Balint Marczin (also known as Nakamura RTS) and I have a podcast called RTS Masterminds as a passion project between the 2 of us. RTS Masterminds as a name is somewhat tongue in cheek, but we are both working game designers in senior positions (I’m the lead designer on Tempest Rising, and Balint is lead systems designer on Titan Quest 2 (he also has worked on the Total War: Warhammer series, Halo Wars 2, and Age of Mythology) and feel as both passionate players commentators, and working within the industry we have something of a unique perspective on the Real Time Strategy genre and hope that people find that perspective interesting and useful.
While we originally tried to do 2 episodes per month, our busy schedules got the better of us, and there was sadly a 5 month gap in our programming. That gap ended with the release of our latest episode: “Why are RTS so expensive to make” which released yesterday afternoon. Read on to learn more and get embeds for Spotify and YouTube for the episode:
(RTS Masterminds has a Patreon which we use to cover expenses associated with the show)
In this episode, we take a look at the example of Stormgate and its recent funding controversy to talk about the costs of game development, best practices for in-person, hybrid, and remote studios, and to talk about the greater landscape of financial difficulty which makes the whole idea of game funding so fraught and contentious these days.
We cover topics like ramping up staffing as the development of the game progresses, the time and cost of creating an RTS technical stack, the challenging of showing work on things like pathfinding and response rate, and more.
I truly hope you get something out of this episode, and tune in next time (which I promise won’t be 5 months from now!)
In future we’re looking to keep episodes around 30 minutes, which we feel is digestible and not too difficult to keep up every 2 weeks.
Thanks for tuning in!
Wayward Strategy 