcareer change. A real stand-up guy who is a Master of Madden.

But patching is something that we PC gamers take for granted. So I link him there and talk him through the process.

He then - understandably - asks how he can get a better video card for his laptop. He's not ready for that, yet.

All of this gets me frustrated for him. All these great games out there that require fine-tuning, downloading, updating...all those things that we serious PC gamers just take as a matter of course are flummoxing him.

If I was smarter I would have asked him more about his computer before recommending anything. Of course, none of this was an issue when I recommended Political Machine. But this type of crap is one big reason why PC games will never catch up to consoles in market share. I think that most PC games are better, more enjoyable and deeper. But they are also a pain in the ass to use unless you have been playing them for years.

This little adventure may have pushed my friend over the edge into buying a gaming desktop, since, through my evangelism, he knows there are lots of great games out there for the computer. But it's a shame that we had to spend so much time in frustration and IM guessing game hell because he can't play one of the best games of the last two years.

Final E3 strategy game listing

A final list of the strategy games on display at this year's E3. Lots of big titles here. Civ4. AoE3. Rise of Legends. And, most anticipated by far, Spore.

Fantasy strategy seems to be making a comeback and tycoon games are still going strong.

The shocking title is Frog City's Snow. One of my all-time favorite developers - the makers of the Imperialism games - is now doing a drug lord tycoon game. Since I openly admit to targeting civilians in my RTS games, I shouldn't get on my high horse about ethical behavior in games, but there does seem to be a qualitative difference somewhere in there.

Age of Empires III (Microsoft/Ensemble)
American Conquest: Divided Nation (CDV/GSC)
Ascension to the Throne (1C Company/DVS)
Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness (Buka Entertainment/Targem Games)
Black and White 2 (Electronic Arts/Lionhead)
Blitzkrieg 2 (CDV/Nival Interactive)
Brigade E5: New Jagged Union (1C Company/Apeiron)
Civilization IV (2K Games/Firaxis)
Codename: Panzers, Phase Two (CDV/Stormregion)
Company of Heroes (THQ/Relic)
Cuban Missile Crisis (1C Company/G5 Software)
Desert Law (1C Company/Arise)
Diplomacy (Paradox)
Dragonshard (Atari/Liquid)
Earth 2160 (Zuxxez/Reality Pump)
ER (2005) (Vivendi Universal/Legacy Interactive)
Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords (Strategy First/Stardock)
Ghost Wars (Hip Games/Digital Reality)
The Guild 2 (JoWood/Deep Silver)
Hard Truck Tycoon (Buka Entertainment/G5 Software)
Heart of Empire: Rome (Deep Silver/Deep Red)
Heaven vs. Hell (TKO Software)
Heroes of Might and Magic V (Ubisoft/Nival Interactive)
Hotel Giant 2 (JoWood/Game Factory)
Imperivm: Great Battles of Rome (FX Interactive/Haemimont)
Joint Task Force (HD Interactive/Mithis)
The Movies (Activision/Lionhead)
Outfront II(1c Company)
Pacific Storm (Buka/Lesta Studio)
Paraworld (Sunflowers)
Perimeter: Emperor's Testament (1C Company/KD Labs)
Panzer Elite Action (JoWood/Zootfly)
Rollercoast Tycoon 3: Soaked (Atari/Frontier Dev.)
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War (Midway/Stainless Steel)
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (Microsoft/Big Huge Games)
Rush for Berlin (Deep Silver/Storm Region)
Seven Kingdoms: Conquest (Enlight Software)
The Sims 2: Nightlife (Electronic Arts/Maxis)
Singles 2: Triple Trouble (Deep Silver/Rotobee)
Snow (2K Games/Frog City)
Space Rangers 2: Dominators (1C Company/Elemental Games)
Spellforce 2 (JoWood/Phenomic Game Development)
Spore (EA Games/Maxis)
Stalingrad (1C Company/4X Studios)
Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts/Petroglyph)
Tycoon City: New York (Atari/Deep Red)
UFO: Aftershock (Cenega/Altar)
An Untitled RTS (Deep Silver)
War Front: Turning Point (CDV/Digital Reality)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault (THQ/Relic)
War Leaders: Clash of Nations (CDV/Enigma Software)
World War I (1C Company/Nival Interactive)
A World War II RTS (1C Company)
XIII Century: Sword and Honor (1C Company/One Small World)
Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species (Microsoft/Blue Fang Games)

New screens of AoE3 and RoL

Ferrago has new screenshots of Age of Empires III and Rise of Legends.

If they keep this up, I'm going to lose all my hardcore grognard street cred by gushing over graphics.

First the AoE3 screens. The Vauban style fort in this shot is a little out of place in the New World. I guess Louisbourg was a pretty solid fortress, but most New World fortifications were simpler. But it's really silly pointing out ahistorical stuff in an Age game. I think I saw this shot in an old Western once. All the new screenshots look amazing, but give little real sense of what the game is going to be like. No new battle scenes, not a lot of resource gathering stuff. More a pretty textbook than the sense that there is a game going on. But this is Ensemble and the game related stuff should be available soon.

As for Rise of Legends, it is still a year off. No way to tell that from the screenshots. Check out this battle scene. Or this one. The themes of an Arabian Nights world and a steampunk civilization are pretty clear. There looks to be a genie in one of the battles and one of the cities has that fantasy Harun al-Rashid thing going on. The flying machines look really cool. Here we have a lot of battles, but little else. I am assuming that most of these shots are coming from the story driven campaign in production, so the conflict is the centerpiece. But a little more of the civilian side would be nice. As I mentioned earlier, I play my RTS games at a pretty slow pace, so the domestic development is something I am really interested in.

Thanks to Ferrago for posting these screenshots. The anticipation is almost as sweet as the inevitable satisfaction.

Haemimont tries to impress me again

Haemimont Games and FX Interactive have announced a new ancient strategy game, Imperivm: Great Battles of Rome. Yes, it's supposed to be a "v". I guess that since "Imperium" has been used a lot, and they aren't creative enough to think of another name, they'll just drop the "u" and pretend that all their customers get the Latin joke.

I don't mean to be dismissive or snarky, but Haemimont is one of those developers that I just don't get. Both Celtic Kings and Nemesis of the Roman Empire did very well with most critics, but bored me more than Pliny. And their new game, with all its promising PR looks like more of the same.

Don't believe me? Check out their press info pack here.

First, the good. Numantia and Viriathus! Finally a game developer decides to take on modeling the guerrilla war in Hispania that, in many ways, set the tone for Roman politics between Hannibal and the Gracchi. Hard fought, long, and very frustrating for the Romans.

It looks like there will be set piece battles from the screenshots with the ability to give orders while paused.

There is a Total War type campaign mode that looks like it could be a decent distraction.

Now the not so good. None of these battles are really set pieces (most discuss sieges or landings) and much of the document shows the same settlements we saw before, raising the threat of supply focused gameplay that made their other two ancient games such a chore.

Anubis warriors? Osiris chariots? Where in the name of Sisyphus were your historical experts? Is it so hard for developers to understand that Cleopatra's Egypt was not Ramses' Egypt? A couple of thousand years does make a difference.

The graphics don't seem to have changed at all.

And, once again, Pompey gets slighted.

I'll get it more because I have this ancient itch that won't stay scratched. And I expect respectful reviews from my colleagues in the gaming press. I remain to be convinced.

Age of Kings is now turn-based

1up is reporting that the new version of Age of Empires II: Age of Kings for the Nintendo DS will be turn-based.

Why take one of the most popular real-time games of all time and make it turn-based? And how would that even work?

"Age of Empires has set the gold standard for real-time strategy games and its global audience continues to grow," said Ken Gold, vice president of Marketing at Majesco.

So how do you translate a gold standard real-time game to a turn-based game? It will be an entirely different game, that's for sure. How can you do an archer rush in a turn based environment? Or a town center creep?

Eagle Games has tried to make these types of decisions for its series of board games based on computer hits. It has somehow managed to make Age of Mythology into a board game. But there can be no confusing it with the the Ensemble Studios hit. It uses cards as power ups and exploration chances, but still has the basic myth unit/human unit distinction and the three races. But when you look at the game board, it is clearly more inspired by Age of Mythology than a simulacrum.

Doing a turn based Age of Kings for a handheld console is an intriguing concept and I look forward to seeing if and how it turns out. Europa Universalis II, the king of humongous real time historical fun is also being designed for the DS and it has the advantage of being derived from a board game in the first place.

Given the dearth of serious historical strategy games on the big consoles, their migration to portables is an interesting trend that might push me to pick up one of these little toys myself.

Pardon the rant - Paper Sleeves and Games

Why do games come in paper sleeves? Do the marketers have any idea how easy it is to lose one of these? And when I am scooping up a pile of paper from my too-cluttered desk, a sleeve with a game in it can get more easily lost in the folds of a folders than a true CD case.

Plus, these sleeves have no distinctive side art (like those heavy cardboard envelopes) so when they are on my shelf I have to leaf through a bunch to find the one I want. As I look at my game rack at the moment, I can identify Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Pax Romana, Europa Universalis II and six other games to its right. But the game to left of Kohan is in a white envelope, so I have no clue what it is. (On closer inspection, it's Dominions II).

On the other hand, I love the new DVD boxes. No cardboard box to recycle. To the left of my laptop I see Imperialism II, Dragoon and SpaceHoRSE. Well, at least SpaceHoRSE has something going for it. The DVD boxes are attractive, though they do take up a lot more space than traditional CD cases.

The decline of game packaging is as constant a subject of complaint as the decline in manuals. At least most manuals are being replaced by better in-game help and roll-over tooltips. There is great resistance, it would seem, to moving to superior forms of packaging like DVD boxes. The only possible explanation is cost of CD cases, but game companies are still (mostly) using boxes to stick the sleeves in and this is mostly wasted paper.

Updated E3 Strategy Games - with links

Age of Empires III (Microsoft/Ensemble)
American Conquest: Divided Nation (CDV/GSC)
Ascension to the Throne (1C Company/DVS)
Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness (Buka Entertainment/Targem Games)
Black and White 2 (Electronic Arts/Lionhead)
Blitzkrieg 2 (CDV/Nival Interactive)
Brigade E5: New Jagged Union (1C Company/Apeiron)
Civilization IV (2K Games/Firaxis)
Codename: Panzers, Phase Two (CDV/Stormregion)
Company of Heroes (THQ/Relic)
Cuban Missile Crisis (1C Company/G5 Software)
Desert Law (1C Company/Arise)
Earth 2160 (Zuxxez/Reality Pump)
Ghost Wars (Hip Games/Digital Reality)
The Guild 2 (JoWood/Deep Silver)
Heart of Empire: Rome (Deep Silver/Deep Red)
Heaven vs. Hell (TKO Software)
Heroes of Might and Magic V (Ubisoft/Nival Interactive)
Hotel Giant 2 (JoWood/Game Factory)
The Movies (Activision/Lionhead)
Outfront II(1c Company)
Pacific Storm (Buka/Lesta Studio)
Paraworld (Sunflowers)
Perimeter: Emperor's Testament (1C Company/KD Labs)
Panzer Elite Action (JoWood/Zootfly)
Rollercoast Tycoon 3: Soaked (Atari/Frontier Dev.)
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War (Midway/Stainless Steel)
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (Microsoft/Big Huge Games)
Rush for Berlin (Deep Silver/Storm Region)
The Sims 2: Nightlife (Electronic Arts/Maxis)
Singles 2: Triple Trouble (Deep Silver/Rotobee)
Space Rangers 2: Dominators (1C Company/Elemental Games)
Spellforce 2 (JoWood/Phenomic Game Development)
Stalingrad (1C Company/4X Studios)
Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts/Petroglyph)
Tycoon City: New York (Atari/Deep Red)
UFO: Aftershock (Cenega/Altar)
An Untitled RTS (Deep Silver)
War Front: Turning Point (CDV/Digital Reality)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault (THQ/Relic)
War Leaders: Clash of Nations (CDV/Enigma Software)
World War I (1C Company/Nival Interactive)
A World War II RTS (1C Company)
XIII Century: Sword and Honor (1C Company/One Small World)
Zoo Tycoon 2: Endangered Species (Microsoft/Blue Fang Games)

An interesting experiment

Over at Gamerdad, Dave Long is subjecting himself to an interesting experiment. He will cut himself off from your typical game news sources and rely solely on the mainstream media for his E3 coverage.

Lots of gamers don't know a lot about gaming. These are the big, bloated, casual gaming mass that really has no idea where to get up-to-date information. I have one friend who has repeatedly asked me for the latest dirt on 24: The Game despite the fact that I don't have a console and that I have linked him to Gamespot at least twice.

Lots of people who care about this sort of stuff knew what the Xbox360 would look like and what its specs would be days before the MTV promo-show for it. Your average console gamer might not have even known that a new Xbox was on the way.

I look forward to hearing about Dave's experience. I find it hard to cut myself off from my Gametab News and read mainstream coverage of gaming more to get an idea of what my nieghbors would know about it. Very little, it seems.

So check out Dave's story and follow his adventures. And spend some time at Gamerdad. A great site with a great team of writers doing some important work.

Tin Soldiers rides away...with my heart

My most recent editorial for DIYGames was partly about how the confusion between realistic graphics and good graphics gets in the way of appreciating how a distinctive, if stylized, look can add a lot to a game. I cited Outpost Kaloki and Darwinia as good examples, and Dominions II as a cautionary tale.

Now a word or two on Koios Works' Tin Soldiers games. They have released two ancients war games in the last six months - Alexander and Julius Caesar. Both are, in many ways, your typical wargames. They are turn based, they emphasize maneuver and flanking and are aimed at a niche audience.

They are also very attractive because they have decided to make this game as close to miniature wargaming as possible. The units are drawn like painted miniatures and a giant hand descends from the heavens to pick up the eliminated stands. Even the ground looks like it is made of plastic matting and styrofoam.

The entire effect is very convincing. It does a lot to make an average wargame and above average wargame. My review of Alexander sets out my main objections, some of which were addressed in Julius Caesar and some that were not. (More on that if and when my review gets published.) Both could use an editor and the chance to paint your own units, but I have no critical complaints against either.

The Tin Soldiers games are an exciting opening move from a new developer. Both are available through Matrix Games, and at a decent price too. If you have any interest in these types of games, check them out.

Custom scenarios, modding and a klutz

These days, every decent strategy game comes with an editor of some sort. You can customize scenarios, build campaigns or even modify the units to your satisfaction. Even those games without decent user tools (like the Paradox and Total War games) have populations devoted to fine tuning their favorite games.

I want to be part of the fun. But I can't.

I have a terrible for sense for how this sort of thing is done. Even with the best modding tools or scenario construction kits I get easily confused and lost in the mess of what I was trying to do. I have no sense of pacing, a poor idea for how I can incorporate base building into what I want to be a big battle and not a great sense of scale.

This is truly a shame because I like the idea of remaking historical battles or editing maps to reflect ahistorical possibilities. But when confronted with the not-too onerous task of actually doing it, I freeze.

I shouldn't. I am sure that less adept hands than mine have made mods and custom scenarios, but I just can't get the hang of it. Part of it could be my love of instant gratification in games; I don't waiting for something to happen but I better have the feeling that it could happen at any time. If "something happening" depends on my schedule, though, forget it. I'd rather not put in the hours.

That said, I do want to learn how to make custom historical battles in Rome: Total War. There is an excellent historical battle mod out there, but it can use some tweaking.

Meh. Someone else will do it.

The Carnival of Gamers

Tony Rice over at Button Mashing has graciously invited me to participate in a game-blog-wide semi-regular party called Carnival of Gamers to link the gaming blog community.

No, I don't quite understand it either, but doesn't it sound neat?

So I have to come up with a clever idea that I want to share and that I haven't discussed already. I'd rather not recycle an old editorial or rant about how much I am looking forward to Age of Empires III.

Please feel free to submit ideas for a column or contribution. And please follow the Carnival of Gamers. There are a lot of people writing some great stuff out there, and I only wish I could link to it all. Hopefully this will give you a chance to read a wide variety of opinions and introduce you to writers you might not know.

Empire Earth 2 review

My review of Empire Earth II is now up at Game Method.

What a disappointment. (Yes, I know that 7/10 is pretty good in mathematical terms, but you know how the 7-9 scale works in game reviews.) It is a corporate monolith with nothing novel, interesting or moving. There is no sense of wonder and no feeling that the game is anything more than a bunch of stuff.

Look at the other RTS out there. Act of War has some interesting unit match-ups and a great story. Darwinia (now reviewed at DIYGames) is a much smaller production that does a better job of sucking you in to the game. Warhammer had a style all its own plus frenetic game play and Kohan 2 is just a winner no matter how you cut it.

Of these, only Empire Earth II is a true historical strategy game. Could it be that people who make these games are running out of ideas? Do they truly think that bigger and broader is the same as better?

Rise of Legends

It is official. Big Huge Games has announced their new RTS, Rise of Legends - a steampunk world with a character driven campaign. This IGN preview does nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for this title.

Though I love historical strategy games almost as much as life itself, the chance to play in a pseudo-historical Jules Verne type of universes is too appealing to pass up. I will confess to having a poor knowledge of steampunk in any detail, but the clunky elegance of Victorian-era machinery designed for modern ends is irrresistable.

Like Arcanum, Rise of Legends posits a world where magic and science uneasily co-exist. Some of the screenshots look like they are from a Dickensian nightmare and others from a fairy story. Dan Adams, the preview writer, comments that the cities look important (and the screenshots bear this out). In all, there is a lot to look forward to here.

And, most importantly, it has Brian Reynolds and the Big Huge brains behind it. Though I thought Age of Mythology was a better game in many respects, Rise of Nations was clearly the more important game. It subtly messed with the RTS formula and did some really interesting things. No historical strategy game had ever made the factions so distinct, and Thrones and Patriots showed that the brains in Timonium were willing to keep taking risks with how much power a particular side should have. The campaigns were, I think, less innovative than was claimed at the time but this in no way made them less enjoyable or varied.

So, if I had to choose between news on Age of Empires 3 and Rise of Legends, I'd have to go with the latter. I am truly excited about this new game and look forward to writing more about it.

Sunflowers keeps on counting

German game maker Sunflowers has announced the third game in their Anno trading/building sim. Titled Anno 1701, it promises to bring a prettier version of the near identical gameplay we saw in Anno 1602 and Anno 1503.

Like Cossacks, this is another European game thing that I just don't get. The economies in the Anno games are incredibly hard to balance and shortages happen very quickly. Even more than the Impressions city builders, the Anno games are complicated math problems that require nearly perfect planning for a city to be viable and self-sufficient in the long run. Like Settlers, there is a long chain of production from one good to the next and satisfaction of the upper classes means meeting all their needs. I always found it easier to just take someone else's city than to make my own viable.

Target release date is late 2006.

Rise of Nations meets Arcanum

This month's Computer Gaming World has a sneak preview of the upcoming RTS from Big Huge Games. It has a fantasy/steampunk theme.

No details as of yet, but it's nice to hear that Brian Reynolds and company are working on something completely unique to the real time strategy genre. Because if I have to build one more pikeman, some one is going to get hurt.

Updated PC Strategy Games at E3

Updated list of the strategy games for the PC and this year's E3. A few names have been added as I increased my number of sources.

American Conquest: Divided Nation (CDV/GSC)
Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness (Buka Entertainment/Targem Games)
Black and White 2 (Electronic Arts/Lionhead)
Blitzkrieg 2 (CDV/Nival Interactive)
Brigade E5: New Jagged Union (1C Company/Apeiron)
Codename: Panzers, Phase Two (CDV/Stormregion)
Company of Heroes (THQ/Relic)
Cuban Missile Crisis (1C Company/G5 Software)
Desert Law (1C Company/Arise)
Earth 2160 (Zuxxez/Reality Pump)
Ghost Wars (Hip Games/Digital Reality)
The Guild 2 (JoWood/Deep Silver)
Heart of Empire: Rome (Deep Silver/Deep Red)
Heaven vs. Hell (TKO Software)
Heroes of Might and Magic V (Ubisoft/Nival Interactive)
Hotel Giant 2 (JoWood/Game Factory)
The Movies (Activision/Lionhead)
Outfront II(1c Company)
Pacific Storm (Buka/Lesta Studio)
Paraworld (Sunflowers)
Perimeter: Emperor's Testament (1C Company/KD Labs)
Panzer Elite Action (JoWood/Zootfly)
Rollercoast Tycoon 3: Soaked (Atari/Frontier Dev.)
Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War (Midway/Stainless Steel)
Rush for Berlin (Deep Silver/Storm Region)
The Sims 2: Nightlife (Electronic Arts/Maxis)
Singles 2: Triple Trouble (Deep Silver/Rotobee)
Space Rangers 2: Dominators (1C Company/Elemental Games)
Spellforce 2 (JoWood/Phenomic Game Development)
Stalingrad(1C Company/4X Studios)
Star Wars: Empire at War (LucasArts/Petroglyph)
Tycoon City: New York (Atari/Deep Red)
UFO: Aftershock (Cenega/Altar)
An Untitled RTS (Deep Silver)
War Front: Turning Point (CDV/Digital Reality)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War - Winter Assault (THQ/Relic)
War Leaders: Clash of Nations (CDV/GSC)
World War I (1C Company/Nival Interactive)
A World War II RTS (1C Company)
XIII Century: Sword and Honor (1C Company/One Small World)

New Civil War game about a new civil war

PopTop Software, the developer behind Tropico and Railroad Tycoon 2, is developing a new game based on an American Civil War that hasn't happened yet.

Shattered Union will be released later this year. No word on if the hypothetical war will be between the North and South again, or if states will divided into Red and Blue.

Personally, I think South Dakota is asking to smacked.

A little love for a little game

The people over at Introversion have posted a little update about the status of Darwinia, their independent real-time strategy game.

They say that have sold a few thousand copies - "good but not great". Hopefully my upcoming review will improve their sales, but I'm not so vain as to think I could make them a lot of money.

Darwinia is a little charmer and has been getting very positive reviews from most outlets. There hasn't been a lot of press stateside, yet, so we can only wait and see if reviews from the US giants have an impact of sales. This is a game that does not derserve to be forgotten or ignored by strategy gamers.

I'll post more when my review is published.

New editorial at DIY

My latest ponderings for the independent game minded can be found at DIYGames. It is more a less a counterpoint to all those geekier-than-thou types who claim not to care about a game's graphics.

Me? I love graphics. No, graphics can't trump gameplay, but they can make it more enjoyable, immersive, refreshing, amusing, etc.

Quick on the trigger

My review copy of Empire Earth II arrived today (with my review copy of Cossacks II) and the box prominently featured a sticker trumpeting the game's 94 score at PCGamer (Editor's Choice).

That was fast. Seems like I just heard about that score last week.