StarCraft 2 lead dev teases new “paradigm-shifting” RTS game

Missing the golden days of StarCraft, Command & Conquer, and Age Of Empires? A scoop by PCgamer foretells that the Real-time strategy genre might be about to make a comeback, as Starcraft 2’s multiplayer lead developer David Kim revealed in a documentary that he’s working on a new RTS project aimed at completely changing the landscape.

In this new Noclip documentary, Redefining the Game: A Paradigm Shift for the RTS Genre, Uncapped Games showed their plans for a new real-time strategy game with a much broader appeal than the previous games in the genre.

One of the core problems of the RTS genre is its inherent level of difficulty, or, perhaps, the level of difficulty that most strategy games have accustomed us to.

On that, Kim says, “Our game concentrates on the core essence of this genre and gets players to the fun of RTS more quickly than ever before.” Kim also talks about how the “easy to learn, hard to master” motto has always been a lie, at least regarding the RTS genre, and he wants to change that.

Games like Starcraft 2 are inevitably dominated by players capable of performing a nigh-superhuman amount of inputs per minute, and Kim is trying to make a change here. “It’s one of my favorite games of all time,” Kim says, “but I often wonder, like, is this really a real-time strategy game, or is it more like real-time execution?” Kim is now aiming at making a game that’s approachable and values strategic decision-making over typing speed.

This is a pretty ambitious goal as, even if you make an RTS aimed at letting the player who thinks strategically over the one who “plays piano faster” win, the fastest player might always get ahead in the long run. Still, Uncapped has enlisted developers who’d previously worked on the StarCraft, Warcraft, Dawn of War, and Company of Heroes series, so this might be one worth looking forward to.

We’ll learn more about Uncapped’s new take on the RTS genre this June as the studio does its full reveal at the Summer Games Fest.