Stormgate, an upcoming free-to-play RTS game, which fundraised over US$2 Million, has bots. Good bots. Unique bots! While its not unusual for an RTS to have bots, Stormgate intends to make their bots somewhat revolutionary.
The team behind this highly anticipated RTS revealed that – 75% of StarCraft 2 players never played a single ranked game. Which goes to show that most RTS gamers are not “competitive.” Even though most big studios seem to believe that EVERYBODY wants to play multiplayer games. Stormgate’s developer: Frost Giant, seems to have a good pulse on player’s needs and wants. Which can’t be said about most game studios these days. But Frost Giant won’t follow that overplayed trend of online-ranking madness.
Stormgate introduces BuddyBots
And, their rebellion doesn’t end there. Frost Giant has also developed an automated BuddyBot system for their upcoming RTS. It’s an optional AI assistant which can be activated to help players do mundane tasks. The AI can be customised to do thing like worker training, and base building, etc… on your behalf. Leaving you to focus on what matters the most to you. And, when players feel confident enough to play without their BuddyBot, they can just deactivate it. And, go in solo.
How awesome is that! I find it rather refreshing, especially in an age where people think that bots are all bad, and never good. Forgetting that games have had bots (good bots) in them for decades now. Fighting bots in mortal Kombat, car racing bots in Need for Speed, and even those bots on your team in FIFA. It’s all bots, bots, bots!
In conclusion, I sincerely hope that Stormgate will finally advance bots even further than before. By introducing some never-seen-before, bot-related technology. Lets hope! Which might force other game-studios to rethink their increasingly negative attitude towards bots.
