XCOM - Is now a Genre

Henriquejr spotted a new colummn on PC Gamer: The Gollop Chamber

The Gollop Chamber: XCOM is now a genre

In his first column for PC Gamer Indie, creator of the original X-COM Julian Gollop argues his game has become a genre of its own.

Welcome to my first column for PC Gamer. What’s it all about, you may ask? You can look forward to my musings on games, the games industry, and also follow progress on my new XCOM-style game, Phoenix Point, which is underway at Snapshot Games in sunny Bulgaria.

Phoenix Point was first announced at the PC Gamer Weekender event in March last year, where I argued that XCOM is now an established genre, thanks to the tremendous success of the Firaxis games. Ever since I signed over the X-COM rights to MicroProse back in 1997 I have been trying to build a new X-COM-style game, but I never quite succeeded, despite releasing several turn-based games over the last 15 years. The XCOM genre is something special and distinct, and diverging too far from its fundamental design pillars results in something less than satisfactory.

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While I agree that XCOM's (recent) success has solidified the genre, it's the Jagged Alliance franchise, also started in 1994, that will always be my favorite. If it weren't for a couple half-baked attempts at "reloading" and "flashing back" that franchise, I wonder if it wouldn't be just as popular?

Well there have certainly been other turn based cover shooters, but I think the part of XCOM that really caught on was the whole two action system where you get one move action and one attack action. That system is not exactly revolutionary either, but it just turned out to work really well with XCOM's gameplay. Although I know some people here really prefer action points.

Ah, Time Units, fondly remembered. UFO Enemy Unknown, right in the feels.

Before Xcom, there was Laser Squad and Rebelstar. Laser Squad was a game I played until the disk broke.

And before Rebelstar was Rebelstar Raiders.

Joe Capricorn lives forever.

Wasn't there an XCom that was a Descent clone?

Thought the same thing a few days ago when I read a game had XCOM-like combat in its description.
I still like X-COM and Xenonauts more…

Isn't Tactical RPG the genre?

Originally Posted by wolfing
Isn't Tactical RPG the genre?

Maybe, but I suppose he's referring to the whole global view versus combat view as well? Can't think of that many games that has done this well? The first I can remember is UFO:EU, so calling it the Xcom genre makes sense (but it shouldn't be in capital letters?)

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory
While I agree that XCOM's (recent) success has solidified the genre, it's the Jagged Alliance franchise, also started in 1994, that will always be my favorite. If it weren't for a couple half-baked attempts at "reloading" and "flashing back" that franchise, I wonder if it wouldn't be just as popular?

I sort of understand XCOM and have tried multiple times but it never grabbed me. Jagged Alliance 2 was incredible for me though. Actually makes me want to download the 1.13 mod again and see if its better than a few years ago. But yes the reboot sucked more than it should have.

Originally Posted by wolfing
Isn't Tactical RPG the genre?

Not really. The original X-com didn't give you the ability to customize the stats of your soldiers. You could name them, but over time their stats just got better with every rank. You had no control over what did or didn't get better.

Originally Posted by Mustawd
Not really. The original X-com didn't give you the ability to customize the stats of your soldiers. You could name them, but over time their stats just got better with every rank. You had no control over what did or didn't get better.

Not true. They learned by doing. You could force same characters to do most of the shooting so their accuracy went up more.

Originally Posted by tomasp3n
Maybe, but I suppose he's referring to the whole global view versus combat view as well? Can't think of that many games that has done this well? The first I can remember is UFO:EU, so calling it the Xcom genre makes sense (but it shouldn't be in capital letters?)

I think the total war series has this element as well.

Sent from my SM-A520F using Tapatalk

No one mentioned the XCom board game: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/…com-board-game I've only tried to play it a couple of times, and it took all today to simple get through the first round.

XCom is a franchise. A genre would require quite a lot of other products doing the same yet without cloning their model.

Re Gollop: ego much?

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory
While I agree that XCOM's (recent) success has solidified the genre, it's the Jagged Alliance franchise, also started in 1994, that will always be my favorite.

Still my favorite game of all time, though I've played too many hours to enjoy it anymore. JA:2 is not only the best designed game I've ever played, it's one of the best designed pieces of software I've ever seen.

I remember this game : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incuba…Is_Running_Out

And then I was playing a demo of a game during the last RPC, I think …

Originally Posted by Archangel
Not true. They learned by doing. You could force same characters to do most of the shooting so their accuracy went up more.

You could, but that doesn't make it an rpg. At best you could argue that it has an rpg element.

At the end of the day X-con always was a tactical turn based combat game with a strategic layer.

There's X-Com and XCoM, the original comment was for X-COM but it applies much more to XCOM. Clearly many games tried clone in part XCoM, not many did it for X-Com.

Still it looks like game over and XCoM won't become a genre as Diablo even if it was close to. The 2 sell well but certainly not enough to achieve that.

JA2 was clearly much closer to achieve become a genre than was X-Com. It's not clear it really achieved it. In my opinion it build a too active too caustic community of fans that generated a lot of negativity on any attempt looking somehow related to the original series.

That's where XCOM achieved something, break the similar X-Com community, just ignore them and do something deeply different. Alas it looks like JA2 will never benefit of this bless.