In the middle of June this year there was a game design challenge called 7 days FPS challenge (you might have guessed - creating a FPS in 7 days http://7dfps.org/) .

One of the entries was by a indie developer called Quick Fingers, and the result was the very impressive Europa Concept. There is a free download of this game on his website, and I suggest you download and play it right now:

http://www.quickfingers.net/portfolio/europa-concept/

The point of this thread (except giving you a link to a very good free game) is that the concept is now being expanded into a full game -

http://www.quickfingers.net/europa-announced/

and I for one will be following this very closely.

This was made in only 7 days?

Very impressive indeed

Indeed.

And in case people are to lazy to try the concept, there are a few YouTube videos of it also

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WY8Z4_0lwo

The result looks quite professional. However surely the developer relies heavily on frameworks, so it's more the idea and the integration that counts for the 7 days duration. And I wish these contests would also exist for grand strategy games and deliver similar results.

and a ever so slightly, tiny little bump on this one.

Yeah, because it would be a slice of cake for one person to develop a grand strategy game in seven days.

It doesn't have to be a full game, this project here also isn't a full game. And also it doesn't have to be seven days. Make it a month if that's better. But there are tons of fps out there, all more or less very similar: explore, kill, collect, kill, find location, kill. But there aren't many grand strategy games nowadays compared to what was there ten years ago. So I think this would be a worthwile pursuit. I am sure the demand is there. The frameworks probably aren't grown enough to describe something as complex as an arbitrary grand strategy game. That would be a problem indeed. However I really like the idea.

Well, many contests don't limit the participants to a genre, in my experience most of them just provide a theme. But as you noted: devs heavily rely on frameworks and the really good and popular ones are aimed at 3D action games.

Thank you, I haven't laughed that hard in weeks. You think it could be done in a month? That's adorable.

I actually never heard of a specific framework for the development of grand strategy games. There are several FPS engines floating around, I think I've heard about 2-3 similar engines for 2D jump'n'runs, and of course there's RPGMaker for 2d RPGs. But I never heard about one for grand strategy games.

Also, I believe that you underestimate the amount of work that has to go into a grand strategy game. If you go single player, you need an AI, which requires a lot of adapting, fine-tuning and rewriting. If you go multiplayer, you need to spend a lot of time on balancing. If you want both - there you go. And that's just one part of the work.

You are bemoaning (understandably) why there are tons of FPS games, and relatively few grand strategy games. The reasons for this discrepancy are right here. Developing a good grand strategy game is harder than developing a good FPS, and appeals to a smaller market.

This I do not quite agree with, just take a look at some of the concepts for this competition, there is a lot of variety and originality there. All they have in common is some form of moment in a first person perspective (well, almost all...)

The same can be said abut 'grand strategy game', it is just build, search and kill.

balancing, mostly. In truth, they are not that hard to make, however it is very hard to make a good one.

The most basic problem steams from that most 4x games are asymmetrical, each faction is different, and it is very difficult getting balancing correct. It requires a lot of testing and tinkering. You also need to balance out things like economy, research, growth and so on and so forth.

Are you serious? You can't be serious. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh wow, you're just a mine of comedy gold.

Have you ever looked at a grand strategy for more than one second? I was assuming you had, but you obviously have not because you would know that they're about 1000x bigger in scope (hence "grand") which just means they're 1000x more time consuming to develop.

And if you really think that grand strategies is this huge untapped market, you're hilariously deluded. Because I can prove that your alleged demand is fantasy. Look at any store, any sales figures, any games related website, or anything related to grand strategies ever really. It's a niche genre. So yeah, if your opinion is that the market is there then your opinion is wrong.

I'm not saying grand strategies are bad, because I like them a bunch. I'm saying that they require large development teams and dedicated fan bases to maintain, not shoestring budgets and single developers.

So no, it doesn't make a speck of sense to spend exponentially more time developing in a genre with way less widespread appeal. I think it would be extraordinarily stupid, actually. I'd rather see indie developers make cool new ideas instead of shitty Civ clones that could never even come close to matching any mainstream strategy due to sheer lack of manpower.

You know - you come across as an arrogant know-it-all and so talking with you is not a pleasure for me at all. You might have a point but every new post will only result in more insults from you and that's not tolerable.

Just a few remarks: I don't believe a second that grand strategy is a 1000x more time consuming to develop, you're just exaggerating like hell to make an argument which is useless. Maybe it's more but how much more nobody knows. I also think sales figures do underestimate the demand for strategy games because the market is simply not perfectly adapted to demand here. And I really don't care what you'd actually rather see, because you obviously also don't give a damn what I'd rather see. So you see, this discussion is utterly useless.