Crazy how the genres we grew up with just evolved over time into something completely different
I was thinking about this the other day while looking at my Steam library. Back in the late 90s and early 2000s, the gaming landscape was so specific. Everyone was into RTS games and arena shooters. If you look at the top charts today, those classic genres look totally dead, but they really aren't, they just changed into something different over time.
Take RTS for example. We all grew up on Command and Conquer, Starcraft and Warcraft, the games were pretty hard and punishing for newcomers, and you had to master both the macro economy side of the games and the micro unit control. But players eventually fractured the genre into entirely different directions, people realized you could cater to some parts of the playerbase and have a successful game. You had the custom maps in Warcraft 3 that started the whole MOBA craze with Dota and League. Then you have the base building side. The whole turtling aspect of RTS (Almost everyone enjoyed turtling back then) morphed into these massive base defense survival games.
I was actually playing some Diplomacy is Not an Option lately and that’s what sparked this whole train of thought. It takes the best parts of old school RTS (scale, familiar controls, UI etc.) but is completely focused on turtling and defense. It feels like the natural evolution of how I actually wanted to play Stronghold back in the day. In fact it might be a spiritual successor of Stronghold in a way.
Then you have the shooter space, while on the surface level games look similar, fundamental things have changed so much. Quake and Unreal Tournament were the absolute peak of multiplayer gaming for a lot of us. Pure arena shooters are basically a ghost town now, but their DNA completely morphed into the hero shooter. The old emphasis on map control and weapon pickups turned into managing cooldowns and team synergy in games like Overwatch or Marvel Rivals. The crazy strafejumping movement replaced by built in, easier to use, movement abilities. Tbh I liked the skill expression of strafejumping a lot, but veterans just dominate any newcomer if you have mechanics like that in a game so I can see why its not as popular anymore. But the basic fast paced fps formula is there, just repackaged for a new generation. The funny outlier is Counter Strike. It somehow refused to change and just willed the tactical FPS genre into existence through sheer stubbornness. It is wild that it still pulls massive numbers and sits right alongside its own modern evolution with Valorant. I guess the game really was ahead of its time, since we still play it.
Even old hardcore roguelikes and traditional RPGs kind of merged. We went from these slow, punishing ASCII dungeon crawlers to modern roguelites. Developers basically took the progression and stat building of an RPG, mashed it with the permadeath of a roguelike, and sped everything up into condensed action runs like Hades or Dead Cells. Not surprised roguelites are so popular, the combination works very well.
It makes me wonder what the popular games right now are going to turn into in another twenty years. I have no idea what the games will look like, but I know some version of Counter Strike will probably still be popular.