More AoE3

After reading Tom's AoE3 review, I ended up in the corresponding QT3 forum thread, in which I found this beautiful little nugget:

"It seems by the time you've stripped the game of all the meaningless micromanagement, either of the economic or military variety, and fleshed out all the interface and other constraining factors, you've no longer got an recognisable RTS game."

That comes courtesy of a poster by the name of TheSelfishGene, which, incidentally, is the name of an absolutely outstanding book by Richard Dawkins. Totally unrelated.

Anyway, the point made by the well-read forum-ite is quite astute, and, I think, goes a long way towards explaining why I (and likely many others of my ilk) find ourselves increasingly disenchanted with RTS, as a conventional genre. If, as seems to be the case, the defining characteristic of an RTS is that it derive its challenge from overly cumbersome and burdensome play mechanics and inefficient UI, then as far as I'm concerned this recipe for game design is a dead end. Or, as I've often argued for 'action RPG', the genre is tragically misnamed. More and more, the RTS genre is being defined by games whose principal challenge to the player isn't strategic decisions, but rather adept and efficient manipulation of a purposefully obtuse interface. Sure, the player still makes a few choices over the course of the game, but 99% of their success hinges upon the feverishly dexterous execution of a slew of individually insignificant actions. That's not a 'strategy' game. That's closer to an arcade game. It's closer to a platformer. And if that's the only kind of game they can make that has both an analog clock and the trappings of strategy, then I'll stick with turn-based (or pauseable) strategy. At least with those, though their interfaces aren't necessarily any better, at least the interface isn't the dominant factor determining victory or defeat.