Rollercoaster Tycoon Is The Most Insidious Real-Time-Strategy Game

This story was published concurrently in video form by Subpixel.

Starcraft, Total War, Homeworld… These games are generally considered to be some of the best real-time strategy games ever released. But no one ever mentions the true pinnacle of RTS games, the Rollercoaster Tycoon franchise.

Real-time strategy games are traditionally categorized as wargames where you compete against an AI or human player in real time. While the real-time element is shared with any MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) or online FPS (first person shooter), RTS games are generally built around unit and structure management, where two or more combatants wield vast hordes against one another. I’d argue that Rollercoaster Tycoon falls into this category.

In the RT franchise, you are the “Tycoon”, an omniscient, omnipresent force bending the land to your whims and building your entertainment empire atop a sprawling root system of specialized rollercoasters and kitschy themed architecture. You are the god of your park, and your park’s attendees are ruthless heretics intent on finding and exploiting any weakness in your amusement Valhalla. Where Starcraft would have you construct additional pylons, you construct ferris wheels and hot dog stands. Instead of Zerglings and Ultralisks you hire maintenance crews and mascots. These are your weapons of war against the most diabolical enemy ever coded into a game: people who set their standards way too high.

My first foray into the world of Rollercoaster Tycoon was with 2002’s Rollercoaster Tycoon 2. At that point in my life, I could not manage to successfully run any of the game’s parks. Perhaps it my age and my impatience, or simply my youthful desire to build unreasonably long and wild coasters, but I never could seem to keep my finances from descending into chaos after a couple in-game weeks of operation. All my parks would inevitably morph into desolate garbage ridden hellscapes.

I found myself more successful in 2004’s Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. Maybe it was because I was two years older and two years wiser or maybe the game was just easier than the previous iteration, but I (mostly) sailed through RCT3’s main campaign. I rode a wave of capitalistic euphoria until disaster struck in a mission titled “New Blood”. On this particular mission, you weren’t allowed to charge fees for your rides — a revenue stream I had desperately come to rely on in all the previous challenges. And as the old saying goes, “Man cannot live by hot dog and themed propeller cap sales alone”. I had achieved the mission’s first two objectives easily enough (1: have 200 guests in your park, 2: have 400 guests in your park and repay your starting loan), but the third and final objective eluded me. I was required to have 600 guests in my park and achieve a park value of $60,000. The first task was paltry in its simplicity, but the second was the challenge. Like Sisyphus pushing his stone, I desperately tried to scrounge up enough money to build my park up to a $60,000 masterpiece of entertainment. With each new coaster I constructed, my operating costs and park value increased — my revenue did not.

This is where the enemy destroyed me.

I found myself pitted against the very type of park goer my parents had molded me into as a child: one who would pay the cost of admission, but had presumably snuck his own food into the park to avoid spending any more money than was absolutely required. While my expenditures grew and park attendance soared, no one was buying any food or merchandise. I was hemorrhaging cash as my park neared the $50,000 mark, but even after taking additional loans to fund the final stages of coaster construction there was no hope of reaching my $60,000 goal. The enemy’s frugality had won the day, and my shiny amusement park bled its final dollars into the dirt.

To this day that final objective has eluded me. And while a majority of the other campaign objectives came quite easily to me, there were a handful that required a more skillful touch. All of the more difficult challenges had one thing in common, they hinged on pleasing the guests. Certain tasks required that a ride reach a certain ‘excitement level’, others that the decor should line up to a certain VIP’s aesthetic standards. All RCT3’s technical benchmarks came easily to me (“Have a ride X long”, “Build two of Y coaster”), but anything related to guest happiness was more demanding of my time.

In an RTS like Starcraft or Homeworld, your enemies behave in fairly predictable patterns; not so in Rollercoaster Tycoon. You never know what kind of person will walk into your park. They could be some 20-something who wants to ride really intense coasters after having downed four hot dogs, or a mother and child who just want to ride the teacups and buy a fancy balloon. They may come prepared to spend lots of money, or they might not. There is an anarchy to Rollercoaster Tycoon not usually present in games of its ilk. And that is why I became convinced that Rollercoaster Tycoon is the most insidious real time strategy game ever developed. No one can predict chaos, but the Tycoon series thrives on it.