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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34988 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I mean if it's about quality and not numbers, one single classic board game (War of the Ring as you said) is enough. The others before it don't matter.

I will grant that Dune 2 is a legendary RTS and LOTR has nothing with that kind of legacy, but I contend that has little to do with the IP. They simply were making the right game at the right time, and had few to no competitors. By the time you had LOTR games being made (which I remind you are actually pretty good in many cases), there was a thriving games industry and the genres were pretty well established. I contend that something like BfME 2 is as good as Dune 2, it just was later on and so it didn't have the same impact. The IP didn't cause that.

I think the one IP based aspect of the RTS template that easily could have converged towards very different designs is the focus on in-map resource extraction and economy. You can't make a Dune game without harvesters, but you can easily make a strategy game without actively managed economy units and harassing thereof. And many successful RTS's from this century have abandoned this aspect.

I wasn't even particularly looking for Dune-related insights, but this is definitely an interesting point. Thank you.

LOTR has nothing with that kind of legacy

Not quite, but there was a very influential adventure game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hobbit_(1982_video_game)

Presumably that's why, in Red Dwarf, as their generic adventure game, they hint at a LOTR game:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fYAlB1Kxayc

Of course the others before it matter. It's an infinite monkeys on typewriters scenario. If you give enough people opportunities to make a game based on Lord of the Rings, one of them eventually is likely to be good.

And sure, on a technical level, Battle for Middle Earth is the more polished, later game. But that is sidestepping the most difficult part in creating, which is creating something new and dynamic. It is easy to make a similar game in hindsight, once it has already been done. And you are simply wrong when you say that there was no opportunity to make Tolkien-branded games while they were making Dune games. That just isn't true. They were making games. They even attempted a strategy game before Dune II. It is just forgettable.

We're going to have to agree to disagree. I think you are wrong on all points, I'm sure you think the same of me. If we can't agree on the basic axioms we're dealing with, then of course our conclusions will differ.

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