Videogamer writes: "Last month we fought our way to Games Workshop's headquarters in Nottingham for an in-depth look at Relic's hotly-anticipated PC strategy Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II. While we were there we caught up with associate producer Jeff Lydell about RTS design, piracy and the supposed death of PC gaming.
VideoGamer.com: Apologies to start out on a negative note, but what do you think about the current state of PC gaming? There's a lot of chatter online about how it could die quite soon...
Jeff Lydell: My take on that as someone who's been reading internet chatter for a number of years now is that PC gaming has been 'dead' since 1994 and that it continues to 'die' every year. But that's obviously not true, because there are people playing PC games. It's just that we're seeing changes in the types of PC games they're playing. A lot of the things that the PC had that were exclusive to it, like online experiences, are starting to come over to consoles - so it's less a hold-out for that kind of social interaction. There's Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network - even the Wii has online components. So back in the day when Quake was defining how gamers interacted with each other online, PC gaming was 'dying' then! And I'd consider that to be the golden days. The N64 didn't kill it, the PlayStation 2 didn't kill it, and I don't think any of the upcoming consoles will kill it."
VGChatz's Taneli Palola: "There's no question that during these years the overall popularity of the genre took a significant hit, as most games within it specialized even further by adding new elements from other types of games into their gameplay loops and consequently became increasingly niche as the years wore on.
However, this doesn't in any way mean that the period was devoid of great games. Quite the contrary, in fact. Arguably some of the greatest RTS titles ever made came out around this time, and much of this was because many developers were increasingly familiar and comfortable with adding new twists and gameplay elements to the familiar formula. As such, even when the genre's popularity dwindled, many studios were still creating excellent and groundbreaking titles almost every year, just for a smaller audience than in years past."
those were fun years red alert star craft command and conquer well when westwood studio made good games before EA brought them like bioware...
Aside from C&C 4, the other C&C's from EA were all good/great. The genre nose dived once Moba's rose in popularity, even Petroglyph Games (ex-Westwood employees) haven't had a hit since Star Wars: Empire at War (2006), all there games got abandoned after launch.
"This week when I was scrolling through my Steam library for a game to play I was stumped, until I found a mod which brought fresh air to an old classic. The game was the legendary Dawn of War series by Relic. The Dawn of War expansions; Winter Assault, Dark Crusade and Soulstorm along with other stand-alone titles like Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, give the universe the justice it rightly deserved."
Sega wants to give you even more free games.
