| LegitHyperbole said: I think the "popularity" is still there, the pond is just bigger and it seems more niche compared to the rest of gaming as is such with Sim racing and the like. Perhaps even more people play these games now since there are so many titles and I think the fact that they are often on console now proves that. That said, I lost my own interest in grand strategy cause they are to hard to keep a game going, start something in Civ or Stellaris and you leave it for 2 or 3 days, it's extremely difficult to know what you were at. These games are for when you have a couple of weeks and you can hop on them every day, I'd hope they fix that in the future and make it more accessible with AI that helps keepyour games going over a longer period. These days, my strategy games go no further in complexity than something like Fire Emblem 3 houses, Two point hospital, frost punk and the like. They are just complex enough to have a similar experience yet not so complex it's like being a manager of a real life business. You can pick them up and put them down for a week and remember exactly what you were at. I fucking love Two point hospital, it's so, so much fun. I hear a unicorn Overlord is great too and hope to play that soon although I'd like an option to fast forward through the battles playing out. |
Yeah I've read theories that the Strategy community was very sizeable in the 90s/early 2000s, but the community didn't really grow much beyond that while the rest of the industry shot past it like a rocket lol. So while the community never left, it just pales in comparison to the rest of the games industry. Became a "dad" genre, which ironically is how I got into Strategy games 
I definitely remember as a kid, Real-Time Strategy was always one of the biggest genres in gaming. Whether it was Age of Empires, StarCraft, Warcraft, Command & Conquer, Homeworld, Total Annihilation, Rise of Nations, Empire Earth, or even a Star Wars game called Galactic Battlegrounds, there were so many major RTS releases that would make headlines and are still recognizable names to this day. Hell, StarCraft literally became the sport of South Korea for well over a decade lol.
But there's definitely other sub genres that take a ludicrous amount of time like you mentioned. If you're playing Civilization, pretty much any Paradox Interactive game, then you're going to be spending hours upon hours on a single game, and that's if you're well acquainted on how the game plays.
So there certainly will be certain sub-genres that will forever remain niche, but it is nice knowing that the genre still thrives in many ways, albeit primarily through certain franchises lol. Civilization VII is getting a full reveal next month and it will be on consoles day one, so I'm willing to bet it will bring down the skill ceiling to where it's as approachable as possible.
Unicorn Overlord is currently my GOTY, so I highly recommend! 
