Command & Conquer designer Lou Castle on how he's returning to RTS with War Commander: Rogue Assault

If you wanted to pick someone with which to discuss the finer points of the real-time strategy (RTS) genre, Louis Castle would probably be at or very near the top of the list. Castle was one of the two co-founders of the legendary Westwood Studios, which made some hugely influential real-time strategy, adventure and role-playing games from the late '80s until its acquisition by EA in 1998.

Undoubtedly the developer's most famous property was Command & Conquer. This is the series that, along with Westwood's own Dune II and Blizzard's Warcraft, pretty much defined the RTS genre that we know today.

Among his many other achievements, Castle worked with Steven Spielberg on the development of cult Wii game Boom Blox. That alone is sufficient for instant hero status in my house.

With the release of War Commander: Rogue Assault for iOS and Android, Castle (in conjunction with developer Kixeye) has returned to the real-time strategy genre he helped write the rulebook for. We couldn't resist the invitation to ask him about the unique demands of making RTS work on mobile, the challenge of balancing a freemium model with strategic depth, and what he thinks about the idea of a mobile C&C port.

When developing for mobile, immediate access and variable session times have a great impact on how I think about the game design. Mobile players have the ability to pull a gaming device from their purse or pocket at any time resulting in players looking for quick ways to interact the game for a short session length. This can be when in line or waiting for a bus. In some cases this can be a timed collection mechanic and in other cases a location based event. This can even be the intended way to play the game.

There is also secondary play, when a mobile player is doing another primary activity like watching a show with a second screen game experience. Deeper and richer games, like strategy and story games, appeal to mobile players who have a very specific time set aside for a mid length session. Millions of people spend as much as two hours a day commuting. Many are riding on trains or other places where they can plan a typical mobile session or 20 minutes or so.

Finally, mobile players of rich games will set aside dedicated gaming time for entertainment, just like traditional PC and console gamers. I try to ensure that the mobile games I work on have clear ways of interacting with as many of these types of gaming sessions as possible. We want to be deliberate in offering a way to interact with the mobile game that matches the player's available game sessions.

There are dozens if not hundreds of special considerations and some significant concessions when producing RTS games for mobile devices. Mobile audiences are the largest potential gaming audiences in the world with the highest amount of diversity of gaming device and cultural tastes. Real time strategy games appeal to a large segment of that audience, but the styles of real time strategy games vary dramatically.

At Kixeye we have focused on making a game for the millions of players of RTS mobile games that want to interact with the game units and immerse themselves in a game as a military commander, similar to players who enjoy traditional PC and console RTS games. The largest types of considerations fall into the interface, performance, and balance of a game that has to have many interacting pieces, allow for touch control, on thousands of types of devices with a wide variety of sizes for a vast and diverse audience.

Unlike most mobile strategy games we did not simplify the visual style or reduce the number of units so War Commander: Rogue Assault feels familiar to traditional RTS PC and console gamers and offers something new and exciting to mobile RTS gamers. The potential of a small screen size results in the largest number of concessions keeping menus simple and nested with as few UI elements on the screen as possible.

What attracted me initially to War Commander: Rogue Assault was the immediate similarity of the game presentation to classic PC RTS games. The story campaigns, voice over, ability to control individual groups of diverse units during a battle, instantly building my buildings, technology tress for unit progression, building my own base, attacking other players' bases and just the overall breadth and depth of artistic detail; all reminded me of the delight I felt when playing traditional RTS games.

The team at Kixeye has added a long-term tower defense progression and truly epic world map where millions of players can interact in a single contiguous world. We already have many comments from our test market players directly comparing the feeling of playing Rogue Assault to traditional RTS games and we couldn't be happier to read those comments.

Strategic games that have very rich and deep strategic development, like RTS games, are a natural fit for free to play. These games require and reward deep engagement and learning over time which can be accelerated with payment for the players who have less time to devote to playing or may be just impatient. We took great care on Rogue Assault to also give players the meaningful choices during combat to reward the skill developed by playing the game and interacting with other players.

Our philosophy of using payment as a way to increase efficiency through play is very much a pay to play verses a play to win approach. We know that the best ecosystems have games that are exciting to play for free and rewarding to pay for. That's why there are no timers for building buildings and no pay only super weapons in Rogue Assault. Players develop their armies through resource collection and build their tech trees over time, just like a traditional PC RTS.

Traditional PC RTS games could be reimagined on iOS and Android but I do hope that the owners of those franchises would not seek to simply port them. The core elements of traditional PC RTS games are alive and well in Rogue Assault and have been blended with tower defence elements to appeal to existing mobile strategy game players.

Other interpretations could be equally successful. It would be very easy to try to take the PC RTS games directly across to mobile but a touch screen is not a mouse and the gaming session times for mobile are not the same as PC RTS so I don't think a direct port would be as appealing to players.

I'm thrilled at how strategy game elements have found their way into just about every possible game genre. RTS games have even been used to create a fast paced arcade like experience with MOBAs. It's exciting to see all gaming genres requiring more tactics and strategy as I think these games treat their audiences like the very smart players they are.