Legendary composer Frank Klepacki says the RTS genre isn't dead, but he would like to see devs get a little more creative with it

Frank Klepacki has composed a lot of great game music over the years—in fact, he's responsible for the soundtrack in Eye of the Beholder 2, one of the best dungeon crawlers of all time. At heart, though, Klepacki is a real-time strategy guy—and he takes real issue with claims that the genre is dead.

There's no question that RTS is diminished, at least compared to its glory days. Back in the 1990s, games like Command & Conquer, Warcraft, and Dune 2 (especially Dune 2, I'd say) dominated the scene. But all that remains of any of them these days is the seemingly unkillable World of Warcraft—and how many players even know that Blizzard's one true behemoth is an RTS spinoff?

Speaking in the latest issue of Edge, however, Klepacki said he thinks the genre still has lots of life in it. "There was all of this doom-and-gloom talk about ten years ago, saying, 'Oh, we think RTS is dead now—why are you still trying to work on games that are in a genre that’s going away?’" Klepacki said. "Obviously, if there are games coming out, [the genre is] not going away. It’s just that other types of games have taken the forefront of attention. Everything runs in cycles, you know? That’s how it always is."

That's true: RPGs have ebbed and flowed over the decades, and flight sims were huge until they weren't, and then they were again. But Klepacki also pointed the finger at a hollowing-out of the industry and growing aversion to risk, particularly among big-budget developers: "I would love to see more unique ideas that are allowed to be triple-A titles. A lot of indie titles are taking those creative chances, but a lot of the middle ground has gone."

Real-time strategy DNA has persisted in the MOBA genre, but traditional RTS games are enjoying a bit of a boom too. More than 20 years after Frozen Throne, Blizzard dropped a new campaign for Warcraft 3 in September, a Game of Thrones RTS is in the pipe, and Company of Heroes and Ruse are back; Age of Empires and Age of Mythology are still rumbling along, Tempest Rising delivers a very C&C-like experience, and while the new StarCraft game revealed at BlizzCon is a shooter, Blizzard is still dicking around with StarCraft 2, too.

The days of building them around ensemble Hollywood casts may be over (at least for now), but the RTS itself? Be happy, Frank: it's definitely alive and kicking.