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Further Down the Road
Further down the road for Cavedog is Total Annihilation 2, a game that Gilbert says was originally scheduled to be released this Christmas. "We probably could have made a glorified expansion pack, put it in a box, called it TA2, and made a bunch of money, but we want to treat the franchise right," he says. Although there is no timeline for the sequel, Gilbert says design work is already under way.
"We probably could have made a glorified expansion pack, called it TA2, and made a bunch of money, but we want to treat the franchise right."
- Ron Gilbert
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The TA2 design will begin with a blank slate. "With the RTS genre there are so many assumptions made these days," says Gilbert. "I don't think anyone has really stepped back, wiped the table clean, and re-thought the genre. That's what we want to do with TA2." He continues with a series of questions. "Does the player want to be driving tanks around, or issuing commands to infantry? Should the player be the general, the tank commander, or the leader of the country? There are a lot of different levels to an RTS."
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Huge multiplayer battles are what kept Total Annihilation so popular online. Cavedog hopes to duplicate this success with the sequel due in the future. |
Although Gilbert isn't prepared to divulge how TA2 will answer those questions, he does give some clues. "Players are really getting tired of all the micromanagement and playing so many roles," he says, "so I want to throw away all that baggage with TA2. I want to explore ideas such as making the AI work for the player so you can off-load routine tasks and concentrate on strategic planning."
The wheels are clearly turning.
Taylor Turns On the Gas
Although Chris Taylor surely won't be involved with TA2, he has his own game development studio set up - Gas Powered Games - with an office near Lake Washington in Kirkland. He recently signed a publishing agreement with Microsoft and has announced that his first game, due out in 2000, will not compete in the RTS category, but instead will be an RPG.
Why the shift away from his favorite genre? "I want to put some insulation between TA and me. I don't want people to think I'm trying to launch into direct competition with Cavedog, because I'm not. Nevertheless, I do hope to return to RTS at some point."
For his design philosophy, Taylor sees accessibility and the fun factor as keys to the future. "The last thing someone wants to do when they come home from work is to be challenged by the most mind-bending of puzzles cooked up by mathematicians. My first game is going to be self-scaling - if you want to tease your mind it will, but it can also be very fun to play."
So, have you figured out what he's doing just yet? Taylor does provide a few clues. "Well, I'm not trying to make a wild and crazy game where Jell-O people jump naked out of hot air balloons - you don't want to start a new company on a game like that unless you have $50 million in the bank."
Next - He Waved Back 
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