The ’90s were the undeniable golden age for real-time strategy games. Everyone just seemed fascinated by the idea of constructing a well-defended base, gathering resources, drawing green boxes around assorted units, and sending them into battle against a human or AI opponent. People loved playing these games, studios loved making them. Combined together this resulted in a very lively esports scene, to the point where there were actual TV channels dedicated to broadcasting StarCraft matches.
This changed somewhere around the mid-2000s. We can’t say with certainty why. Some blame the new generation of gamers not resonating that well with the RTS genre, others the astonishing popularity of MOBAs that tapped into the same potential player pool, a few glance sideways at the perceived super-human APM needed to play these games at a high level, and the rest blame the developers chasing that elusive esports bag to the detriment of making an actual fun game first. But the results are clear and undeniable. These days RTS games are seen as a tough-to-get-into niche, not one of the most popular video game genres around.
If you do find yourself in that niche, or...
