'Age Of Empires' Developer Dave Pottinger Says RTS Genre "Hasn't Changed Much, You're Still Playing The Same Game We Made 20 Years Ago"
Dave Pottinger, who worked on Age of Empires, Age of Empires II, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III, and Halo Wars claimed the RTS genre has not innovated within the last 20 years and even new games are fundamentally the same.
Speaking on the VideoGamer podcast, Pottinger discussed how his team at Last Keep, which is developing Project Citadel, had been playing Age of Mythology: Retold after it released in September.
He said, “I think it reinforced, in the situation that we are in now, it reinforced our decisions to innovate with Project Citadel because, as much as I love the strategy genre and to a large extent I owe my fortunate career in games to it, it hasn’t changed much. You’re still playing the same game that we made 20 years ago.”
“And looking at some of the new games that are coming out, the Stormgates and others like that, they are still really largely based on that, that level formula,” he continued. “And it works. It’s an old golden set of rules because they were good back then and they are still good now. And it’s nice to see that that stuff still works, but at the same time I want to do something new. We want to do something new. Both, we want to play something new and we want to develop something new.”
READ: PC Gamer Editor Bashes 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' And Declares He's Done With BioWare
Pottinger then summarized, “And so it was great to see the old games get a face lift and be kind of remastered for the modern day, but at the same time it did reinforce what our path is here at Last Keep. RTS games are having a bit of a resurgence, but they are also honestly due for some game design innovation. A lot of the game design things are still what we pioneered a long time ago.”
“And we have an interesting chance,” he noted. “There were some times on the Age [of Empire] franchise where we flew a little too close to the sun and we had to pull back and take some very innovative things out of the game. And I’m talking specifically about formations, formation-based combat from Age of Empires III. And hell, we demo’d that at E3 and then took it out of the game because we were afraid it was going to alienate too many of the existing Age fans.”
“So, we’re building a new franchise here at Last Keep and we have the opportunity to-. We don’t yet have fans of our game so we can innovate a little bit more and it’s a chance to really show them what we think the strategy genre can be but we don’t have 30 years of backlog that we have to maintain. If you cut the villagers out of Age of Empires or change the way the maps were made people would be up in arms because there’s just expectations with that franchise,” he concluded.
Lost Ark describes Project Citadel as “a strategy game for a new generation of gamers. Liberate the galaxy from the evil Voltari Empire in this real time strategy, sci-fi roguelike where fast-paced action combat meets deep, strategic squadron management.”
The game is expected to go into Steam Early Access.
What do you make of Pottinger’s comments about the RTS genre and its lack of innovation?
I really enjoyed reading this. I do think I'll stick to the series personally though. I enjoy the historical settings.