I disagree with this premise. I think games like age of empires and StarCraft had mass appeal and success. They brought in audiences who don't normally like games, and broadly were well received by young, old, and different genders. Especially age of empires 2.

Modern RTS games are just (mostly) sloppy, unfinished, cashgrabs with no vision. They suffer the most from the transition to 3d as well. If a major studio actually put work and time into a polished, 2d, isometric, RTS that wasn't solely focused on being an esport, I think there is a major vacuum for them to fill.

The problem with modern RTS games is that developers don't really make proper RTS games. You don't see C&C or SC anymore, instead you get a mixture of tactical missions, RPG levelling and other shit. I don't want to play stealth infiltration missions and level up my hero, that's not RTS.

The RTS genre will never be mainstream

StarCraft: exists

Lmao what the fuck is this guy even talking about

You know, they said, 'An RTS is like PC-only by nature, why would you work on a single platform game when you could have made something multiplatform and another genre?'

Bruno thinks that's because big publishers are hoping for lightning-in-a-bottle hits that return 10 times their investment—"When you're operating at that scale, you want to build something that has the potential to sell 30 million copies," he said—and he doesn't think the RTS genre is ever going to produce that kind of success. If it did, he's skeptical the game in question would really be an RTS as he defines it.

So, first, even if the audience is limited, you can make a game that has a 10x return on investment if you can do the game on a smaller investment. A big publisher doesn't intrinsically need to do big-budget games.

Second, the genre grew up on the PC. And it often has conventions tuned to a PC platform. Precise selection, use of groups off a keyboard. But it seems to me that it's not impossible to produce new controls. The roguelike genre also was developed on a PC, and had a lot of conventions that were not friendly to other platforms, like use of many keyboard buttons that one would need to tap. But Shattered Pixel Dungeon ( !pixeldungeon@lemmy.world ) is a pretty good mobile adaption of the genre.

Based on this chart, video game revenue on the PC is relatively-strong compared to consoles in historical terms. What's new is mobile.

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/50-years-of-pc-vs-console-gaming-revenue-visualized-pc-maintains-lead-over-consoles-vr-mobile-and-handheld-market-data-included

According to that, in annual game revenue, consoles are about $30B, the PC is about $45B, and mobile -- the newcomer -- is $101B.

So, first-off, the PC is a quarter that. I'm not sure that it's unreasonable to do a game that targets a quarter of the market. There are lots of genres that target only some of those platforms. First-person shooters aren't gonna be all that great on mobile either.

Secondly, there have been console RTS releases. Off the top of my head, Supreme Commander also came out for the XBox 360. That series tends to be less of a clickfest, but it clearly means that doing an RTS on console is doable.

Thirdly, I think that console controllers are the hardest to adapt to that. I think that it's probably pretty reasonable to do a touch interface. And if you can do PC and mobile, that's more than three-quarters of the market.

Battle for Middle Earth was my favourite game ever probably or at least among top 3. Honestly between the 4x warhammer total war and rts bfme I think bfme was slightly more fun.

It’s a real shame the genre is so forgotten.

RTS is more organic genre without incessant thinking about numbers and save scumming while 4x always feels like Math.

Every game session of RTS game is slightly different even with the same map and enemy parameters providing for a way more replayability value and unpredictable chaos that you need to manage in real time. It’s much more engaging this way.

It’s still about numbers under the hood but more organic while 4x feels like an excel spreadsheet sometimes. There are less solutions to victory, sometimes even only one proper, predetermined before playing and that’s boring.

Another gem was Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. They made 2 sequels but none captured the gameplay of the first one. For some unknown reason they scrapped everything what made the original good in the second game, making it completely different. The third one was an attempt to go back to the mechanics of the first one but it was mediocre.

C&C was mainstream. Fuck you EA.

Based on this histogram, they're still coming out at a decent clip in absolute terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_real-time_strategy_video_games

That has the peak year being 2001, with 41 releases.

But still 14 releases in 2023.

I think someone should reboot the Dune RTS game from like 30 years ago. I played it as a kid on my Sega Genesis, and right now it's a ripe time to do it. Interesting parts:

• feels like C&C, but with spice worms
• lots of factions, but could stick to three: Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino/Emperor (optionally add the Fremen as a fourth)
• cool, unique tech and setting

So, here's what I suggest:

• copy C&C gameplay with updated graphics, and swap units appropriately
• add spice worms as a "random" event based on greed (keeps stronger players in check)
• balance like in Starcraft - harkonnen are like Zerg, corrino/empire are like protoss, and atreides are like Terran; Fremen faction could work like Zerg, in which case harkonnen works more like Terran

I think that could sell well.

Last year brought us Baldur's Gate 3.

In what way can "nerd things" not be mainstream?

For a moment, I was swapping 4X and RTS in my head, making me absolutely agree that it'll never be mainstream.

Yeah, I don't know enough about RTS games to make a claim, but I'd like to think games like Civilization are well known enough to make them mainstream.