History of Cossacks games on youtube.
Gscfancom put on youtube movie - history of Cossacks games.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rV7sljLRvk
It were memories in 15 years anniversary of GSC Game World which developed several super sellers games as like Stalker which had 4 millions copies.
This movie is in Russian language, nevertheless it show how they started as unknown Ukrainian studio which developed their first strategy game and achieved unexpected big successes with Cossacks. It also mentioned other real time strategy games, which were developed in the past. These next GSC projects were not so successful, however it were profitable.
The story was told by
Sergiy Grygorovych general director
Anton Bolshakov director
Andrew Shpagin game programmer
Dmitiy Zenin game designer
Evgeniy Grygorovych Cossacks 2 project manager
All they have pleasant memories of these days when they started as unknown studio and achieved big success with Cossacks.
Then they developed several strategy games published by cdv Software Entertainment
Cossacks 1 series games published in 2000- 2002
American Conquest series games published in 2003-2006
Cossacks 2 series games published in 2005-2006
Heroes of Annihilated Empires published in 2006
There also were Alexander game published by Ubisoft in 2004.
Few screens in this movie showed impressive Hawks European Warfare mod too.
They mentioned even Cossacks III case which was not developed game, but was some kind of accidental performance during Stalker Fest 2009 in Kiev.
However GSC gain fame with lucky shot as like Cossacks games, but later they abandoned these games and went into new projects. Some people which worked on strategy games in GSC quit their posts. This way these games run aground and lost market place. Sergiy Grygorovych saw only a little chance for next strategy games and GSC did not want took a risk and invest few millions in this kind of development. But it looks that GSC did not see how many mistakes they made here.
I think that real time strategy games still could and should be profitable, but it needs some new ideas, innovations and vision how to rouse these games, and get the upper hand from this stagnation.
Can somebody make progress in real time strategy games? This question still is open. Even for GSC Games World.
PS
Interesting theoretical essay about RTS games design was on cdvusa.com forum. http://forums.cdvusa.com/showthread.php?p=730031#post730031
However Ftoomsh went to far from real practice, then stopped posting and vanished somewhere, but he puts some interesting things which could be taken into consideration.Added (25/August/2011, 8:14 Am)
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This footage on youtube could be quite interesting however I still can not understand why GSC did not make something more for their fans and for these old strategic games. It could be good marketing effect when they will prepare some kind of supper gifts for their fans. It could be something as like some improvements, new units, maps, scenarios, or even more realistic campaigns for these old Cossacks games. I know that it is hard to develop quite new strategy game in Cossacks style now. But something could be done there.
There are many questions, suggestions, remarks and wishes to Cossacks 2 game. Here they can find what theirs fans want to see in these games.
Is it so hard for skilled professional men prepare few official patches or free mod and this way better celebrate theirs 15 years anniversary? Even small modding team can do it and why developers team can not? Competitors companies sometime made many DLC, patches and other things even for their old games. It build their marketing position.
It also could be good for GSC public, commercial, customers and even investors relations. This way they can easy and cheap show their potential as serious game developer which achieved great success with Cossacks games and still do not forget these games and their fans.
I can understand that GSC work upon other projects and can not risk more money investment for new strategic game. Nevertheless some improvements to their old games can be done and it is not so costly. What is more it can easy gives many positive effects.
Maybe it is too late now, but better is too late than never make something good in this case and GSA could take it into account.
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