One button to rule them all indeed, although Louis Castle’s GDC 2006 talk on
bringing the RTS genre to the console was at the end of the day on
Friday, the last day of the conference, it was packed.

The
proposition has me very excited. My first exposure to the RTS genre was
a console experience, playing Dune II on the Sega Genesis. Bringing it
back would be very powerful, but as Louis was apt to point out, it has
yet to be done right.

You cannot just port the PC experience
to a console, as Mr. Castle pointed out most simply, a mouse and
keyboard control schema just doesn’t translate to a console controller.
In order to be successful in reviving this genre on the console you
need to rethink the experience.

Having played the Pre-Alpha
build briefly, when Louis was so kind as to share it with our RTS class
@ USC, I have to say the controls work wonderfully, and the world feels
more rich then it ever did on a typical PC.

Although this was
the second time I sat through this presentation, I found it
invigorating, and I believe the rest of the audience did as well.