Lord Of My Own Domain

I find something deeply satisfying about city-building and RTS (real-time strategy) games so over the weekend I renewed my acquaintance, with a marathon session covering a number of games. Age of Mythology, Age Of Empires (all incarnations), Zeus, Pharoah, Children Of The Nile, Cleopatra and Populous and Warcraft 3 all got aired for a few hours on my trusty PC.

The genre on domestic machines can trace its lineage all the way back to Powermonger, one of the first commercial releases by Peter Molyneux, when his Populous title was still an idea on paper. Oh how I loved getting my little men chopping wood and building their base before sending them out across the landscape on suicidal missions against a computer controlled enemy. Nearly 20 years later I still find myself doing the same thing, I am still sending out hordes of little people to chop wood! My little men have become more detailed but the basic game premise remains unchanged across countless RTS games.These games are themselves based on resource management games that hark back to the mainframes of the 1960s so the concept has been with us a long time indeed!

Some of these games place greater emphasis on combat than resource management whilst others concentrate on building your civilisation from the ground up and lording it over your own teeming metropolis. Wherever the emphasis lies all of these games are based on the same framework that has stood the test of time for nearly three decades. Some game genres come and go, flittering in and out of fashion like the latest summerwear but the RTS/citybuilder survives and continues to flourish amidst the swathes of yearly gaming releases. A genre that was once confined to the PC is now migrating in greater numbers to the consoles and later this year we expect to see the flagship Age Of Empires make its debut on the Xbox 360.

What is it that makes these games so enduring? There are probably any number of reasons. There is certainly a sense of achievement in spending countless hours building a city and populating it, carefully placing buildings, walls and all the paraphernalia of urban life and harvesting resources necessary for survival. It also has to be said that there is tremendous satisfaction in decimating the settlement painstakingly created by the other guy or computer opponent! Who can deny the sheer delight of sending wave after wave of little people into combat, sitting back and watching the chaos ensue. Those who you who recall gaming of the early 90's may recall the pleasure of sending countless Lemmings off cliffs in Dave Jone's landmark "Lemmings" game!

The psychologists will no doubt tell us that the pleasure is all about being in control, having the power of life and death over the little people whilst we assume the role of some digital deity or a case of Napoleon syndrome, the enjoyment of planning and strategising as a great military leader. Personally I have never cared for psychological overviews of why I enjoy the RTS genre so much, probably because I am just too busy having fun even if my little people face certain doom every time I play!

Anklesock Littlegirlsocks

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