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#136 THE MEANING OF THE POST COUNT AT APOLYTON FORUMS Xuenay takes aim at the Apolyton administration for their handling of forum post count situations. #135 WHY I'M STILL PLAYING CIVILIZATION II DaveV can count to four reasons as to why he is still playing CivII more than four years after its original release. #134 A MODEL FOR A CHEAT-FREE GAME Kent Wang re-investigates the model used for multi-player gamers, and offers an alternative. #133 WELCOME TO APOLYTON OFF-TOPIC If you let him, connorkimbro will take you on his tour of Apolyton's Off-Topic forum. #132 APOLYTON: CIV SITE SUPERPOWER Somgu shows the funny(?) side of Apolyton's position in the Civ community. COLUMN ARCHIVE

There have been questions asked in various fora about the future of Turn Based Strategy games. Something of a dearth of new games obviously has a lot to do with it. Even worse, with people like Hasbro pulling back from PC game production (what price Microprose now?), it looks like the development money will be a little on the short side until priorities change again. If they ever do.

The same thing is happening in other genres, particularly Flight Simulations, where Falcon 4.0 looks like it is going to be the top of the pile for quite some time (again, many thanks Hasbro!) However, I seem to recall the death knell being rung for Adventure games, RPGs and even Shoot 'em ups. As Mark Twain was heard to remark on reading his obituary, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." Just when you think it's all over, a small team somewhere comes up with an idea so good even the publishers can see it and with the skill base out there, we aren't likely to run short of developers any time soon. Just as long as everyone remembers that Doom was written by a bunch of guys in their spare time, there should be no cause for despair.

So, having seen virtually all PC game genres come, go and come again, I would suggest we shouldn't get too worried if TBS is looking a little creaky at the moment. Shogun Total War perhaps shows the way things will go in the near future, but it's been done before (Caesar I/II/III, Conquest of the New World etc.), just not as well. I know TBS plus real-time tactics aren't to everyone's taste and may even offend TBS purists, but for my money the option to actually fight the battles you set up is a real step forward. Civ players will kill for Civ3, just as will MOO fans for the upcoming sequel. The developers and publishers are well aware of this. I am also very excited about Sid's Dinosaurs (which looks like it may have more than a little TBS in its DNA), though as has been remarked elsewhere in this site, things seem to have gone a bit quiet recently.

The problem, in the end, lies with the publishers, most of whom wouldn't know a good game from a hole in the ground and will stick to the tried and tested (and tired), rather than risk something their marketing pukes tell them will bomb. We see the same thing happen in the music and movie industries periodically, when the accountants get into the executive loop and everything becomes shareholder driven. As my mother used to say, "It's just a phase." In this industry, there will always be room for the small teams and from time to time, they will produce a big one, so just hang in there, TBS fans. Your time will come again.

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About the author: "PC game addict and highly trained F16 (Sim) pilot".

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