Where others rise and fall, strategy remains: powerful, ever-present, adored. We takes a look at the evolution of the genre that pre-dates all of gaming
It’s the oldest genre in the world, predating videogames, computer games, any form of organised game. It forms a base element of near enough all thought processes. Nations have risen – and fallen – because of good and bad use of it. Without strategy, there would be nothing – never mind Civilization, we wouldn’t have a civilisation as we know it. Strategy is, in short, quite an interesting genre.
Inxile’s Brian Fargo puts it simply: “Without strategy there is no game,” he says, “Whether I’m playing Civilization, Tiger Woods Golf or Halo I need to be developing some kind of strategy in my mind as to how to approach the problems. It is the underpinning of what makes any game interesting and stimulating.” But this is a broad look at strategy in general – it’s the specific genre (admittedly broad in itself) that’s such a captivating, ever-present part of gaming.
“As a player I’m not just seeking to defeat an opponent, I’m looking to defeat a system,” Tomas Rawlings, design and production director at Auroch Digital, says. “By that I mean for the player to win they have to start to understand how the system works as well as how your opponent does. You soon start to re-apply your strategy in new situations, and when it works you feel a great rush and that sense that you’ve outwitted the system.”
It’s a viewpoint shared by XCOM 2 designer Jake Solomon, that the core of the genre in gaming is about learning a system and using it against what was originally challenging you. “You think about this as a strategy designer – the very first games are strategy games,” he says, “All of them have their roots in strategy... What’s special about strategy is that it fl exes different muscles. It’s not about the experience of playing, your reflexes or coordination in general – but it appeals to that part of your brain, as humans we like to learn things.”
It’s no surprise, considering how broad the criteria to be considered a strategy game is, that there are a huge array of different games sitting under the genre umbrella. Civilization, Wasteland, Warcra˜ , the Sim series, the Tycoon titles, Football Manager, Syndicate, most (but not all) of the X-Com/XCOM games, and plenty of others. They’re all very different games, and just because they all have strategy in them to different degrees, it doesn’t mean they have the same appeal to all players. But they do have things in common.
One good example of this is provided by the XCOM series. Kacper Szymczak, lead designer at CreativeForge Games explains: “While being on the front lines of the war against alien invaders is undoubtedly exciting, the history of XCOM titles in other genres shows that a large part of the appeal is the responsibility for the survival of humanity. Sometimes the protagonist of the FPS has to be sacrificed by the hero of the strategy and that too is a part of the experience.” Basically, there are always broader concerns at play – the death of one being a tragedy, the death of many a statistic.
And this universal appeal is something that has been present in strategy gaming since the very beginning. When asking our experts for their input on the legends of the genre, we were given enough names to fill a whole extra feature – Dune II, Metal Gear Ac!d, Rebel Star Raiders, Laser Squad, Advance Wars, and countless others we wouldn’t even have considered – or even thought were classed as strategy titles.
“For me it was probably Warcra„ in terms of the way it shook up the genre and added real time elements in for yet further brain work,” Fargo explains, “Dune probably gets more credit for the innovation but I spent far more time with Warcra„ . It clearly struck a bigger nerve as Blizzard is now the most successful developer in the world.
“Also, when I was young and had my Apple II computer I used to play Computer Ambush and boy, that was an affair of patience. It was a buggy game in which the computer would take hours to generate it’s move, it would take me days to finish a game assuming it didn’t crash. But still I was fascinated.”
Solomon shares that obsessive feeling with Fargo – as do most of our strategy experts – but on different titles. “I thought Age of Empires II: Age of Kings was an absolutely perfect game. You didn’t have to be a super-expert to play. I remember after I’d played a LAN game of that, I would stew on the drive home thinking what I should have done... it just consumed me. Then there was Syndicate,” he continues, “It had an impact – I think one that’s more visible in XCOM 2 – there’s that tug of dark cyberpunk. Syndicate always stuck with me. Outside of the original X-Com I think Syndicate has the most to do with modern XCOM, they’re connected amorphously in my mind.”
And, of course, the line from XCOM 2 traces all the way back to the original UFO: Enemy Unknown, which Szymczak cites as one of the most impactful on the young developer: “It created a tangible sense of dread and inadequacy when going against the intimidating alien invaders with Earth-built weapons. The tense atmosphere, line of sight mechanics and map design made turn-based battles as exciting as any real-time shootout. While not the first of its kind, UFO felt like a true blockbuster with visuals able to match the fantasy.”
Finally, Johan Andersson – studio manager of Paradox Development Studio – tells us no list can be complete without Civilization – and who are we to disagree? “It is probably the most successful franchise ever,” he says, “And I must say that without playing that game in my late teens, I probably would never have delved into making strategy games myself. Then I’d probably say the original Starcra„ . It was the game that defi ned and perfected the RTS genre. It was brilliant in its UI for the time, and had absolutely stellar balance with three asymmetric sides, which impressed me to no end.”
This brings up an interesting point where the purer strategy genre is concerned: how little the mechanics of its games have changed over the decades. While graphical fidelity has of course improved, and the aforementioned user interface updates have made it easier for anyone to get involved, the actual central strategic elements really haven’t moved much from their early days. In part because of how strategy as a concept predates almost everything, of course, but surely there have been some sea changes in the past 30 years?
Solomon doesn’t think so, beyond the look and accessibility of things: “It’s nuts to think about the early 90s – Civilization, Syndicate, X-Com, bookended probably by Warcraƒ 2 when that came out. To me that was the first main RTS where it felt like a proper RTS. That early 90s period was huge. I think a lot of us as designers are still stunted by that period – we’re still chasing the experiences we had hunched over the monitor, chasing that feeling of UFO Defense and those other games from the early 90s. I don’t remember as much about my time as a kid as I do about some of those games I played back then.”
While the concept of an evolution of the genre is leƒ broader by Rawlings: “I’d say Red Alert – it was full on strategy (and an evolution of Dune 2) but into the gaming mainstream, saying ‘this genre is here, deal with it’.” Nobody we spoke with was able to nail down any huge step for strategy – any shiƒ in styles or concepts or fundamentals that could be pointed at and said to be ‘when things changed’. There’s been no Doom moment for the strategy genre. But then, there’s never needed to be one – it was refi ned and defi ned before computers even existed, through Chess, through Risk, through countless other physical, tabletop forms of gaming.
That tabletop factor is yet another element that still gets factored in, even today in our connected, social way of playing the highest (and lowest) tech of videogames. Rawlings explains, at least in part, why that is: “The big thing you get from tabletop is the human factor,” he says, “When you’re [in the middle of] a game and you start to deploy a strategy and you’re hoping your opponent does not see what you’re up to; that agonising wait for them to complete their turn and hoping they’ll not move that tank to there but will move those infantry into close combat...it makes for such a great experience.”
Fargo agrees – while gaming in the digital realm has its place, and is the main money-maker for everyone we spoke to for this feature, there’s something unbeatable about the social board gaming world. “Strategy games on computer bring an ease of use and accessibility that table top games oƒ en lack,” he says, “They also oƒ en hide a lot of the formula work behind the scenes so that the player doesn’t have to roll dice. But nothing beats a good old strategy game feast when your friends are sitting right there with you.
“You cannot deny the origins of strategy games going back thousands of years. Whether it was Chess, Go or Senet they paved the way for all modern games. Even games like Wasteland were inspired by and used the rules of Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes – and of course Wasteland inspired Fallout. Everything always draws a clear line back to tabletop.”
The diff erence in experiences provided by the digital and physical worlds of strategy gaming are so vast, though, that they can peacefully coexist for the foreseeable future. If anything, the rise of videogaming has preceded the resurgence of the tabletop gaming world, with one feeding back into the other and vice versa – the X-Com born from tabletop roots, with the XCOM reboot birthing a physical, tabletop game of its own. It’s a positive feedback loop the likes of which we haven’t seen before, and it’s leaving us all spoiled for choice – almost to a fault, as there’s just too much around to be able to play it all.
“I believe that both fl avours of strategy can and do learn a lot from one another,” Szymczak says, “Tabletop games became more immersive and visually attractive to capture the interest of the videogame generation, oŠ en adopting clever devices and systems (both analogue and digital) to simulate and keep track of more complex scenarios. At the same time tabletop games remain easier to prototype which makes them attractive to amateur designers. They also attract a slightly different audience, initially, building awareness and testing mechanics which can then be brought into the digital realm.
“I mean, Chess used to be seen as a simulated battle – a king’s game which entertained and educated at the same time. It’s still the best mainstream reference, which both gamers and non-gamers should understand!”
This is another common theme in our discussions on strategy – it all comes back to the early days, to things like Chess. In many ways, modern strategy videogames are better than Chess – they have the (sometimes literal) bells and whistles to make the experience more engaging and impactful. But not one of our designers would honestly say their games – or any games – were objectively better than that strategy legend. Too much is borrowed or otherwise appropriated from the battle of kings, queens, pawns and knights; Chess is simply too pure an experience to be one that can be ‘bettered’ in any believable way.
So does that mean the future is an unexciting one? That the genre of strategy will stagnate, unable to evolve past things like prettier graphics and slightly easier UIs? Of course not. On one hand, strategy as a genre – as a game type – has survived and thrived for years, decades, centuries and millennia. It has staying power. And on the other hand, we’re always seeing exciting developments in the world of technology and gaming – and it’s all going to feed back into the genre of genres.
Szymczak points out some of the huge shifts we’ve already seen in strategy: “Being able to simulate large-scale trends in Democracy 3 or the insanely complex politics of Europa Universalis IV makes things more interesting and customisable,” he says, “While AI keeps improving, the ability to play beside or against human players can also enhance the experience in many different ways. I’m personally looking forward to some real artifi cial intelligence: simulated staff or advisors we can really delegate some duties to and so on. Combine it with virtual or augmented reality and my fantasy of running an Imperial Sector Fleet from Battlefl eet Gothic gets ever closer.”
Elsewhere, Fargo is also extremely positive about the future of the strategy genre – thanks in no small part to the changes and updates we’ve already seen: “The biggest fundamental change has been design that incorporates using the internet,” he explains, “Whether it’s a matching service like Battle Net or simple peer to peer gaming, it changed everything. Imagine the old play-by-mail days in which you awaited your friends response via the post offi ce. The next big step will be VR in which we feel more connected by sitting in a virtual room for each other. Games have just begun to have their real power.”
This feeling clearly runs through the development community, and it’s being felt both inside studios and even now outside, in the cut-throat world of publishing and marketing – thanks in no small part to certain mobile and casual titles being based almost entirely in the strategy genre. “Interestingly, strategy-related games are in the ascendant at the moment,” Rawlings tells us, “At a conference I was speaking at, one of the presentations was on the trends in mobile genre, and Clash of Clans and Fire Age showed strategy dominating the field. The resurgence of XCOM in recent years has also been part of this. However I can recall a few years back pitching turn-base strategy titles and getting no traction because it was seen as an ‘older’ genre. Not so now!”
So it’s all rosy? Of course not – there are valid concerns; we can’t let ourselves run away with ideas, or just assume that because strategy has been around forever, it’ll be popular no matter what people do with it. Solomon airs his caution: “I get turned off by my own mechanics if they’re boring, or complicated or whatever – so I think the danger would be to make things too complicated... I don’t believe there’s any objective value in complication. Complexity is good. I’m more impressed by designers who can do things simply, rather than by people who just throw another fucking system at something. I don’t think an enormous amount has changed, and I think that’s because strategy is much, much, much older than the videogames that are trying to present it. And there’s only a limit to what the human brain can cope with.”
And yet... “I think we reached our limit pretty early on in videogames,” Solomon continues, “There haven’t been that many changes, just in terms of a shiš from simulation to game-games.
“At the same time I think it’s stupid to say that, because at some point someone will just come along and release a strategy game that blows us all out of the water with new ideas. What do I know?”