A kind of anniversary: 10 years ago I decided to start working on f2p games. 🏆🎮It was a difficult decision that I weighed for six months. F2P’s reputation was worse than it is now, mostly it was represented by browser and mobile casual games.
I wondered: is there a way for such games to be as fun and engaging as retail titles for PC? With those thoughts I applied to RJ Games and got work at “UnderControl” – browser tactical RTS in modern setting. And never regretted this decision. After all: I’ve always dreamed of working with RTS, the genre on PC was mostly non-existent, Clash royale was’t released yet.
At RJ from the one side the team was struggling with soft-launch that gone wrong: project was on the brink of closure when I joined (or it felt this way). Game was inspired by projects like “Sudden Strike” or so I was told. It also had PvP and PvE modes, with real time gameplay (rare sight for a browser game).
At the other side I had considerate experience with RTS before. Worked with couple of niche tactical strategies, made some mods for games like Total war and Company of heroes. So I found a lot of mechanics to play with and task to challenge my skills as a game designer. The project team was also cool and skillful, I learned from them a lot.
During couple of months we overcame the challenges of the soft launch. In the next 2,5 years project got released on the six platforms and got to ~38 place in the Facebook Top Grossing. What an emotional ride it was!
For the most part that experience is dear to me not because of the metrics. It was a rare opportunity to dare and try to make a great RTS in rather strict boundaries. Not always it was easy, not always the results were good, but it was fun most of the way. Experience from that time gave me a solid foundation in terms of game design skills and I am very grateful to the team and to the project after all these years.
