4X Games: in search of the fifth

Today I would like to touch on a rather specific kind of games belonging to the genre of global strategies or 4X games, as they are sometimes called. But it will be not only about offline games and the genre in general, but also about some aspects of online representatives.

The term 4X was first mentioned by Alan Emrich in the Master of Orion review and has since been used to describe similar games where players control the empire and “e X plore, e X pand, e X ploit, and e X terminate”. Their ideas and roots are found in desktop and text computer games of the 70s. The first game was turn-based, but now Realtime 4X are no longer a rarity.

Since many step-by-step games were published back in the 1990s and then were pushed aside by the RTS genre, the question “ what happened to turn-based games ” and directly about the death of the genre itself was quite acute. I am inclined to agree that the “dark ages” quite reasonably took place in the history of 4X. Many epoch-making TBS, which have grown in popularity of the genre, despite the continuation of the genre emphasis on strategic depth, empire management and positive reviews from critics, have not met commercial expectations.
As a result, new ways of implementation for 4X games were found and tested. The first realtime 4Xs were released, such as Imperium Galactica in 1997 and Starships Unlimited in 2001. A few years later, Sword of Stars was released, which featured a real-time tactical phase made in 3D. Following the success of the SoS, Ironclad Games released Sins of a Solar Empire, in absolute realtime and absolute 3D. The latest trendsetter now can be called Civilization V Sid Meer, without exaggeration, one of the greatest games in the history of not only the genre, but the industry as a whole.
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After the patient’s condition had stabilized and some aspects acquired a new meaning, the question of 4X death was no longer relevant. New iterations have become quite popular, expanding the audience of players. And then a completely different question came to the fore.

Customization?

What is meant by casualization relative to the genre in question? Things like simplifying the gameplay, eliminating more complex game designs, reducing the initial threshold for entering the gameplay, which significantly expands the game’s audience, can be considered as casualization. Generally, frankly, this scary word scares us for a long time, reasonably and not very. Moreover, this concerns not only global strategies, but also absolutely other games and other genres.
I think it is possible to distinguish two main types of casualization, different in their essence, concepts and implementations.

The first of these follows by cutting back on the more “hardcore” part of the gameplay, simplifying the gameplay, reducing the number of available features, focusing on the graphic part, which have a direct impact on the depth of the game, its concept and philosophy. Essentially speaking, this is the path of least resistance, when everything that makes the game much more difficult for a certain audience as much as possible is removed. From a commercial point of view, this is usually a winning option, in terms of the popularity of the game - most likely, too. But the more hardcore players and connoisseurs of the genre just remain disappointed, as they are the category of players for whom it is crucial to follow some of the “canons” of the genre. They can be understood as they often lack precisely those trimmed elements of the game, without which it is either “no longer a cake”, or simply is completely different and does not meet their expectations. For example, I liked Sins of a Solar Empire, but at the same time, I felt a certain feeling that the game did not reach the level of, say, Master of Orion, or at least Galactic Civilization. No, you do not think - in fact it is not bad, besides, given the full 3D and realtime for this kind of genre, Sins of a Solar Empire is an excellent game. But, which is not quite consistent with the framework of the genre. By the way, now, quite relevant reproaches in the direction of the same Civilization V, although I do not quite agree with them.

The second way is more difficult. It implies a careful, accurate shift in the “player-friendly” plane, without critical changes to the gameplay. And this is not only about the mechanics, the complexity of the game, but rather about a comprehensive set of solutions that can make the game more accessible to more players, without prejudice to its strategic part. In my opinion, in this approach, and in the concept of any game, the initial threshold of entry and the first impressions received from the gameplay are extremely important. There are theories according to which the very first minutes are crucial and decisive, during which its fate is decided with respect to “an individual person”. In other words, this is how quickly a player can get comfortable in the interface, how comfortable he will be taking his first steps in the game, how difficult it will be for him to confront AI or other similar players. And if fans of the genre who are used to everything, as a rule, are quite easily mastered literally from the very start of the game, then it is quite difficult for an inexperienced player to figure it all out. It is worth even to dwell on the interface and usability, probably, the sore points of global strategies. Usability is the most important factor when striving to reach a wider audience of players. According to research, if the user does not understand the interface in two minutes, he is more likely to stop playing altogether. I think many people can imagine the furious implementation of interfaces in many 4X games - an abundance of menus, pop-up windows, sliders, summary tables and various screens.
Another important problem of almost all, without exception, global strategies is the increasing amount of information that must be processed after each turn. A good anti-example here will probably be the Master of Orion III, which was literally buried under an abundance of informational reports, reports, reports on economic, military or scientific events. And if at the beginning of the game it was possible to cope with this relatively quickly, then, literally, after a few hours of play, the volume increased simply exponentially - the delay between turns became clearly excessive.
In general, exceptional “severity” is one of the main problems of the genre. However, this is explained by the fact that 4X is quite conservative and niche, calculated solely for a certain audience of players, for whom this very “severity” to some extent is even attractive. Although, recently there are quite clearly seen the tendencies to make games of this kind more friendly, oriented to a wide audience. And in this vein, I think that Civilization V is quite right, despite the dissatisfaction of some fans of the series or hardcore players. In its latest incarnation, we see excellent graphics (especially within the genre), a fairly user-friendly interface (but not without flaws), a good implementation of advisers (governors), and some simplifications in management. Of course, saddening and the elimination of religion, the shortcomings of the combat system, a little damp concept of soc. paradigms that are now based on culture, optimization ... But I will not go into details and discuss the gameplay as a whole, because I mentioned above the importance of the initial entry threshold and the friendliness of the game, which, I think, Civilization V perfectly succeeded.

Uber alles

Thus, on such “Scales of Equilibrium” there are two concepts of game development, the philosophies of which are strikingly different. Excessive deviation of the bowl in one direction or another leads either to the casualization of the game, or to an orientation toward a more niche audience of players.
Against this background, the situation with online representatives of the 4X genre looks somewhat more interesting, where the players themselves are the balancing factor, since the online role of the AI ​​is reduced to zero or is completely absent. I do not consider multiplayer modes for classic games in our understanding, since they are designed for a much smaller number of players, and I mean rather bbmmog like the-game.ru, ferion, spacom, erepublik. Being representatives of bbmmog, they, naturally, are not without flaws of this type of games, which I mentioned in my previous article . Together with the shortcomings of the genre, such projects ultimately turn out to be either overly niche or strikingly differ from the original 4X concept.

But let's try to change the topic a bit and figure out what attracts players in 4X itself. Delving into my feelings and communicating with the same players, I came to a definite conclusion that this kind of games are cultivated if not “God’s syndrome”, but sovereign or commander precisely, in addition to the already fascinating, serious and thoughtful gameplay. Moreover, it is rather close to the real state of things in the world. By the way, such “conditional realism”, regardless of the framework and background of the game world where events take place, is one of the key features that attract players of this genre. From the point of view of psychology, to a certain extent, ambitions are fulfilled - managing the army, navy, aviation, creating and managing an empire, which, of course, uber alles, a triumphal march across enemy capitals and cities - such moments give the player the opportunity to feel like a virtual Alexander, Caesar Napoleon, well, and Stalin with Hitler, of course. Some simply enjoy the process itself, some also manage to follow a course and, I would even say, play-play a certain concept of the state or its leader. All this we are kindly provided 4X. As a result, a completely new, but still relevant question arises: what if you allow the player to control not pixels or pieces of code, but real, real people? Ten people. A hundred. A thousand Without revolutions, barricades, bloodshed and other unpleasant things. Just like that, not rising from your computer.

Recently, I finished a little processing of statistics regarding the preferences of players in the 4X genre, collected from various thematic resources. In no way do I pretend to be the ultimate truth, but I also do not take figures from the absolute ceiling.



It can be noted that in addition to the basic requirements for global strategies, players also pay special attention to politics, diplomacy, and interaction between players / states. In fact, this can be an excellent integrated solution based on online games, since the level of interaction with AI, which is now implemented in games, does not meet the needs of this category of players, except, perhaps, some games that are focused on the designated aspects. Such a solution can be considered as the median stabilizing factor between the two bowls of extremes described above. Why I pay so much attention to these aspects - this is because, in my opinion, they are an excellent ground for interesting gameplay, since the players themselves are game content generators and event makers, they can be expected to do absolutely anything, offline representatives or games with AI. Developing the social part and improving its functionality, we, thus, slightly shift the emphasis of players from the traditional foundations of the genre, get a little extra “space for maneuver” in the more complex and controversial aspects of the gameplay.
In addition, man is a social being, in its essence. This explains the popularity of various social networks and services - a person feels the need for communication and interaction. And competition. Which, in turn, forces him to achieve something in irl or in mmo.

Then is not the aforementioned “politics-diplomacy-engagement” a complex, the fifth X for global strategies that will give the genre a new impetus? In my opinion - has all the chances for this. No, I by no means want to say that offline analogs or multiplayer are extremely bad or unpromising, but the development trends of mmo games and the increase in the number of players online create an extremely favorable atmosphere and significantly expand opportunities for 4X games. It is much more interesting for players to interact with each other than with AI. The same applies to the war - show gruel or distribute pretzels to another of the same players much more pleasant. Moreover, in such a system, incidents or stupidities, which are often shown to us by a computer opponent, are excluded. In and of themselves, diplomacy or politics in a game carries in itself such an extensive field of opportunity that it often goes beyond its framework, allows building complex social structures, whose activities and functioning become similar to community models from our real world.

Unfortunately, among browser games, I still do not see such an implementation of the social part. Erepublik looks best in this respect, but it belongs to a slightly different genre and does not quite fall under the 4X frame. The rest of them, for the most part, are pioneers in this field and now either simply become outdated or occupy exclusively dense niches, designed for a very specific audience. On the other hand, more modern counterparts have gone through casualization and have lost much of their original appearance. I will not now describe in detail all the existing representatives of 4X bbmmog, because now there are dozens of similar games and their clones, with different levels of implementation, attractiveness and popularity - their description and analysis would take several pages of text. Perhaps, if this topic is interesting and relevant, I will continue their detailed analysis and opening in a separate post.

To want to say in the end. It was not quite easy to compile my thoughts that had arisen for several years, because Today's subject matter is on the verge of sensation and personal perception, but for me, certain moments are presented quite clearly. In the era of mass, mainstream and casualization, which lead to a significant simplification of 4X games, it is difficult to choose between their accessibility to a wide audience and preserving the foundations of the genre, so beloved by old-time gamers and simply lovers of serious, deep game. This is especially true of bbmmog games, the popularity of which leads to cuts in some gameplay elements, simplifying the gameplay. Therefore, one of the ways to preserve a kind of balance between hardcore and casualization, I still see the development of the social aspect, balancing such a complex structure as 4X, since a sufficiently large percentage of influence on the events taking place in the world will have not only certain spherical levels of mines, the number of troops or accumulated money, but also such important factors as the social skills of the players, their ability to diplomacy, management and management. And, most importantly, not over abstract pixels, but over living people, of flesh and blood. What is not 4x?