Spreading the good word: Supreme Commander evangelism
I love Supreme Commander. Its scale is as epic and its strategic possibilities as endless as promised. While you all probably agree with me, sadly, many of my gaming friends have yet to “see the light.” Even my friends who are huge fans of RTS have failed to join the bandwagon. Being a huge fan of the game, I often fail to understand other gamers’ lack of appreciation for the game. Heck, I was practically sold when I saw the first shaky camcorder footage of the strategic zoom. Many of you may also have friends who haven’t gotten into the game. I contend that there are two main reasons why your RTS buddies aren’t into Supreme Commander, and I ask you what, if anything, can be done to persuade them to join the fun.
First, many gamers aren’t into Supreme Commander because it appears (and indeed, is) so different from most real-time strategy titles. Many gamers simply don’t want to learn a new game, with a new economic system, more complex queuing capabilities, etc. Sadly and inevitably, the features that distinguish Supreme Commander from more ubiquitous RTS titles (think Westwood, Blizzard, Ensemble, etc.) may also turn people off of the game. People are comfortable, for example, with the basic economic systems that have been around for years: gather as much of one or more map-limited resources as you can, which is why they may be more likely to buy the newest C&C game than a completely new one. The economic system, however, shouldn’t be as large of a barrier as it seems to be. Over the last five years, RTS titles with different economic systems have gained much popularity–Rise of Nations and Battle For Middle Earth are among them. The fact that in Supreme Commander, your economy can stall indefinitely, especially if you’re an inexperienced player, turns off many potential players.
Really, the only solution to the first problem is getting your friends to settle down and play the game for an hour or so. Showing them promotional footage of massive large-scale battles and gigantic experimental units may impress them, but it isn’t going to sell the game to someone that has it in their head that the game’s learning curve is simply too steep. However, the learning curve is steepest right at your first gate-in, and it gets better quickly. I would guess that after three or four skirmishes against the AI (which, remember, can be played with the free demo), most RTS-savvy gamers will have a decent operating understanding of at least the early-game economy and military responsibilities. Plus, after your friends climb that first curve, they’ll start to realize how rewarding the game is, with its physics system, time-saving queuing features, and diverse strategic opportunities. So, if your friends haven’t even tried the demo, give it to them on a burned DVD to save them the trouble of remembering to download it. Let them know a standard build order to spare them a stalled economy right off the bat, then let them have at it.
The second reason I suspect many gamers aren’t into Supreme Commander is because they’re afraid they will never “catch up” to their friend or friends who have had the game for a while. This argument could be used for any RTS, and naturally, a more experienced player does have an advantage over a new player. However, I think the scale of Supreme Commander makes it more intimidating than most games. Gamers think they’ll never be able to remember all the strategic icons, or keep track of many factories and multiple fronts at the same time. Also, they simply don’t want to be dominated, especially by one of their friends.
To get your friends over this hurdle, I recommend showing them replays of games where you or someone used sneaky tactics to secure an advantage or a victory. Show them how engineer drops can turn the tide of a game, or how stealth can make your enemy grossly overconfident. Your friends may start to grin as they formulate plans to sneak around and defeat you, the experienced commander. Assure them that as long as they’ve gathered good intelligence, pretty much any attack that should work will work. That’s the beauty of this game. Also, although it may not sound as fun to you as stomping your friend’s ACU into nuclear waste, offer to team up over a LAN against a team of AI players.
Please give your ideas on how to persuade a fellow gamer into picking up Supreme Commander. I’d love to hear your techniques and success stories. Are there other reasons why your friends won’t take to Supreme Commander? Also, please give your opinions on ways to level the playing field while playing against your buddy who just picked up the game. Should you go easy on him? Are handicaps cheesy, or a legitimate way of evening things out? Or, is the best way to learn the game to be mercilessly destroyed until you figure out what you’re doing wrong?
May 15th, 2007 at 11:52 am
Very good article here. I wish some of my friends, who already own the game, would play more.
May 15th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
And here I thought this was about the patch finally coming out. ;)
May 15th, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Here’s my “idea on how to persuade a fellow gamer into picking up Supreme Commander”: They release the patch. =P
May 15th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
I’ve told all of my gaming friends to play Supreme Commander. None of them will, either because of the system requirements (their afraid it won’t run) or because they don’t like RTS games. It’s a shame too, their missing out.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
It’s simple.
I can sell the game to my friends, and they love it, but they won’t actually buy it because it’s too steep a resource requirement for them to play on their PCs.
A big thing that will sell the game will be the patch with its many promises of balances and optimizations. Once the patch is out, I believe I can get three more people to play. (”Don’t worry, your computer can run it. Just don’t load up any 81×81 maps with more than two players.”) A price drop would also help matters a lot. For a while, EB had Supreme Commander at $30. I almost got someone to buy it then. but I’m sure you all know how that works. They said “Sure I’ll go buy it now!” then by the time they get to the store, the promo is over.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:31 pm
I’ve actually been able to get a few of my friends into the game. But they too don’t have computers that would be able to run it. So now every time one of them comes to visit I have to let them play a round.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
I mentioned it to a couple of friends recently. They didn’t even know what Command and Conquer was. Or what an RTS was. Then I gave up.
May 15th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I didn’t even consider the stumbling block of computer requirements (perhaps I should have, although the solution to that is in GPG’s hands), since most of my gamer friends have good pc’s. Two of my buddies and I had C&C3 at a LAN party, and although I would prefer them all getting SupCom, since more already owned C&C3, we persuaded a fourth guy to go and buy C&C. The guy had never even played anything in the C&C franchise, but it was still a fairly easy “sell,” not to mention fairly easy to learn the game’s mechanics. I think the aspects that make SupCom look appealing to gamers also make the same gamers more hesitant to buy it. SupCom does require more of a time investment than C&C3 for example. But I probably speak for everyone in this community by stating that SupCom returns on that investment more than any C&C game ever will.
Molloy: They didn’t know what an RTS was? Yikes, you’ve got your work cut out for you!
May 15th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
I’m not sure it comes with the demo, or how it even works, but the pre-built structures mod that comes with the game may help newbies not stalling their early economy quite so easily while still giving them freedom to experiment.
The system requirements are probably the biggest turn-off for people especially those who like to play large games with several players. I also think with any new player you need to be cautious and oibliterate them completely. Let them tech up, get the interesting units and let them use it. Make some light attacks and stuff and do stupid things to win. They might still get beaten but at least they’ll have fun doing it.
Sell them the strong points of the game, use build queues, joint attacks etc and show them all the features in use. The game is a quality game, you just have to be patient with them and let them formulate their own opionion of it, good or bad.
May 15th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
*I meant not obliterate, rather than obliterate :P
May 15th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Yep, system requirements kill it. One of the reasons Starcraft is so popular (especially in Korea) is because it can run on virtually any computer.
May 15th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
I’m nearly sure Supcom was released without any optimization. I think this step was simply bypassed to release the game ASAP.
Consdider people reading the so called “Recommanded configuration” and realizing the game is clearly not playable on their configuration , especially considering what was shown at the E3 …..
Yes for small configuration 1v1 is playable, 2v2 nearly playable. but is that what was really promised ?
So the coming patch really needs to make the difference.
May 15th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I wouldn’t say that the game was released with no optimization, but you’re right, it does have unacceptable performance. There’s no reason it has to be so slow, and hopefully in the next patch we can see it done more correctly.
May 15th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
The best way to get people to play Supreme Commander over CNC3 is to buy them a copy of CNC3 and have them play it online.
May 15th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
People shouldn’t be introducing their friends to this game until the bugs are worked out, the game is balanced, and the game is optimized so you don’t need a top of the line computer to run it with any amount of graphical detail or gameplay complexity (aka long games on large maps).
Otherwise, you’re just introducing people to what looks like and should be an awesome game, but instead is a terrible experience.
Savage 1 was like that.
May 15th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Yeah, I’ve campaigned hard to get my small group of gamer friends into the game. We all love playing TA at LAN parties, so I figured it was an easy sell. About half have gotten it and love it. A few more have it, but can’t play it well because of the system requirements, and the rest are waiting to buy it because of the system requirements. So, that is by far the biggest hang up. I usually get responses like “Yeah, it looks sweet, but I can’t run it.”
May 15th, 2007 at 8:11 pm
The system requirements seemed like a lot until I upgraded my system for less than $425 and it’s now completely smooth in 4 player skirmish (me and 3 AI). On my old single core system it was a slideshow.
Core2Duo, 2GB DDR2, and a nice 650i SLI motherboard and I can enjoy the game much more. The 7900GT I had still does just fine with everything High except shadows.
May 15th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Right, but if your trying to get your friends to play the game, saying “IT’LL ONLY COST YOU 425.99!” won’t help too much. Their not going to upgrade their computers based solely on your recomendation, or atleast my friends aren’t.
May 15th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
Sub: You’d be surprised. I got one of my friend to shell out about $800 on a new computer capable of playing Supreme Commander.
May 15th, 2007 at 9:06 pm
yeah i know 3 friends that bought new systems or upgraded old ones to play this game., all it took was either the demo or a little multiplayer lan on the weekends to sell them. now… if only I could afford a new system.
May 15th, 2007 at 11:08 pm
you know i think supreme commender has the bet community ive ever seen in a game… keep up the good work ;)
May 16th, 2007 at 2:05 am
The second point isn’t valid, IMO, because the game is still very young. It’s been out, what, three months now? That shouldn’t necessarily be enough time for a permanent set up top 10 players to develop. Additionally, RTS talent is VERY different from FPS talent in that even an uncoordinated person can still quickly learn to dominate. In that vein, ANYONE can become good at SupCom, whereas those with poor coordination will always suck at FPS.
The first point is more than valid, though. The initial learning curve isn’t so much a curve as a small brick wall. Once over that learning comes quite easily. Take me, for example. In the demo and early into the retail release I couldn’t beat the hard AI. I had no idea what I was doing wrong but it’d get ahead and I’d never be able to get back into the game. All it took for me to realize the basics on how to actually play was watching two or three replays of decent/good players playing 1v1. That’s it. I wish FPS skill came so quickly… ;)
May 16th, 2007 at 4:43 am
Computer Specs is what lets the game down heavily but with some optimizations in the patch it will hopefully help a little.
May 16th, 2007 at 7:11 am
I don’t know how so many people say that the system requirements are too high. Just look at this post http://www.supcomtalk.com/2007/04/03/supreme-commander-and-laptop-gaming/ that I wrote a while ago. Sure, a 4 way FFA vs AI got to the almost unacceptable line at the end with alot of units, but realistically it was just fine. With SupCom being able to take advantage of Dual Core systems, the price of a system capable of playing it goes down alot.
Here’s an entire system that, with the exception of the video card which you can upgrade to something quite a bit better for the $50 that is on the rebate right now, is _better_ than my laptop. So for ~$600 or so you can get an entire system that will play SC fairly well.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883107359
May 16th, 2007 at 8:03 am
My point was more that the cost to upgrade to make the game playable by someone who’s already a gamer is no more than buying a console to play console games with your friends.
May 16th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I really want to play this game. I do. But I have a problem. The game has done it’s best to prevent me from playing it. Let me start by saying that I came by Total Annihilation a couple of years after it came out and I wondered why it did not make a bigger splash when it did. I love the game still but I never heard about it at release time. After reading comments about how this release is similar with the same stumbling blocks as before, I now understand.
I bought my computer 2 and a half years ago and it was not top of the line, but it was decent. In order to play this game I will need to invest in a new video card, more ram, and my processor will only be scraping by. I will not do this to play a single game I haven’t tried before. I would like to try it though so I downloaded the demo at work and I plan on finding a work computer that can play the demo. That is quite a bit of effort on my part just to try it out.
On the other hand, I have a xbox 360 that I bought 1 and a half years ago. It plays every game that comes out for it, and a lot that are out for the X-box as well. I can test these games in many different stores around the country. I get OXM that sends out demo discs (all of which work on my 360). I have friends which can come over and play without needing an internet connection. Games will still be made (and work perfectly) in my 360 for several years to come.
It is not just that the requirements are too high. The requirements to look at the game play in anything other than a grainy youtube are too high. The size of the community and the troubles it is having are the only proof I need to show that. Perhaps a simplified demo that was smaller in size and easier on system requirement would have lured in more people instead of turning them away to something more easily attainable and testable.
May 16th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Zengief I don’t want to hear console games compared to PC games by all means go ahead but it is rather stupid.
May 16th, 2007 at 1:35 pm
Even though you want to stick your head in the sand, consoles are still a factor. They may be different styles but they are still video games.
Besides that, my ultimate point was that gpg should have put out a better (less requirements, and smaller size) demo.
May 16th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Zengied, like u said “they are still video games”.
We’re not talking about Need For Speed franchise that is interchangeable between console and comp, we’re talking about an RTS game which are non-existent on consoles as far as I’m aware.
Cheers!
May 17th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
first time comment’er here - but i wanted to say about the system requirements; the feedback I’ve had from friends isn’t what is reasonable enough to run the game, it is what is required to reasonably run the game that was “being sold” by GPG through the last few years of demonstrations.
No on gets excited about playing 1vs.1 on a 10×10 map when they’re dreaming about having been sold into trying SupCom on for size - they’re wanting the big guns to come out; the uber E3 demos, the 1000+ unit trailer worthy battle scenes, the 8 player dynamics of chaos.
Then they find out they can’t run it like that. Then they find out few people can, and “well its only a few hundred bucks to upgrade” doesn’t cut it when you find yourself with a mortgage and a family and answering to a higher power (our spouses for those of us who have them).
Is it true that its really *that bad*? Nope, we who play often and play loud know that. But the major reviews that your average joe or jill pays attention to have long since been posted and they all spoke loud and clear - Its a great game - if you can run it.
~VW
May 21st, 2007 at 6:54 pm
The same thing happened with TA. Every journalist pretends to go misty eyed about TA nowadays, but back when it first came out it was a mixed bag for a lot of people. The problem with TA and SC is the atmosphere, which can seem plain until you have your first chaotic battle, with its surging phases of attack and defence. Then you see the deranged chaos of it, and in the chaos the life.