Strategy games a dying breed study claims — interest wanes in tactical gameplay mechanics despite steady player counts

As a genre, strategy games have one of the more hardcore fan bases, but it appears as though the genre as a whole might be slowly fading into obscurity, if a new study by Quantic Foundry is any indication.

According to the survey, which compared interest in 12 gaming motivations — reasons gamers play games — found that, while most gaming motivators remained consistent or experienced only slight changes, strategy saw a substantial decline in interest. Specifically, strategy dropped from the 50th percentile to the 33rd percentile. Or as the researchers put it “67% of gamers today care less about strategic thinking and planning when playing games than the average gamer back in June 2015.”

This is despite gaming — and particularly strategy gaming — being more accessible than ever. Handheld devices like the Steam Deck and Lenovo Legion Go (curr. $699.99 from Lenovo US) seem almost designed for strategy games, with their touch pads and handy macro buttons.

It's also important to note that the survey is self-reported and doesn't actually evaluate player counts on strategy games, which seem to have remained more or less consistent across popular strategy games, like Sid Meier's Civilization VI, Total War: Warhammer III, and Age of Empires II.

There are likely a number of explanations for why strategy in games is declining in popularity among gamers over the last nine years. Primarily, it seems reasonable to assume that niche gaming communities — of which strategy gaming is certainly one — might see limited growth as the gaming population increases, and increase it has.

It's reported that the number of gamers has grown from 2.03 billion to 3.32 billion between 2015 and 2024, and the vast majority of games — especially in the current era of multiplayer FPS titles — are not strategy games. A cursory look at the game tags on Steam reveals that there are 5,528 games tagged “Strategy,” while tags like “Adventure” and “Action” number in excess of 8,000, indicating that strategy games are certainly a minority.

Another potential explanation that Quantic Foundry presents in its report on the survey is the ongoing trend of dwindling attention spans, the organisation even goes so far as to suggest that the dwindling interest in strategy in games is a reflection on general societal trends.