Chris Taylor, the creator of iconic RTS games Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, is ready to get back into making games. And he’s got some big ideas.
Supreme Commander made our list of the best strategy games on PC, and Total Annihilation would’ve if it weren’t so old.
Taylor’s idea came to him while he was working at World of Tanks studio Wargaming, edging closer to management than to making games.
“For me, time is at a premium. When I turned 50 in September, a switch flipped… It was like the world wants me – and I want me – to make another game in a series of games people would think of as a Chris Taylor game. They want that and I want that, so if you want it and I want it, why am I not doing it?”
Taylor decided to make another RTS, and it sounds like he’s got big ambitions.
“I’m going back to RTS. I’m going to change the paradigm. My goal is to put RTS [games] on more screens than ever; I want to move the football way down the field. I want to change, fundamentally, not only the way we play RTS but the way we access the RTS experience.
“What if I told you you could be playing on your dual-screen PC with your quad-core whatever, and when you had to run to a meeting you could continue playing on your phone, because you want to, because you’re dying to, because you don’t want to have to wait to get back?
“What if I told you you could just turn the power off on your PC and when you went to your phone you could continue playing without any disruption in the experience? A real continuous experience on any device.”
Taylor says his new game will be hosted on his own website, rather than going through Steam or GOG. He also says it will be free-to-play, but that “I’m changing the free-to-play model.” He says he’s “going to set up a bunch of stuff” that other developers will want to leverage, and “I know that starts to sound like a platform because… maybe it is.”
Taylor has been working on his idea since January. It will be in the vein of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander, but with a role-playing twist.
Taylor was speaking with Eurogamer, in a lengthy but interesting profile that’s worth a read, if you’ve the time. Apparently, he’s the kind of dude who can walk into an art store looking for oil paints, drop five thousand dollars on pottery supplies instead, and do this.