As my boyfriend sits behind me grumbling about how Warlords Battlecry III has been “dummied down” from the second installment of the game, it causes me to once again ponder: is the push of gaming towards the mainstream excluding a segment of gamers on whom gaming is built?
You see them at gaming conventions: the guys (almost exclusively guys; over 40, heavy-set, bearded, glasses) standing tensely around a table on which innumerable cardboard counters representing army units spread over a map of some sort. These people thrive on complicated systems, and on figuring out the complexities of those systems. Even Games Workshop games (i.e. Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40k), which feature far “simplified” mechanics to these cardboard counter games still have rules which fill many hundreds of pages.
These are the folks who, when back at home in front of their PCs, thrived on such titles as Masters of Magic, Masters of Orion II and the earlier Warlords titles.
These titles have alot of depth, but require a steep learning curve, and may not be immediately accessible to the new or “mainstream” gamer. As the gaming industry seeks to expand its market by streamlining gameplay and simplifying mechanics, is it in fact disenfranchising these old-school hard-core gamers who love nothing more than to ply their minds to complex and difficult problem solving? Where are the games for this traditional gaming contingent to come from in the future if alot more money can be had by appealing to the mainstream market?
Large companies with their eye on continually growing the bottom line are likely to disregard these people. Instead, to the mechanics-hungry, I recommend checking out Shrapnel Games, a small publisher of games that specifically fore-go graphics for depth of strategic gameplay. One very complex and so far endlessly fascinating game (which I gather from the ridiculous hours the boyfriend has stayed up to play it for weeks now) is Dominions II. In this game you play a demi-god attempting to become the one true god of their fantasy world. The character creation itself is not just a matter of personal preferences, it has a huge impact on the strategy of the game. And there are many strategies to try. Dominions II might make the most hard-core Warcraft players wince on flipping through the 134 page manual, or overwhelm them with choices at the beginning of the game. But for what was once a respectable population of gamers and is now a niche market, Shrapnel’s games represent a much appreciated refuge from “dummied down” gameplay.
If anyone has further recommendations on deep and complex digital strategy games, please suggest them. It would make my boyfriend very happy.
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One Response:
June 4th, 2004 at 5:35 pm
It’s a really fun game – and has a sweet demo. You get 40 turns of almost full featured play (some of the nations are disabled).
While the graphics aren’t top end, they’re nice. It’s massively multi-platform, which makes /me/ happy, since I’m on a mac.
My only complaint about it is that wars are handled entirely by the computer. While there’s a ton of stats and combat options, you don’t really have tactical control of any of them – thus, pretty much, it reduces to comparing the sizes of the boxes on the map and hoping that if mine is bigger then theirs, that means I’ll win. Which usually works.
X.