Video games have evolved to include countless different genres, with each one emphasizing different gameplay mechanics and attracting different types of players. Yet when it comes to identifying the key moments in that development or the games that pushed the medium forward, many people point to the same few eras and the same few games. The 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the rise of real-time strategy games during those years, stand out as one of the core developments that cemented what we now know as video game culture.
The RTS genre is also one of the few that have felt the rush of leaping forward. Not in terms of graphics or audio, which we often peg as the core of “advancement,” but in how those games play, in the fundamental rule-sets that lie at the heart of the genre.
My initial venture into the realm of real-time strategy games was with Dune II: Building of a Dynasty in 1992. Before this, my video game experiences were largely limited to puzzle games and platformers, which, while certainly enjoyable, didn’t really seem to offer much in the way of the top-level strategic decision-making I wanted; they also didn’t really seem to offer much of a world to play in, which, as I learned as I tinkered around with SimCity 2000 and then played Dune II, seemed to be a fairly vital component of a strategy game. Little did I know that Dune II would be the precursor to one of the next decade’s most important gaming genres.
After Dune II found success, the RTS genre started to prosper. The golden age of real-time strategy games was just dawning. And not surprisingly, Blizzard’s Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) was one of the era’s defining games. Tomorrow’s titans looked closely at what had gone before—particularly Dune II and Warcraft and at what made them so influential. The two games taught some important lessons.
For an experienced gamer like me, it was fantastic to play Warcraft for the first time. The game’s graphics are simple but still beautiful in their own unique way. When you also take into consideration the massive pre-existing fan base for all things Warcraft, it’s really no surprise that this series has taken off to the extent that it has. Then, most importantly for a game to succeed, there is the wildly addicting multiplayer online component, where players can go against each other in real-time. Lots of folks want real laughs, and with the range of unique characters and zany abilities in this game, it is really hard not to.
Blizzard’s Warcraft is a meticulously well-achieved real-time strategy game. But what makes it all the more impressive to me is its story. The story is about a conflict between two kinds of humans and two kinds of capturable, unplayable monster units, seen in the player’s first-person view—as with the “StarCraft” series, where the story is the same but with slightly less emphasis on player-identification with the hero—through plenty of unskippable real-time cutscenes. And this is not just any thrown-together story; this is a truly incredible multilayered parallel-universe-fantasy epic. Utterly. In all the right ways.
Mastering the various factions’ abilities and eking out their vulnerabilities, developing stratagems that would play to my strengths and ensure my inevitable victories—that was the thrilling art of war I cultivated in StarCraft, a realm that continues to have me under its spell. StarCraft doesn’t just rule in a thriving competitive landscape, still much the same as it was in the late 1990s. It also rules for a reason: the game’s design, polished during the many memorable years in which the original version’s service went without a needed sequel, is of a certain immaculate sort really only achieved by the Elgin Marbles, the Death Star, and maybe a few other things.
From this period came another classic game, Age of Empires. Ensemble Studios released it in 1997. Different from many other games in the genre, it focused on historical accuracy and detail. But what really set it apart was that it was also an era-based game. Players took their selected civilizations from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Along the way, they had to gather resources and build an assortment of structures to advance through the period and maintain control of their territory.
On many weekends, my friends and I would get together for what we called “local network fests,” where we’d play computer games for hours on end—sometimes for several days straight. It’s hard to imagine the thrill we experienced after we won some epic battle or another virtuoso performance of political, economical, or technical prowess in administering our affairs in games like Age of Empires or Rise of Nations. Indeed, many times, after we were successful in either game or after we had managed to turn the tide of some in-game war in our favor, we’d act as if we had achieved something monumental or an impressive “real-life” victory; by contrast, the disappointment felt in defeat was equally grand but grudgingly accepted as part of the experience.
The real-time strategy genre grew up, and with that maturation came the ambition to seriously test the boundaries of the mechanics and philosophies of the medium. That was what led to Total Annihilation. It came out in 1997 and pushed the boundary of what the RTS camouflage was capable of. It introduced some novel ideas and mechanics, which took full use of what the landscape and units had to offer in line-of-sight and tactical depth. It was foolish to think that the Earth would not shake with the thud of its arrival.
Battles in Total Annihilation were also on an unprecedented scale, with hundreds of units smashing into each other on the battlefield. The game’s resource management systems used a continuous flood of energy and metal, and they encouraged the player to think and plan too far ahead. I spent hours and hours coming up with strategies, both defensive and offensive, approaching the game liberally of half a mind. Total Annihilation was a great way to express that flexibility.
One more title that really stretched the edges of what it means to be trapped in the genre of real-time strategy is Homeworld, which was released by Relic Entertainment in 1999. The label trapped is appropriate because Age of Empires already had a real grip on what the genre stood for, and yet Homeworld now, because of its many obvious beauties and because of its handful of inobvious problems that were most noted after the release of Age of Empires II, is itself as much of a landmark as that other game.
Directing my armada of starships across the interstellar medium was an exhilarating experience. The storyline of the game was absorbing and vital, following the journey of the Kushan people to their long-lost home world, which was once populated by the ancient Kushan civilization. The stakes were immense, and Homeworld created a real feeling of scale, virtually unmatched in the ’90s. The majesty of Homeworld was so overwhelming that I actually found myself lost for words when I tried to explain why I loved it so much to a friend.
In 2002, Blizzard released yet another innovative game, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. In it, players controlled not just armies, but also a particular kind of unit called a hero, these were currency in the game. Heroes had a range of special abilities that could be used in combat and, in the way chess pieces have their unique moves, using these abilities brought a whole new level of the gaming experience. Add to that, Warcraft III had a great story that unfolded in its campaign, and its world was filled with more narrative imagination. The result was that players were doing more than just managing resources and controlling units: They were immersed in a world.
The Real-Time Strategy (RTS) genre has been deeply affected by the World Editor of Warcraft III. This is much more than a map maker. It allows complete control over not just the landscape but all the buildings and units that can be used in a game. It also allows for the creation of triggers, respawns, and drop points. The level of modding that can go on in this game is huge. With their permission only grudgingly given, the fans of the series have pushed the “what if” scenarios to the limit and have created some entirely new games.
The ’90s and early 2000s saw something of a boom in real-time strategy games. During this period, a number of games had a profound impact on the gaming industry, and they were massively influential titles. And what was that influence?
Principles. You start to see them crop up in a range of different genres, from MOBAs (multiplayer online battle arenas) to even some side of said arenas’ offspring, which you could easily argue includes squad tactics games, our beloved base-builders, and our core resource management games.
One of the real-time strategy genre’s most important legacies is how it has affected competitive gaming and esports. StarCraft and its follow-up, StarCraft II, are the games that, for all intents and purposes, have laid the foundation for what is now professional esports. Of course, Quake and Counter-Strike have had their roles, too, but StarCraft deserves a lot of the credit.
Real-time strategy games have a palpable effect on the development of the multiplayer online battle arena genre. League of Legends and Dota 2, for instance, are direct descendants of Warcraft III, with the former’s influence readily seen in Chandler’s work. If you stare hard enough, you can even see these games’ hand in Sun Tzu’s ancient manual The Art of War. The direct translation of MOBA to anything close to ancient China is already rather nebulous, and games have proven their worth in real-time strategy far more than they have in military strategy or ancient warfare.
The real-time strategy genre influences a number of current strategy game designs, Total War, Company of Heroes, and They Are Billions being the notable examples. Their mechanics might be called an evolved form of the classic real-time strategy design, where they aim to mesh more of what we love about these individual forms of strategy and assemble them together in ways that work not only more effectively, but also create a more engaging and rich narrative. They seem to take the highest parts we love about the classic RTS and the turn-based strategy games, and these recent influences of evolution are what shows how not-yet-dead the original design RTS was to us in the 1990s.
The countless hours I have spent playing real-time strategy games—governing the enormous military forces of Age of Empires, for instance, or guiding the powerful fleet in Homeworld to victory against an enemy that was, at times, both powerful and perplexing—left an indelible imprint not only on my adolescence but also on my identity as a gamer. Looking back, I would say that the real-time strategy genre was one of the top two or three forces that helped make me the core/action gamer I am today.
The legacy of real-time strategy games is very much alive and well, you could argue, because of the vibrant communities that have cropped up around them. They’re full of intensely dedicated people who have formed some of the closest friendships of their lives at local-area network (LAN) parties, or at massive multiplayer online (MMO) flame wars, or even at just the next-door neighbor’s house on a Friday night. And they’re always focused on a shared passion: the discovery and application of the coolest and most thrilling new strategies and breakaway tactics that can be used in an intensely competitive match.
In essence, the advent of real-time strategy games was a crucial moment in gaming history. From the early days of Dune II and Warcraft, to the groundbreaking titles, such as StarCraft and Homeworld, the RTS genre provided gamers with a whole new level of strategic depth, real-life decisions, and minute-to-minute fun that both demanded and sharpened our gaming skills unlike any other. More so, the RTS experience was an engaging and immersive one, wherein the player controlled the action, directed the fate of some in-game world, and did so in a largely on-the-fly way.
