Greg Langmead

Now playing: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox), The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (GBA), The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GC), Rise of Nations (PC)

Help me be a winner!

I have a long-standing issue with real-time strategy games: I suck at all of them. For me, a fun game is a complete experience, a compelling design with a great concept that's woven through all the game's layers. The tragedy for me is that RTS games very often meet these criteria (Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, and Starcraft are good examples), and I continue to buy them and get frustrated.

Yes, I'm a loser, but my loss could be someone else's gain. My purpose here is to introduce an idea that I hope catches on: game coaches. I'd pay good money for help overcoming my difficulties with RTS games. Why would I do such a thing? For one thing, to attain the level of immersion the developers worked so hard to give me, I need to get further in the game and learn how to work with advanced units I never get to build (having lost already). Some of the depth and balance that I know is lurking in there is hidden from me. Secondly, not all my friends and family suck at games, and I want to play at their level so we can all have more fun. Although I wish there could be a third reason, where I pretend paying for a coach helps me get a proper return on my $50 investment, in all likelihood the economics won't work out--a coach will be at least as expensive as the original game in order to provide the level of teaching I'm talking about. But the good news is that the skills a coach can help develop can be applied to more than one game.

A person, not a manual
Strategy guides can only offer a limited number of tips, and normally they only contain utterly unhelpful raw data anyway (for example, giant lists of units and spells). Downloading saved games that you can play back and interact with (as in Warcraft III) is a great way to learn, but the challenge is still, as always, in the execution. Seeing someone else do something difficult doesn't really get the viewers much closer to doing it themselves--if it did, I'd be great at RTS games, and I'd be a revered home-run hitter.

My own struggles begin midway through most game sessions, when the number of choices becomes very large. There are so many ways to spend your resources, and a balanced approach is rarely a good idea. There are resource-gathering units to build, military units to build, and tech-enhancing buildings to build. I rarely tackle these in the right ratio and often get swarmed by opposing units. If I do manage to build up an army and send it out to attack an opponent, then eventually all those units are destroyed and I find myself poor and defenseless.

What I need is an experienced coach (tutor, really) to play with me, either against me or on the same team, or maybe in a special mode where they can see into all my buildings and monitor what I'm doing (some recent RTS games offer this "observer" feature). This person would come to understand where I'm going wrong. Maybe I'm hesitating to take risks because I haven't done enough reconnaissance of the enemy's weaknesses--a good coach could tell me that. But more than that, they could steer me in the right direction by showing me a new approach that works for me. I've taught math at the college level for years, and I know my problems could be addressed by someone with a good understanding of the game who is also a good teacher. A couple of solid hours of directed playing would do wonders for me.

I even envision the developer, or maybe the publisher, helping set some of this up, in the form of a certification system with some sort of guarantee of quality, or at least a Web site to house all the info and get people connected with coaches. Once they have a few good people, the organizers could pay some of them to recruit more tutors from among the ladders on the multiplayer servers. There are lots of existing models for running a tutoring service, where problems have already been solved, like how much of a cut the tutor gets, what fair incentives for recruitment are, and so on. Follow that model and you can't go wrong.

I think games are getting more and more complicated, though I suppose it's possible I'm just getting older and dumber. I don't mind complicated games--I think there's more fun to be had with more complexity, especially if it's well thought out. Plus, with all the map editors and other features meant to give games huge longevity, there's a lot to be gained by becoming a good player. But as with other human endeavors, some people need help to get over a hump or two before they can excel. So get out there, someone, and be entrepreneurial. I'll be waiting patiently, because with your help, I'll be able to kick my brother's butt just like I could back in the day when I was twice his size.