JoeBostic

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I had a great time programming it. C&C was lots of fun even before it was complete. Our test department would start up a game to test one particular aspect and before you know it they would start playing the game to win against other testers. "Hey, did you test the rocket launchers against all the different enemy targets?" "Oh, no. I forgot, but at least I won the game we played!"

Yes and Yes.

HAHA. No. I have friends who work there and I don't think EA is evil. It has a corporate atmosphere, but that comes with any company that is large and been around a long time. I'll admit that there is an appeal of small developers -- the whole root for the underdog aspect.

It does seem like the game-playing population has reduced attention span than it had in the past and that seems to be contributing to the greater focus on tactical combat and tower-defense-like games. Maybe this is due to the nature of the Internet, Youtube, Twitter, news-bite type world we live in where attention deficit is the norm and maybe it is partly because gamers are getting older and have other work/family obligations that compete with the player's time. The RTS genre has fragmented and I suspect various aspects will still be alive and well in 5 years, albeit in their own niche. I hope RTS genre will still have a niche that caters to the game player that wants challenges to the mind rather than twich (aka, Actions Per Minute rating).

As a developer, I won't argue with that, but publishers seem to have a different opinion. :(