Has RTS games went the way of the dodo?

If you were to ask me what type of games I prefer and enjoy the most you may be surprised to hear my answer would be Real Time Strategies.

I can still remember all the many upon many hours I spent playing all the different versions of Command & Conquer, Age of Empires, Rise of Nations, Starcraft and quite a few more but it is sad nowadays to see online communities for this genre of game is slowly disappearing and even the likes of OpenRA, C&CNet and smaller communities are disappearing. 

Any who knows about gaming will know RTS games have never been massive. Their player base has always been quite small to others such as first-person shooters but a lot of the issue nowadays comes down to players preferring quick games they can just jump into and companies love those types of games as it allows to make money from them easily.

It is for this reason that MOBAs (Multiplayer online battle arenas) are becoming more common and replacing many old RTS games – they are quick games you can jump into, have a bit of fun for 10-15 minutes and then buy any upgrades they fancy without it affecting other players.

It is a real shame that MOBAs are replacing RTSes but sadly most modern gamers nowadays do not wish to spend hours on a single game (then again I remember most C&C Tiberium Sun games ending in about five minutes by skilled players)  but I will always remember the fun I have played with people where you had to think a couple of steps ahead of you.

Beyond some indie games and the odd few games, sadly the era of real-time strategy games is dead at least on an online competitive scene and it is quite sad … used to be one of the most fun times I ever had gaming.