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What happened to the racer? | Computer Gamers
The State of PC Gaming
As we approach 2022, we’ll take a look at the major games, genres, and platforms that make PC games to see where they stand as the new year begins.
In 2019, automatons seem poised to be the next big video game fan, taking the mantle from the battle royale games that stole our time. The trajectory evokes the success of the MOBA, which was also born out of the modding scene. In early 2022, history suggests we should be inundated with them, with studios of all sizes trying to get a piece of the latest trends. It’s not completely out yet.
Autobattlers is an easy-to-digest real-time tactical game where each battle is a short round, you just sit on the sidelines and the outcome depends on how strong your plan is – what heroes you play, what upgrades you give them, where they stand position on the chessboard. When they started on PC, they did find a home on mobile, where there was already a huge market for games with passive continuity, like clickers and endless runners.
Building an eclectic roster of heroes and sending them out on the battlefield to fend for themselves is therapeutic, but also stressful. Fiddling with loads and crunching numbers to create this exquisite fighting machine made me very happy. Watching them get crushed by the size of a smarter player makes me cry. If the genre can capture grumpy people like me, who only wish we could go back to the golden age of RTS, surely no one can escape its clutches?
how it started
Dota Auto Chess seems destined to catch on in 2019. Just as Dota 2 (and all other MOBAs) exist because of Warcraft 3 mods, a new genre is being built in MOBAs. It wasn’t long before imitators came along — big shots. Both Valve and Riot saw the mod’s potential and quickly set about making their own versions. In March, just a few months after Dota Auto Chess launched, Riot released Teamfight Tactics. Valve’s Dota Underlords followed in June.
With the rapid emergence of big-name new games, the burgeoning genre’s status seems assured. The original creators of Dota Auto Chess also released a standalone Auto Chess while still supporting the mod. Blizzard got in on the action too, developing a new mode for Hearthstone called Battlegrounds.
In less than a year, we’ve gone from a single mod to a bunch of high-profile games, each with millions of players and massive tournaments touting big prizes. The incredible expansion rate brings good things to auto-battle players. The genre then skipped the part where it became mature and stable, and instead rushed towards stagnation and decline.
We’ve seen MMOs and MOBAs go through this gold rush, but not as fast. Sure, they’re all very active genres, but players have coalesced around a few giants and mainstays, with hardly anything new or novel coming out. These games serve their communities well, but the wider genre is effectively dormant. That’s why it was so exciting to see a new world emerge last year, even if it wasn’t great.
how are things
I still play Riot’s Teamfight Tactics a lot, and I’ve never waited more than a few seconds for a game. Not only is it healthy, it’s growing. Last year, it hit a new peak of 10 million daily players. Like Hearthstone, it benefits greatly from its association with an already hugely popular game, making it very easy to convert a slightly interested player into an obsessive one.
However, these games are the exception. They don’t talk about the health of the genre, only their own success. We only have to look at other famous games, like Dota Underlords, to see that the desire for auto-players isn’t what keeps players engaged. Underlords is Valve’s attempt to capitalize on the success of Dota Auto Chess, and with 200,000 concurrent players shortly after its Early Access launch on Steam, it appears to be well-positioned. It’s been over a year since it was even able to hit 10,000. Steam stats don’t give us the full picture as there are mobile versions too, but it’s a significant drop for a game designed to keep people coming back every day.
Teamfight Tactics is the stronger game, but I don’t think that’s the main reason for the difference in player count. People just don’t care much about auto-fighters. Even if some specific games have, the genre doesn’t have any appeal. But why is it fading in popularity when so many other multiplayer trends in similar locations have managed to stick around for longer?
It took me a while to embrace auto-battle games due to a misunderstanding: automation sounds like it cuts out most of the interactions I usually enjoy in strategy and tactical games, and the streamlining shows a lack of sophistication or complexity compared to traditional strategy games MOBA. Even before their respective phones were released, they all had a mobile gaming vibe, designed for short-term attention and microtransaction fraud. That’s an unfair assessment, with many mobile games upgrading them by mistake, but it’s definitely likely a factor in the rise of auto-battle players, which unfortunately stagnated.
Nor are they social experiences. In MMOs, MOBAs and battle royale games, you are in teams, squads and parties. Forced to work together, you can build a new relationship or turn it into a regular game date. Now, I often play TFT with a group of people, but we play separately and against each other, not as part of a team. And there’s no reason to team up with players I don’t know yet.
Multiplayer games thrive on FOMO. When I skip Thursday’s regular session of Guild Wars 2, I know Phil will tell me what cool things everyone did while I was away, which means I’ll definitely be playing again the following week. For auto-battle players, you don’t really do that. There may be events and seasonal crap trying to lure you back, but it’s a lot less appealing if your friends don’t encourage you to rejoin. That’s why TFT’s shared launcher is so important: if you’re thinking about launching League of Legends, you might want to see what’s going on in TFT as well.
The future of racers
Autobattlers seems like a fad right now, and it’s hard to see a bright future for the genre, but that doesn’t mean existing games are going anywhere. A big announcement or a top spot on Twitch isn’t the only indicator that a game is still playing.
Games like Underlords and Auto Chess still receive regular updates, and even if you don’t hear much about them anymore, it seems poised to continue to be the funniest games out there. One big reason is Riot’s Labs program, which the studio uses to test experimental modes like Hyper Roll, which was added last year: a fast-paced mode that’s great for mobile players.
Stasis will hasten the end of auto-fighting games, so the introduction of an experimental mode is a must, and at my most optimistic moment, I hope TFT’s new mode will benefit the genre more broadly, spread the word, and allow other developers to Got more ideas for what an auto-fighting game should be. Maybe it’s just a great concept away from its way back into the public consciousness.
More likely, though, we’ll continue to see a handful of successful people continue to do their thing, with few proper newcomers threatening their status. But that’s not to say there aren’t new racers on the horizon.
They may not have the big names or player count, but like Despot’s Game, a procedural roguelike army fighter, and Gladiator Guild Manager, which sets you up with the task of training gladiators and developing your guild, is bringing an interesting twist to the genre. They’re both in Early Access right now, so it remains to be seen if they’ll have enough staying power, but they’ve been well-received by players so far. So while the genre’s momentum has plummeted, there is at least some potential for growth.