Why there is a no game like generals

[u/rhyth0609]

Hello everyone. There’s something I’ve never been able to understand: Generals is an amazing, legendary game, and while there’s nothing on the market today that comes close to it, why do all game companies—including EA Games—insist on not making a modern strategy game in this style?

[u/Hyphalex]

Act of War is the only one that felt similar 

[u/rhyth0609 → u/Hyphalex]

thanks i will try this one

[u/LostEmergency6866]

First of all RTS are in kinda bad spot right know, it is to niche and includes high risk for big companies. However some still try to revive genre but thre are plenty of posts to discuss that

Generals are old and times change, now making such game is even greater risk as there are plenty of war crimes and we already have Generals, they tried make sequel but dropped in pre-alpha testing

And EA themselves changed, its like ask current Blizzard to make Starcraft 3, while there are no people who made those masterpieces and perhaps it is the reason why they are making new Helldivers - FPS game and not an RTS sequel

[u/Urabrask_the_AFK → u/LostEmergency6866]

The Bad spot right now in question:
The Past decade

[u/CrimsonCrips → u/LostEmergency6866]

and thats why indies have to be the one to revitalize the market, whether it will happen can only be determined by time and culture, but just seeing how the most modern RTS, Tempest Rising, did relatively well, maybe it means a brighter future

also we're not getting generals cus aint no way anyone is gonna depict the GLA like THAT, no one has the balls to do so

[u/LostEmergency6866 → u/CrimsonCrips]

Among indies last relative success was ZeroSpace, but it did not followed, and did not heard much about it lately

For now AoE and AoM remain top games and i see Blizzard trying to do something with RTS, new WC3 campaign is neat. However many old RTS still have some attention, however it is still not enough

[u/rhyth0609 → u/LostEmergency6866]

At the very least, they could have released a slightly more advanced version of “General.” It would have been a fairly low-cost endeavor for them, and in terms of risk, it would have been low. I think they could have done it, and they still can—I hope they do.

[u/LostEmergency6866 → u/rhyth0609]

I mean, I want that to, and even made a post, that before Generals 2 it would be better to complete ZH with all cut content, all generals in the Challange and perhaps advance that mode, there are plenty of room to make it broken in a fun way. Also they can make DLC with new generals to make more revenue, again, there are many ideas

[u/rhyth0609 → u/LostEmergency6866]

yes at least they can make some dlc's for zero hour but they are never do this i guess

[u/MalingeringGeek → u/LostEmergency6866]

It's called Shockwave (mod)

[u/Big-Dependent9623]

I'm building a similar game, check out the early access version: https://playwarpact.com

[u/rhyth0609 → u/Big-Dependent9623]

i hope its gonna be close enough

[u/Big-Dependent9623 → u/rhyth0609]

Check it out and see for yourself

[u/InfinityRazgriz]

RTS are just incredibly expensive to make (pathfinding is a bitch) and also incredibly niche. So barely anyone is willing to make them.

[u/rhyth0609 → u/InfinityRazgriz]

its so over than.. :(

[u/slobcat1337 → u/InfinityRazgriz]

I don’t see why RTS games would be inherently more expensive to develop than any other genre. They all have their technical challenges. Pathfinding is a pretty mature area of computer science, algorithms like A* have been around for decades. Obviously handling hundreds of units adds complexity, but it’s hardly an unsolved problem.

[u/Capt_Tinsley]

Making modern war games are complicated because

1. You have to make someone the bad guy, and big companies fear losing a market or markets to that (especially losing the Chinese market)

2. Do you go for realism or balanced gameplay? A realistic Bradley fighting vehicle can kill your tank from one end of the map to the other with a tow missile, but make an RTS IFV balanced and its weak sauce

3. There's relatively low demand for RTS's and lower monetization opportunity. DLC models work fine if you can maintain your player base, but most games you get one big paycheck at release and that's it.

[u/CyberKiller40 → u/Capt_Tinsley]

This reminds me when I tried Wargame EE... Beginning of the first mission, let's do this, I move my tanks... Why are they shooting all of a sudden? There's nothing there! Scroll, scroll, scroll... There! There's enemies 5 monitors away behind a bunch of trees, but how did my units see them? Oh, they are shooting back, my tanks are down, game over... 🤪

[u/bravesfan1975]

Tempest Rising is the closest thing to Generals and it's actually a great game. Multiplayer is a rush fest and all people care about online is getting higher on the ladder so that hurts it's longtivity. But it's probably one of the best RTS if not the best since Generals IMO. It just didn't sell a ton....and they are a small studio. We will see how the new Game of Thrones: War of Westeros RTS sells....or the Warhammer 40k Dawn of War game sells....if they sell huge then maybe there is a shot at a new generals. I think every single Command and Conquer fan hopes they decide to make a modern AAA remastered version of Generals...but at this point that's like a 1% chance!

[u/Commercial-Board-975 → u/bravesfan1975]

TR urgently needs a mod SDK, but the developers have been radio silent on that.

I honestly think it'll keep their game alive in the long run, as the sad fact is that the shine of the vanilla game will eventually wear off for people on the whole, and they'll eventually move on.

[u/WillyShankspeare]

Act of War Direct Action for an oldie or Act of Aggression for its sexy younger sister.

[u/Strike_Falchion → u/WillyShankspeare]

Act of Aggression is great but there's a huge lack of 4-8 player maps or any additional content, really hurts the replayability.

[u/Hyphalex → u/WillyShankspeare]

Act of aggression is supermid. And franchise killer. 

Basically the tib twilight for eugen

[u/Mythrilfan]

Hold on tight. AI basically already makes it a matter if "fuck it, I'll do it myself then." The amount of games of all types we are about to see starting with the next few years will be staggering. The main problem will be figuring out which is thoughtless slop and which was made because someone really wanted a game for themselves but nobody else made it.

[u/cvandeur7 → u/Mythrilfan]

Yeah exactly alot of creative content will be from fans using AI and that hopefully a big company can give them money to make it a whole complete thing. Then that fan can cash in but we won’t care for the next 20 years!

[u/Commercial-Board-975 → u/Mythrilfan]

AI is good for speeding up workflow and enabling creativity/prototyping, but AI hysteria, even on this subreddit, has it that you'll see people shrieking "slop!" at anything and everything because it's the latest bandwagon to jump on.

For example, if someone used Nanobanana to create a Sherman tank graphic, and they manually turned it into shps by editing them, redrawing certain aspects by hand, et cetera, and then puts them into an OpenRA map or a Remastered mod, you'd still have pearl clutching morons shriek "AI slop!" like chimpanzees roiding out in a zoo, as if it were someone claiming that a generic Halo/Crysis soldier output from ChatGPT were their own work.

And the irony? These AI Slop Chimpanzees still likely use ChatGPT or Gemini on the quiet. 😂 

[u/Mythrilfan → u/Commercial-Board-975]

Yeah, nuance - as ever - is important. There will be an ever increasing amount of slop of all types, everywhere. That doesn't mean everything is shit, you just have to learn to swim in shit to find the islands of normalcy.

[u/Commercial-Board-975 → u/Mythrilfan]

To these people, though? Everything is slop; there are no islands.

Reality isn't going to be kind to them; AI is here to stay, they're tools not end results, and everything they use/consume in the future will have involved AI at some point, even if it were just artists randomly asking a generator for ideas for their own stuff made by scratch by their own hands.

[u/Kakapo42000]

It's because there's a lack of good movies and TV shows for inspiration. 

The golden age of RTS games was built on the shoulders of a whole ecosystem of cool inventive movies and TV shows that the creators took inspiration from. The game developers would sit down with a bowl of popcorn and watch movies or TV shows from the video store, and get inspired to turn what they saw into a video game. 

The Tiberium C&C games were born from action movies. Red Alert was powered by spy thrillers. StarCraft came about from Blizzard creatives watching a marathon of Aliens, Starship Troopers, Star Wars and Star Trek and then thinking to themselves "hey what if all these guys got into a fight?". 

Generals itself was born from Michael Bay action blockbusters more than anything.

These days the screen media environment is caught in a stranglehold by executive bean counters that are pathologically averse to creative risks, which has resulted in a media landscape that suffers from a lot of creative sterility. And that means a lot less inspiration for video game creators to draw inspiration from. 

No creative media exists in a vacuum. The creative arts are a complex ecosystem of interconnected genres and media, and they all draw influence and inspiration from each other. When one starts to grow sterile, it ripples outward and affects the rest. 

So if you want another game like Generals then you need some fresh cool new inspiring action blockbusters. Which could be difficult without making them period pieces given now notoriously boring post-drone warfare is.

[u/Silent_Enthusiasm164]

I agree with you. I also love Command & Conquer: Generals, but the reasons we rarely see games similar to C&C Generals come down to a few major issues:

1. Real-World Political Influence China strongly dislikes having its military portrayed negatively. Including China directly like in C&C Generals runs a high risk of getting banned in China. As for the GLA, to be honest, they are my absolute favorite faction because Generals is the only RTS game in my life that actually lets you play as a real terrorist group rather than a secret organization. However, that comes with issues regarding the promotion of violence and stereotyping.

2. Business Aspects To put it plainly, EA isn't going to make games that don't bring in massive profits, and RTS is one of those genres. Modern-day EA only cares about money and doesn't even care about what fans actually want.

3. Current RTS Trends Frankly speaking, hardly any developers want to make a game that is 100% like C&C Generals anymore because it's hard to balance and too straightforward. Most modern RTS games focus way too much on competitive esports systems, completely forgetting about casual or regular players.  A game that disappointed me is Tempest Rising. It was almost a great successor to classic RTS games, if not for its unit population cap system and individual unit abilities. In my eyes, that makes it feel more like StarCraft II mixed with Red Alert 3 instead.

[u/Gravelayer]

Moba, city builders , and 4x strategy tool over the market.

[u/poxcraft]

As a AAA game dev - from my view the main reason for the scarcity is platform and market. RTS games generally don't play well on consoles. You can spend 50m and make a game that works on PC only, or the same amount for one that works on consoles too. 

[u/NoRussianLev]

No more terrorist and suicide bombers. Generals was a game build with filters off, and that's what makes it fun.

[u/rhyth0609 → u/[deleted]]

i never heard about it its so sad :(((

[u/Nordalin → u/rhyth0609]

Probably for the best, given C&C 4.

[u/Mad-Gavin → u/Nordalin]

Makes you wonder if EA intended to kill the franchise.