I came across my ancient 4E4 entry yesterday and it resurrected my interest in creating a top-down, classic RTS in the vein of Warcraft II, C&C:Red Alert, Total Annihilation, etc (because that's what my 4E4 entry was).

I don't play many games these days but I always wanted to create a game like this, to add the features I missed as a player. These games were the last RTS I played in a big way and I know things moved on a lot, but to me this was a classic era. Do others see it that way?

So anyway a question to the indie people here mainly, but also to game players who are more in touch with trends and what's popular - is there a market for a game such as I describe? Would it have to be ground-breaking in other ways, or like Diner Dash games is there a market for Yet Another RTS?

I see that RTS isn't really a casual game genre, you have to invest time, it's also not the kind of game you can sell for $2 in my opinion. I was also wondering about iPad, it seems to me a classic RTS would transfer reasonably well to touch-screen.

All thoughts welcome :)

I believe that there will always be a market for these games, but you will need a certain level of polish and a reasonable price point. Personally, Tiberian Sun was one of my favourite games for quite some time (and I thoroughly enjoyed Red Alert), and I'd love to see a return to reasonably paced RTS games in a similar lieu. You don't need mass scale like Supreme Commander or other complexity in order to be successful. StarCraft 2 is probably a reasonable example of this - there were not many fundamental changes to that game formula, despite how long it had been since the previous title.

depends on the gameplay

It all depends on how well the game is made.

There are so many poorly made RTS games out there right now, it would hard to market your game IMHO .

If you could make a good Dungeon Keeper clone, you'd have many MANY greatful fans.

depends on the gameplay

That's sort of my point. If you basically just had the gameplay from the games I mentioned, and created a decent campaign, or regular updates of new content, would people who love RTS buy them for their next RTS fix? Or would they only buy a game which does something new and exciting?

I think there’s definitely a market for RTS games, (I’m making one too) it's niche and it's hard to pull off well, but it’s also a genre that is for the most part very underserved by both indies and AAA companies. I think it’s best if you can add something new to the classic RTS gameplay, but even if you make something fairly similar to an older game, I don’t think you’re going to have a problem with being seen as “yet another RTS” since there are so few of them these days.

That being said, I don’t like the iPad as a platform for a non-casual RTS, even though touch screen input could work, it would still be more limiting than mouse and keyboard. Also, with a classic RTS you’re going to be appealing to a niche genre, you won’t attract many causal impulse buyers, you’re going to want to charge a higher price than what’s normally accepted on mobile platforms, and it’s generally a lot harder to get noticed to begin with in the mobile app market.

re:iPad I was thinking that while it's not good for a 5min casual game, there must be people who play on their iPad for hours on end - long train commutes, in hotel rooms, etc. More and more iPad is the device people take with them everywhere, they might leave their laptop at home to take the iPad these days even.

The other idea which seems popular on tablets is turn-based games, especially where you play multiple games in parallel. I haven't decided if that would work well, but this probably IS a new(ish) move for an RTS.

However yeah I reckon I'd target PCs or make it cross platform so I can pursue iPad if I chose, or spin off an iPad game from the same engine easily.

Oh man, I remember 4e4. My (unfinished) entry was my first reasonably complex project, also an RTS. Good times.

The real-time strategy genre is still my favourite genre. Some friends and I still play old-school RTSs in our spare time. Age of Empires, Age of Mythology, and StarCraft are the main ones I play, but I know some people who still bring out WarCraft III occasionally. So yes, there are still people out there playing those sorts of games, but I think whether there would be a market for a new one would depend greatly on how well the game could distinguish itself from its predecessors without straying too far from the familiar gameplay that RTS players like me love.

Brings back memories doesn't it :) I don't recall how far I got on my project, but I do remember my 4E4 entry wasn't as complete as I'd wanted and I worked on it after. I don't think it builds/runs on modern compilers although I never got round to finding out why!

Hardest part is figuring out a pathfinder algorithm for each unit type in game ... ( I wish I could figure it out )