Trigger Happy
table at the weekend by men pushing little figures around with brooms—only now the computer allows the precise calculation of thousands of variables. This swamp of numbers, terrains and troop typologies effectively disguises the complementary fact that, as videogames, their formal root is Atari’s panic-inducing arcade game Missile Command (1980), which originally grew out of a military simulation to see how many nuclear warheads a human radar operator could track before overload set in. As we noted of simulation, though, as games become ever more complex and hybridized, the essential elements of realtime strategy—control of multiple game pieces and tactical calculus—may crop up in several other genres.
Real-time strategy games do not provide the instant control and feedback of the more visceral videogame genres, yet nor are they such leisurely affairs as God games. Decisions about the disposition of troops and units must be made in “real time”: if you don’t react quickly enough, you’ll be overrun by the enemy. A certain pleasurable level of sweating tension is thereby induced. This median level of response requirement makes strategy games perfect for the burgeoning field of online play.
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