I know, despite insane microcontrol and micromanagement StarCraft requires very deep strategic thinking and game mechanics understanding. Timing is far more sharp, than in SupComm also. Limited resources make the game even more sharp.

It is very smart game, even in this stage of it’s theoretical clearence.

I think now in 2007, the main factors forming StarCraft community is the following.
1. 3 absolutely different races with absolutely differend timings. Good game engineering.
2. Quite good balance between races. They use map design to archive this, in major.
3. Minimalism. In Starcraft any unit is absolutely neccessary. Even those rarely used have their own purposes.
4. Founded communiry. I don’t know what is this. Single player, or other things, or all them, but that is it.
5. Epic, as the autor said.

Every time you had to save “humans” in the campaign you only saw them in lousy transport vehicles or locked in some vague neutral building. It would have been great to have some actual humans running around, screaming in front of those giant robots and the possibility of them getting smashed under tracks/feet. Some real cities (like in the intro CGI) would have helped as well. The focus in SupCom is on pure military and conquering desolate planets, more life in the environments would help a LOT if you ask me. And a different interface for each faction would be awesome too, I shouldn’t be too hard to get some art from the briefing screens and distill a re-skinned interface out of it.

On the other hand there are games like chess or tetris that don’t require a storyline. The satisfaction doesn’t come from empathising with characters, or from the atmosphere. It comes from learning the rules. Testing the edges of the balance to see if something new is possible. Taking in the different styles and approaches of different opposition. Getting into “the zone”. That situation where the game is taking so much concentration that you’ve become utterly absorbed in it and everything just flows without you having to think too much.

There are several schools of thought about what games should be. On the one had you have people who think they should be like a movie. I think of them more like a sport or a board game. You still have stories, but they’re more like “Did you see that time I got the tactical missiles up and got your commander down to 200 health, but he got away” rather than “It was the fourth moon. Our battle had ranged on for 40 millenia. We had some sort of disagreement over the TV remote. Then things escalated into Galactic War.”

On a side note: I always enjoyed the Total Annihilation story. It gave you a broad outline. So you were free to think about the games story anyway you liked. That’s why the fan fic community for the game was so brilliant. There were so many gaps they were free to run riot. I always had fun with my Annihilarity comics coming up with ridiculous justifications of all the stuff in the game that made no sense. You could make the story your own. I hate that alot of modern games and modern cinema give everything too much backstory. You watch the latest Batman film and it spends the first hour telling you everything about Bruce Wayne down to what he ate for breakfast. Where’s the mystery? Nothing is left to the imagination.

The Starcraft community is all but dead, and the game forgotten. SupCom promises to be even better than TA ever was in terms of modding and customizability. If SupCom had an immersive story like Starcraft, it likely would have been the best strategy game ever.

Star Craft had a better single player campaign, with high budget cutscenes. As 90% of players (probably more back in ‘97/’98) never play a videogame online that’s the thing you need to concentrate on.

Blizzard also have very skilled artists. They are probably the only Western developer that has succeeded in finding an asthetic that appeals to Asians too.

I personally love the design of the SupCom races. They said they modelled the Aeon to be something like Apple Computers would do. And they really achieved that in my opinion. The Cybran look lovely too, with all the sharp edges. And the UEF have a great, chunky retro look to them. The sort of thing you’d see in an 80’s sci fi movie. The fact that you spend alot of the time zoomed out somewhat diminishes the character of the units. Everything can look the same when you’re far out. But this is the first game to attempt something like this so you can’t expect it to be 100% perfect.

I don’t agree that having the units talk is a good move. The genre has outgrown that. It was fine in the early CnC days where speech in videogames was still sort of a novelty. “Yes sir!” “Affirmitive” “On my way” and all that thing just irritates nowadays. I think that’s why GPG decided not to go with TA style whirrs and buzzes when you selected your units like in TA. Although I sort of miss those.

There are games that take old, limited ideas and polish the hell out of them. They get everything absolutely perfect. That’s what a Blizzard game is. There are games which are done on much smaller budgets, that can’t compete on production values that try to break the mold and distrupt the old gameplay. That’s what TA and SupCom are.

The first type of game is what 90% of people want. But people who play waaaay to many videogames are bored of established ideas. They’re prepared to try something with a few more rough edges because it’s doing something they haven’t seen before. That’s the other 10% of the equation.

Another factor is probably the difficulty. I played TA pretty frequently for 9 years. Supreme Commander is so hard in online play I sometimes think my brain is going to explode. There’s so much stuff to juggle at the same time. There’s been a big trend of going back to simpler games recently. Casual games from Pop Cap are making a fortune. Then you’ve got the Nintendo Wii. All those arcadey Live Arcade games. The more complicated the game the less people are going to enjoy it.

Of course Chris Taylor said he was aiming to please the hardcore RTS players, not everybody. Artistic success isn’t always measured by how many sales you get. Would you rather have a million people who really love the game, or 20 million that bought it and are pretty indifferent to it. Well, if you take money out of the equation (a big factor I know) the first situation seems more attractive. TA didn’t sell as well as Star Craft but it had an incredibly devoted fanbase who made mods, ran tons of sites and wrote really good fanfiction and so forth. The SC community never really produced anything worthwhile.