The History Of The Strategy Game

Some of strategy gaming’s most influential titles were developed for consoles, but by 2000 the genre had been synonymous with PC for a decade.

- Fraser Brown

The launch of the PlayStation 2 saw more and more people drift away from their PCs, prompting Microsoft to make the Xbox, which appeared the following year. It might have looked like a PC, but when it came to traditional strategy games, it was just as hostile an environment as any other console. The audience was shrinking, publishers were becoming increasingly risk-averse, and players were coalescing around stalwart franchises.

Out of this came oddities, hybrids, spin-offs, and more experiments with 3D maps and cameras, like Massive Entertainment’s real-time tactics game, Ground Control. Similar to Relic’s Homeworld, it gave you free rein of the camera, letting you zoom out for an overview of the battle— though not quite as far, given the smaller scale—and then all the way up to your beefy sci-fiunits, watching them from ground level as they bombarded enemy fortifications or stormed bases. It looked great, and it boasted plenty of other noteworthy features, like 3D terrain that could modify accuracy, foliage that could hide troops, and customizable units.

At the same time, Shiny Entertainment introduced the world to Sacrifice. In another reality, Sacrifice is probably hailed as an important and influential RTS, but for some reason we’re stuck in the one where it’s more of a brilliant, overlooked curio. With a library that included Earthworm Jim and MDK, Shiny’s games were typically strange and inventive, but the studio had never worked on anything close to a strategy game. That might have been an advantage, as Sacrifice ripped apart RTS conventions.