Tag Archive for 'Strategy'

Stardock CEO Returns to PC Gaming’s Complicated Basics

Published
on November 17, 2008
in News
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Stardock CEO Brad Wardell is devoted to reviving the classic era of PC gaming in all its excess. Stardock is currently developing Elemental: War of Magic for a 2010 release, a turn-based fantasy strategy game intended as a spiritual successor to the 1995 game Master of Magic.

Wardell talked about upcoming Stardock projects in a recent interview with Gamasutra and commented on the responsibilities of companies who take on old franchises.

“If you’re making a game that ends with ‘3,’ or Something: The Sequel, it should be similar to the original game,” Wardell told Gamasutra. “Don’t go off and say, ‘I have my own artistic vision.’ Okay, good — so call it something else. Don’t ride the coattails of the people who came before you to launch your own artistic vision.”

In the interview, Wardell also expressed interest in revisiting Toys For Bob’s Star Control II and Simtex’s classic series Master of Orion, last updated in 2003.

The CEO told Gamasutra that Stardock is building up a second full internal development team, and is tossing around various project ideas. “We’d like to do a roleplaying game too,” he said, pointing to BioWare classics like Baldur’s Gate II and Knights of the Old Republic as examples of the route he would like to take.

It would be “the same style of isometric gameplay — not first person — where I have a party that I’m interacting with,” he explained.

“I think there are a lot of people who want that. They want to have a party again. They want to have a Minsc-type character in there. You can’t have that interesting banter if it’s just one guy running around.”

Stardock earned a benevolent reputation among PC faithful after developing the excellent Galactic Civilizations II and publishing Ironclad Games’ Sins of a Solar Empire, both without any form of controversial copy protection or DRM. Their next published game, Gas Powered Games’ Demigod, comes out in early 2009.

It’s good to see a growing publishing house stay true to its roots and out to serve a small but ravenous audience of old school PC gamers.

The elaborate gameplay, structure and length of games like Baldur’s Gate II and Master of Orion got left behind by modern developers intent on mass appeal, and revivals like Gas Powered Games’ Supreme Commander fail to produce significant numbers.

Yet there’s something absolutely immersive about incredibly complicated gameplay, as anyone who tried out Steel Battalion’s unique mech controller will say. The spell system and character dynamics of Baldur’s Gate II brought that world to life, and the complicated micromanagement of Master of Orion gave the game’s universe political and economic verisimilitude.

If Stardock is truly pledged to bring back this wrongly abandoned aspect of PC gaming, then we should all be excited to see what they come up with.

MOD HIGHLIGHT: ‘Europa Barbarorum’ Puts You In Ancient World

Published
on September 9, 2008
in Review
. 0 Comments

A supremely accurate expansionary mod for Rome: Total War may seem like a strange thing to highlight on a blog about game narratives, but Europa Barbarorum builds on the historical premise of the game it modifies and develops it into a more immersive experience.

The mod extends the campaign map into Saharan Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, India, and the steppes of central Asia, hosting kingdoms like the Mali, Saka, and Bactria absent from the vanilla Rome Total War campaign. All factions have been bolstered with historically accurate towns, buildings, governmental systems, family members, and military units, with names and voices in the appropriate language.

It’s a stunningly complete package that turns Rome: Total War into a history lesson. A massive volunteer team of modders, artists and historians organized even before the game’s 2004 release and have worked steadily ever since to make their mod as accurate as possible, from place names to lengthy building and unit descriptions and “this year in history” reports.

But the point of Europa Barbarorum is not education. All these complex changes to gameplay make the empire-building campaign much more immersive. They allow players to invest themselves in the historical persona of a third century BC superpower, to adopt their culture, utilize their heroes, and fight their enemies.

Conquer a new city and chose whether to make it an ally, a subjugated state, or a fully incorporated province of full citizens. Each choice has economic and military consequences, accurately reflecting the true complexity of state building. Invest yourself in the role of an evil overlord or benevolent republic and all the while feel like you’re playing a part in a very real historical narrative.

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