Why no surface warfare sims in the past decade+?

[FightingSteel1]

Warning...long post!

This post isn't meant to offend or somehow complain about submarine sims, like the Silent Hunter series. I realize I'm posting this on Subsim..., but there isn't a warship sim forum like this anywhere! I've been a fan of a variety of simulator games in my life, and own Aces of the Deep, SH3/4/5. I like sub games, but would love a surface war game.

I have observed that the simulation market has declined in volume of games, but in many ways has streamlined to provide some top notch quality games (like the DCS series, or modded versions of SH4/5). That being said, I can tell that any kind of WWII sim is increasingly a niche market, yet Silent Hunter continues to have releases throughout the 21st century. It has generally kept pace with aircraft sims, while leaving tank/naval sims in the dust. So, Ubisoft has been able to greenlight multiple submarine games in the past 10+ years, but never has anyone done the same with a surface sim.

To me this flies in the face of common sense (IMO), considering that surface warfare is decidedly more "diverse," with a larger number of both ships and factions involved to interest the end consumer. Ships like the Yamato, Bismarck, Missouri (amongst others) are still well known, and continue to be famous enough to interest those not only in the U.S., but in Europe and Asia as well. A surface sim has raw firepower, strategy, and the possibility of replicating some of the famous battles still talked about today.

Yet, those of us that are interested in the rest of the navies of the 20th century have had little to do for a long time. The Battlestations Midway or Pacific Storm games have come out, but those games don't really do anything well and are hardly good representations of the real thing. Enigma Rising Tide was interesting, but the alternate universe world and less than accessible design doesn't do what I'm looking for either. PT Boats was a bust.

It would seem to me that if a submarine simulation will sell, than a surface simulation will sell more (again, my opinion) and would be interesting to both the crowd that would buy a Silent Hunter game, or the crowd that buys other WWII based sims (like IL-2). I believe it would be a more of a sell in the general public as well, given the larger "wow" factor of Carriers, Battleships and Cruisers.

So, rant over for now I guess. I'm just disappointed that Ubisoft didn't look at the game engine, models and just the world that was created already for Silent Hunter and than put together a companion surface game. The framework is there but not utilized. For someone like me, I'm stuck dealing with Battlestations Midway or putting together a older Win2000/XP system to play Fighting Steel again, since new graphics drivers and other things have blown that game out. I have some hope for World of Warships, or War Thunders ship component, but I imagine that will probably just end up being BBs circling each other at turbo flank speed blasting until the other blows up.

[Herman]

What time period do you seek? Ironclads? Age of Sail or Steam? WW1? WW2?

[FightingSteel1]

What time period do you seek? Ironclads? Age of Sail or Steam? WW1? WW2?

World War II. WW1 would be ok, but I tried a demo a few years ago of Jutland and was unimpressed. I don't have any real affinity for anything from the 1700 or 1800's.

At this point I see Fighting Steel as the most modern and capable WWII sim, and even then it was good, but probably not great.

I'm interested if anyone has any insight into the gaming industry and why no WWII sims have been made recently.

[Herman]

World War II. WW1 would be ok, but I tried a demo a few years ago of Jutland and was unimpressed. I don't have any real affinity for anything from the 1700 or 1800's.

At this point I see Fighting Steel as the most modern and capable WWII sim, and even then it was good, but probably not great.

I'm interested if anyone has any insight into the gaming industry and why no WWII sims have been made recently.

If you want WW1, a superb game is Steam and Iron. A demo is available. It is probably not the one you tried, before.
http://yhst-12000246778232.stores.yahoo.net/standirgrwar1.html

I don't have any other recommendation for WW2 nor can I offer any insight as to why there are not more WW2 games.

[Dread Knot]

I suppose you could check out Atlantic Warfare on this very forum although it's still in development.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=209386

I seem to recall there were plans to remake Microprose's old title, Task Force 1942, but I don't know if anything came of it.


Ships like the Yamato, Bismarck, Missouri (amongst others) are still well known, and continue to be famous enough to interest those not only in the U.S., but in Europe and Asia as well
Famous names indeed, but maybe part of the problem. Bismarck made one famous sortie, fought one famous surface action and was rendered helpless by an obsolete biplane. Yamato spent most of her career either sunning in port, making abortive sorties, or being used to haul supplies. In her one surface action at Samar she was rather ineffectual. Her suicide was famous, but also ineffectual. Missouri spent most of her career bombarding beacheads and acting as an anti-air escort to the mighty carriers.

I always get the feeling that the battleship's chance for "marketing glory'" was done in by timing. By the early 1940s, even the mightiest battleships found their movements harassed and constrained by aircraft. For all the press that was written about battleships, they really saw very little ship to ship action over the entire time they were part of the world's navies. The times battleships engaged each other is even rarer.

By the middle of the war, about the best role for the older battleships was bombardment. Faster BBs could be used as flak platforms. But both of these roles are secondary ones which is why they wouldn't sell well for subject matter in a sim. Yes, there were plenty of cruiser and destroyer actions in WW2, but battleships always seem to catch the eye.

Of course, games are all about "what-ifs" and that would have to be the main selling point.

[CCIP]

The problem is marketing, and honestly, it's not just surface warfare sims. You mention submarine sims, but in fact the only commercially-successful sub sim of the last decade was SH3 - the other two just didn't sell enough. SH3 was a very fortunate combination of factors - a community that asked for more, a developer who was brave enough to go back to the drawing board, a publisher who was willing to delay it by a year, a warm reception in the mainstream gaming press, and a dedicated modding scene. SH4 just couldn't sell well outside of North America, where arguably the main sim markets are; and SH5 was panned critically and lost its chance.

There were efforts in surface warfare - the closest would be Knights of the Sea and Pacific Storm. Despite being developed in Russia, a market friendly to sims and where development generally costs less, both projects ran out of money, came out unfinished, and commercially bombed. Despite being more accessible, simplified, hybrid sorts of games they still failed to get enough interest from the buying public.

But then you look at the history of sims in the last decade in general, and you realize that in ANY type of simulation, there have been only two successful commercial titles since the 1990s: the IL-2 series and SH3. DCS lives on, but arguably only because the very determined developers have found a way to tap into military contracts for funding the engine. The same is true of Bohemia and the ArmA series. The same is true of Sonalysts, should they decide to make a comeback into consumer games. They aren't true commercial sims. Rise of Flight seems to be doing alright, but it hasn't been a runaway success - more a modest experiment in new methods of making money from sims, which I hope continues.

Everything else has basically bombed for the last 10 years. SH3 is the last commercial simulation to ever succeed, as depressing as that sounds. So it's not just a surface warfare problem, and it's not because nobody tried.

On the other hand, there's a healthy niche aftermarket within the sim community (you can look at everything from the massive Flight Sim add-on scene to things like Wings over Flanders Fields, which take existing products and find ways to make money off them even if the original developer long gave up) and there are new ways of funding which are being experimented with in the indie scene. I'm optimistic that maybe a few years down the road, someone will find a way to sell these things on a purely commercial basis. And that would be awesome. But in the current (and very outdated) model of publishing in the games industry, it's sadly just not going to happen.

[Julhelm]

So if the sims consistently have flopped for the better part of a decade, is it because people don't care for the subject matter or is it because they don't care for the sim gameplay? Noone seems to have gone back to the proverbial drawing board but rather all effort seems to have gone into ever more complexity.

[Sailor Steve]

This post isn't meant to offend or somehow complain about submarine sims, like the Silent Hunter series. I realize I'm posting this on Subsim..., but there isn't a warship sim forum like this anywhere! I've been a fan of a variety of simulator games in my life, and own Aces of the Deep, SH3/4/5. I like sub games, but would love a surface war game.
First, this is the 'General Games' section, so you really don't need to worry about the site being called "Subsim".

I too really liked Fighting Steel, and the Great Naval Battles series. A part of the problem as I see it is that no one game can be all things to all people. I've been working for more than two decades on my own tabletop miniatures naval game, and one of the problems I've run into is that most people want to run an entire fleet at the tactical level, if not the entire strategic war. I, on the other hand, want to be the captain of my own ship and know everything that's happening to it. GNB let me do that, whereas FS lets you run the entire squadron if you like. I'm not sure it's possible to make a game that does both. Do you want a game that lets you see everything that's happening everywhere in the battle, or do you want a game that puts you on the bridge, and half the time you can't tell what is going on?

I agree that a new modern surface sim is needed ("modern" in the sense of gameplay and graphics, not modern warfare), and I don't care which of the types I described it should be, I would certainly play it.

[CCIP]

I think that the blame for that honestly lies with publishers and marketing departments and priorities in the industry - there was a time back in the early-mid 90s when simulators were by far the most popular genre of PC games. That's when we got the last great surface sims, too.

There's a billion reason for why, and technology and cost is part of it. For pretty much the entire decade of 2000s, the games industry was an "arms race" that was being won or lost with extravagant art budgets and promotional hype, and in that, simulators almost never had a chance. Making a good simulation the "old way" is probably gone for good, and IL-2 and SH-3 are probably the last titles ever to succeed in that. But I'm pretty optimistic otherwise - we might not see another "golden age" of sim games that lead sales charts, but they are starting to make a comeback via the indie scene. I think that's where the future is. I think it's now possible to sell games without having to compete with AAA art budgets, and it's possible to market them directly to niche customers without having to go through big publishers and mainstream game media.

Hopefully we'll see something come out of it soon!

And it's been so long since one of those games, that noone really needs to reinvent the wheel even - just take what worked about games like GNB, Fighting Steel or TF1942 and make it into something that looks servicable and runs on modern computers.

[FightingSteel1]

I understand that Sims are less commercially viable. Even so, I was just saying that Silent Hunter keeps being made (if they sell or not I guess) while we can't have a good, much less finished surface game or even a tank game - looking at T-34/Tiger there....

I guess it's too "Destroyer Command," but the framework is all there in Sh3, 4 or 5 to have a companion surface game. That's why I was excited about the Surface mod for Sh4, but that seems to constantly rise from the ashes, then die again with no release. I saw Atlantic Warfare, but since these projects don't seem to pan out usually, I'll just wait and hope that one goes somewhere.

As far as the games go, I like the squad level control. It strikes a good balance between being one ship or having a giant overview of the entire war. You could still have a view that puts you onto the individual ships during battle. You can really be only one vessel if you're the Graf Spee trying to break out in the Atlantic or if the AI is going to competently operate with you in a larger battle.

Perhaps a task force level of control would be the way to go, with a large grid map of the Atlantic or Pacific that allows you to direct those task forces around the war theater. A naval game could be both action packed in 3D battles, but also strategy/tactical by modeling a "Risk" style map forcing you to direct your fleets to oppose the enemy.

[Julhelm]

The Battlestations games could've been really good if they had focused solely on the surface units and had somewhat more realistic distances. Certainly games like World of Tanks and War Thunder appear to be incredibly popular.

[Schwieger]

The Battlestations games could've been really good if they had focused solely on the surface units and had somewhat more realistic distances. Certainly games like World of Tanks and War Thunder appear to be incredibly popular.

World of Tanks really shouldn't be brought up during discussions of realistic games. Except, perhaps, as a reference for what a game should not be, as far as realism is concerned.

With that said, I do hope that World of Warships can get their stuff together to create a realistic surface game. I'm waiting for WoWs and War Thunder's naval section, really, and will likely stick with the more realistic out of the two. Right now as it stands, WT appears to be leagues ahead of WoWs, as far as realism is concerned.

If we're looking for actual sims... ATWAR really is the direction to look towards. As previously mentioned, most (not all) of the recent titles are dismal at best, and some of the older ones... Well.. Aren't terribly compatible with current equipment, among other things.

Just my two cents.

[Platapus]

I just think the simple answer is that there is not a large enough market for a game designer to risk the development costs.

If a Sim is somewhat realistic in the depiction of warfighting, there will be long periods of nothing happening. As a general rule, games where nothing happens tend to be considered unfun by a majority of the game playing market. :D

I love sub sim games, but to be honest SH4 has its dull parts. Going from Pearl to the Japanese theater even at 4K take a while and there is a good chance you will pop out of TC just after being sunk by an island, ship, or plane. When I play SH4, I usually have a movie playing on my other computer just to pass the time. :D

I imagine that more and more of the gaming community wants games they can play on their tablet/phone in between checking their status on face-space.

While there will always be a small group of weirdos like us who like Sims, I think the number of non-sim gamers is growing as their attention span shortens.

[mapuc]

I, don't know if there are more than me, had a big wish when SHIII came out. I had high hopes about DC2

It's not just writting a few line to make a game it's a lot of work behind it.

Sometimes I dream of making a DC2 who will be able to play against either SHIII, SHIV or SHV

In the games welcome screen you will have following options

Single scenarios
Campaign
Mulitiplayer. When clicking on this you come to a new screen where you chose who you are playing against e.g SHIII or SHV

I know this will never happen.

Markus

[TorpX]

I don't think anyone knows if a good surface warfare (or sub-surface) sim would be a commercial success or not. Mediocre examples of gaming should not be considered evidence, that a well done game couldn't sell. IMO, Ubi's Silent Hunter series would have done much better, if they had done better. Of course, we will never know for sure.