The Culture: How A Naval Warfare Game Wearing Giant Robots As A Skinsuit Came To Dominate Its Niche

In different circles I run in, there is a saying: "The future belongs to those that show up."

If you want to know why, despite how Not-A-Faithful-Mecha-Adaptation that BattleTech is, it dominates the niche for Giant Stompy Bot Gaming that is all the explanation that you need.

Let's go over the alternatives that tried:

Robotech

Palladium and Stone Mountain (the two licensors) both fucked up by not having a solid wargame product as the cornerstone of the publication business model.

It then created useless supplementary material where you spent more time Not Doing Stompy Boy Things than doing Stompy Boy Things, which is a massive turn-off to the target audience because Conventional Play doesn't allow for players to solve this problem by having more than one man active in the campaign at a time- and Palladium is all about the Cargo Cult so it's all about Conventional Play.

Yes, some of it was not useless; sourcebooks for different eras (representing the different shows in the source material) are fine. I'm talking about the modules, and that does include the one I am sentimental about because it would make for a fantastic MOSPEADA graphic novel side story (Lancer's Rockers).

With disappointing product, a gameplay model that (a) doesn't make sense or (b) satisfy the desires of the target audience, it's no surprise that it never surpassed BattleTech despite having lore-accurate information and direct ties to source materials.

The result was a product doomed to fail because it lacked player agency (the core appeal of the hobby and the medium) and did not satisfy the target audience's demands. It is no surprise that Invid Invasion was the most popular era to play in, and "Do a Guerilla War Without End" only goes so far before it gets old.

(This also applies to Macross II and Splicers.)

Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles

Dream Pod 9 did not make the core gameplay business model error, but they made the same error that Palladium and Stone Mountain (and everyone else) did by not having the cornerstone wargame product be the foundation for all of the fantastic adventure gaming that they promised.

All the lore supplements, while nice, are terrible in terms of application at the table. The same lack of player agency also applies, which is why the arena games were very popular and the core appeal of being military pilots in uniform did not sell. (Nevermind things like Peace River Gambit not even bothering with the mecha most of the time.)

No one likes a mecha product where you don't get mecha action most of the time. No one plays fantastic adventure games to be bossed around like a bitch. Neither of these DP9 games nor Gear Krieg fixed this issue, which is why they always came across as repurposed TV Series Bibles with a wargame attached and not a real game.

Mekton Zeta

Maximum Mike got closest.

Then he published Operation: Rimfire and fucked it all up. That is a TV series repurposed as a campaign module.

Yes, MZ and MZ Plus are fantastic. Good stuff. It's everything after that (and the aforementioned Rimfire as well as Mekton Empire for Mekton II) that screwed the pooch so hard.

Because, unlike the others, this is a DevKit product where the setting is determined by the Referee and not by the publisher and thus the potential for player agency is greater here than in the aforementioned games (and in the smaller also-rans).

But, because he indicated through his design and his supplementary product that he's still got it bad for Muh Drama! and for Conventional Play, user experiences soon soured and they dropped it with some reaction between disguist and disappointment.

TLDR: Your Giant Robot game has to focus on the giant robots. This is not film, television, comics, or prose; your target audience is not there for Muh Drama!- they are there to PLAY A WARGAME!

Failure to center your entire gameplay loop on the thing that the target audience shows up for is how and why each of these competitors--whatever merits they posssessed otherwise--would falter and fail in due course.

Thus, BattleTech

The default and core gameplay assumption for BattleTech is that you are a mercenary MechWarrior. This is maximum Player Agency.

The core of the game is a wargame. The rest of the game builds off this wargame foundation. Your other adventure scenarios tie directly into your core mercenary Stompy Boy action, and you do a clear minority of them as you spend most of your time in the cockpit aiming to pound other BattleMechs into scrap and get paid.

(This is why Mechwarrior 5 and the PC version of BattleTech are such fantastic adaptations; they focus on the core experience of the brand.)

Of course there's questionable supplementary products out there--all that lore that Tex, Sven, Big Red, etc. make videos about comes from somewhere--and as I said previously the actual gameplay experience has sweet fuck-all to do with the Macross, Dougram, and Crusher Joe source material (which is all Save Or Die, and not the Dreadnaught era naval combat that BattleTech actually is).

How To Come At The King And Win

In other words, BattleTech wins because it's as close to an actual game that the target audience wants that can be had at this time.

You also have your way foreward if you want to compete, win, and dominate: you have to not only make a complete and competent fantastic adventure wargame, you have to make one that appeals to mecha fans' desires- and you have to stay in print and available for sale, shoving your product in your targets' faces (and never making them go out of their way).

You don't need a massive loredump. You don't need TV Setting Bible crap. You need a solid wargame, plenty of stompy boys, and reasons to go at it- and that's where studying the genius of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition and others like it (Classic Traveller, Gamma World 1e, Car Wars, etc.) does you credit because those games will give you good examples of Good Practices That Work to draw upon to make the game that conquers BattleTech.