EA introduced at E3 a new part of C & C. And it is physically painful to watch

TL; DR: this is C & C for mobile phones.
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If you are a happy person with a personal life and did not enter the network on the weekend, then most likely you missed the collective shout of thousands of C & C fans in particular and the RTS genre as a whole, which swept across the globe after the presentation of EA at the E3 game show. It would seem that EA from year to year reaches the bottom: selfies in Sims, LT boxes in StarWars, new political correct trailer BF V. Each time, watching the company that gave me my childhood, the phrase "EA Games, challenge everything" and " Eron-don-don ”in the NFS Underground, methodically, frantically digging for himself a reputational grave, I feel bad.

The fact that EA has once again shot itself in the foot is also confirmed by the public’s reaction to the YouTube game trailer. At the time of writing this post, the likes / comments ratio is 1.1 thousand versus 21 thousand. Below, in fact, the trailer itself. Remove from the screens of pregnant women, persons with an unstable psyche, children and dogs:


Conventionally, my local "women" can be divided into two parts: "How do the supporters of the company justify this" and "why they are not right."

#NotMyCNC

To begin with, EA has already buried one of the legendary RTS from the C & C family. This is a series of Red Alert, the rights to which were ruthlessly sold to the Chinese. The last ones in the best traditions will write down the version for Android and iOS with Yuri and Donat, there is no need to doubt this.



The reaction of the audience to such a gesture was quite predictable: the still unreleased game was “crucified”, EA struck another bottom, and Tencent, the direct developer from China, was accused of vulgarizing the glorious RTS heritage. EA was saved from even greater anger only that the release will take place exclusively in China, so that the rest of the world will not see this game. And, as you know, what is happening in China remains there. As in a parallel world.

But the violence against C & C did not stop there. Now, a few months after the announcement of the Chinese RA for mobile phones, EA from the stage of the main game exhibition of the planet presents a mobile version of C & C called "Rivals". And in the trailer even flashed elements of godless hexagonal gameplay. "It's a fiasco, bro."

The logic of the company, however, is extremely simple:

• the mobile gaming market is growing;
• The “rise” of loot there is monstrous;
• People shavayet;
• There are no competitors on the PC.

This is confirmed by rare commentators who say that “strategies are useless to no one, people want fast and simple entertainment.” And here we move on to another, more pleasant publication. More precisely, I, as an old RTS and TBS refugee, will share my experience of survival in the modern world of “interactive entertainment” with litboxes and political correctness. More precisely, now I will prove to you that EA broke through the next bottom, and their marketers are not able to assess the current market strategies, simply by opening Steam.

Why market strategies are alive

If you are a fan of the TBS genre, and specifically the RA series, then reading further is permissible only if there are ~ 150-200 free hours in the next couple of months. Because worse than hard drugs. And while EA and other suppliers of “gameplay gum” are sawing the next “exclusive experience in interactive entertainment,” our beloved genre quietly raises its head.

And I will not even cite as an example the failing "Cossacks 3", although the attempt was worthy of the very fact of the attempt. And talk about a pair of projects that tore the tops of sales Steam in the past six months.

For example, the small studio Numantian Games, which was founded in 2013 (headquarters in Spain) and in 2014 released its first game Lords of Xulima. The game did not become a hit, but received a lot of warm reviews on Steam for its commitment to old school traditions and mechanics. By the way, the director himself and the chief game designer of the studio spoke in one of his interviews.

And already in December 2017 there was an access to the early access of the game, which delivers physical pain: They Are Billions. In fact, the game is extremely similar to the mix of RA and SC in a steam-punk (diesel-punk) setting of a zombie apocalypse.

During the winter sale, Numantian Games sold half a million copies (from $ 10 to $ 25, depending on the region. For CIS - $ 14.99, RF - 699 rubles) and almost all the time they hung on the Steam top. And for a moment: the project is in active development, there is only one mode of "survival", while there is no plot campaign, multiplayer or cooperative. Half a million copies of the game for masochists from an unknown studio. The maximum that was done for promotion was bought a couple of evenings from popular streamers on Twitch, and then the chain reaction went. In general, the game deserves a separate review, especially with the addition of new mechanics, but it is worth noting that at the basic level, a lot has been borrowed from SC, RA and the classic Tower Defense genre. In short, a cocktail of the fact that in the opinion of Electronic Arts is dead and what is the place only in the casual segment for mobile phones.

You can also recall the wonderful release from a small Polish game studio Frost Punk, which knocks out a tear with its music, but in visual terms it seems impossible to beat it at all. And this is quite a strategy with several missions, without online, multiplayer and even replayability, which brings it closer to the novels, and not to the RTS genre.

Yes, it’s trivial to recall the pomp with which Blizzard announced the release of StarCraft remastering and how many hype was around this event (yes, we are still waiting for WC4)

And here you ask yourself a logical question: Electronic Arts, what is wrong with you? People buy hundreds of thousands of copies of strategies, and this is not about giants like Civilization, Europa or Stellaris, but about completely chamber projects. Blizzard launches a remastering of a twenty-year-old game in 2018, but do you bury the legendary game universe and condemn it to live on mobile phones? Do you have mushrooms sour or what? Now the most active part of the population is represented by people born in 1980-1995. And these people grew up on RTS and TBS, on the series SC, C & C, HoMM and others. Why don't you take this into account?

Of course, the questions are rhetorical, but still. In general, the publication was written not only with the aim of “burning out” on EA, but also asking the community: in which RTS, TBS or other strategies do you spend your free time? Do you have to huddle in the HoMM3 fan HD re-releases, or do you, like me, look for something new in this endless ocean of releases of games with “unique experience”?