Remarkable attention for a game that was released 25 years ago

January 12, 2024 10:14 PM

This week, the world’s most-skilled Age of Empires II players are gathered in an apartment in Berlin. On Twitch alone, over 30,000 people are watching live.
posted by one for the books (12 comments total)

A dev on the game discussed the use of assembly in the original game and HD remaster and the changes for the newest Definitive Edition on reddit earlier this week

Never played it competitively online and never will as I'm all macro and no micro, but the single player campaigns are as responsible for my limited world history trivia knowledge as any high school class.
posted by JauntyFedora at 10:34 PM on January 12 [3 favorites]

I cannot be bothered, but my favorite person goes back to this game again and again and I thank you very much for the link and the news. If all goes well with time zones and rain, I might not have to install an insane shelf he wants tomorrow, because he will be watching some Twitch.
posted by lauranesson at 10:41 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

God that was (and apparently still is) an addictive game. The devs built in some fun cheat codes.
posted by senor biggles at 10:44 PM on January 12 [1 favorite]

I don't watch live but I think technically Aoe2 is definitely the sport I watch most of, I will end up watching a lot of these matches, sometimes to fall asleep to.

I have a soft spot for DauT's playstyle, I want to see those matches, I'm not a huge fan of watching extreme micro, it can be very impressive and make for good, clippable "show"moments, but it's not as interesting to me as more strategic plays about civilisation and map choice.
posted by Audreynachrome at 3:25 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]

Yeah that's fun to watch, one can actually understand what's going on.
posted by seanmpuckett at 6:28 AM on January 13

Thanks for posting. This is fascinating, and the timeline of AoE development in the article was eye-opening, too, for someone who casually played very early on and stopped a long time ago.
posted by cupcakeninja at 6:51 AM on January 13

This event is live now and has casters narrating. It's on the YouTube channel and Twitch.

This story is so nice and hopeful. I'm sad how the classic RTS genre is in kind of a slump. You'd think with modern PCs there'd be exciting things with tens of thousands of units and beautiful graphics. Looking online there's still plenty of development, Homeworld 3 is coming for instance. But I never see any buzz about them.

Is there something innovative involving mobile devices and asynchronous multiplayer? The games I've seen are shallow things like Clash of Clans and its clones. Maybe I should be more positive about those, they are remarkably successful.
posted by Nelson at 7:40 AM on January 13

Wo lo lo
posted by Jarcat at 7:59 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]

Oops
posted by Runes at 2:45 PM on January 13

Turns out using your king to scout the map can be a bad idea.
posted by Nelson at 4:22 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]

as someone who was in the QA team on AoE 1&2, i love to see this.
posted by kokaku at 8:51 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]

I missed a lot of the action of the tournament this week as I was on a work trip, but I'm hoping to catch some of the final today. I'll probably also go back and watch the DauT-Viper match as they're two of my favorite players to watch. Like Audreynachrome above, I'm less interested in super micro-heavy play (probably part of why I enjoy watching AoE2 more than, say, Starcraft) and while TheViper is well known for excellent micro, he's also very strategically creative.

I think some credit for the fun of watching this game has to go to the commentators. T90's energy and willingness to explain the game to someone who last played in middle school drew me in when I started watching a few years ago, and there are a number of good smaller commentators for those who want a more chill, less stereotypical Twitch chat experience (small shoutout to my favorite, OrnLu).
posted by egregious theorem at 6:06 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]