Skip to main content PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES Search PC Gamer View Profile Movies & TV Gaming Industry PC Gaming Show Newsletter Signup Community Guidelines Affiliate Links Meet the team About PC Gamer PC Gamer Magazine Subscription Why subscribe? Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99Subscribe now Essential Hardware Battlefield 6 PC Gamer quizzes! Recommended reading Dawn of War, the undisputed king of Warhammer 40k RTS games, is getting a remaster, but Relic isn't changing too much: 'We don't want to fix something that isn't broken' As the Chinese game industry flocks from mobile to AAA blockbusters, Phantom Blade Zero's director says the quiet part out loud: 'Good games are good. It's not 'big games are good.'' The first ever third-party game to come to Steam probably doesn't get the respect it deserves—mostly because no one remembers it Warren Spector was so desperate to make Deus Ex that it almost became a Command & Conquer RPG: 'I was going to find a way to make it one way or another, even if it meant making another damn sci-fi game!' Space Invaders creator recalls building arcade games with mirrors, making a prototype console that never saw release, and how short-sighted Taito's sales team was about videogames: 'These things will never sell' Warhammer 40,000 games Darktide and Rogue Trader enjoyed a sales bump due to the popularity of Space Marine 2 “That evening, I told the company: This is the first game we're publishing”—how vibes, fun, and aggressively mashing a keyboard landed the Vampire Survivors dev its first publishing client Total War: Shogun started out as 'a quick and cheerful B-grade RTS' to help Creative Assembly raise funds for its dream game—an RPG based on Monkey: Journey to the West Jody Macgregor 8 August 2025 Different times. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Sega) It's hard to remember Creative Assembly wasn't always synonymous with the Total War series, and yet, once upon a time, they were so well-known for sports games that pivoting away was seen as a risk. That's part of the story told in a retrospective video about the making of Total War: Shogun put together to coincide with its 25th anniversary. It makes for a fascinating insight into how different things were for the studio at the end of the 20th century. "When I joined there were five people and they were working on sports games for Electronic Arts," says former executive producer Mike Simpson, who was hired in 1996. "I joined in order to start something new. The idea was I was going to head up a team producing an RPG, and we were going to base it on Monkey: Journey to the West. It was going to be done in a new studio we were going to set up in Singapore. None of that happened. Instead we ended up looking at making a quick and cheerful B-grade RTS because we'd seen so many other people doing it after Command & Conquer came out. We thought we'd make one of those games quickly to give us some funds that we could then use to make the RPG that we really wanted to make." Total War 25th Anniversary: Shogun Retrospective - YouTube Shogun was a big enough hit that the Total War series became the studio's main focus, with occasional sidesteps like Alien: Isolation and Viking: Battle for Asgard in later years. During early work on Shogun, however, CA was still creating sports games, which fed into its development. Related Articles Dawn of War, the undisputed king of Warhammer 40k RTS games, is getting a remaster, but Relic isn't changing too much: 'We don't want to fix something that isn't broken' As the Chinese game industry flocks from mobile to AAA blockbusters, Phantom Blade Zero's director says the quiet part out loud: 'Good games are good. It's not 'big games are good.'' The first ever third-party game to come to Steam probably doesn't get the respect it deserves—mostly because no one remembers it "When I joined I was called in to help with Australian Rules Football, which has I think 30 people on the field," says principal creative director Al Hope, who'd been hired as a trainee artist in 1996. The football game's tech proved helpful when it came time to depict armies clashing in feudal Japan. "We had already built up our experience of putting a large number of—well, for then a large number of characters for a sports game on the screen, and I guess we were going to take that and really push it further." Assisted by AFL of all the things, Total War: Shogun stood out from the strategy pack and led to a successful series that's still going today. We'd eventually get videogame adaptations of Monkey like Enslaved: Odyssey to the West and Black Myth: Wukong, but Creative Assembly's never eventuated. 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Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Jody Macgregor Social Links Navigation Weekend/AU Editor Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Dawn of War, the undisputed king of Warhammer 40k RTS games, is getting a remaster, but Relic isn't changing too much: 'We don't want to fix something that isn't broken' As the Chinese game industry flocks from mobile to AAA blockbusters, Phantom Blade Zero's director says the quiet part out loud: 'Good games are good. It's not 'big games are good.'' The first ever third-party game to come to Steam probably doesn't get the respect it deserves—mostly because no one remembers it Warren Spector was so desperate to make Deus Ex that it almost became a Command & Conquer RPG: 'I was going to find a way to make it one way or another, even if it meant making another damn sci-fi game!' Space Invaders creator recalls building arcade games with mirrors, making a prototype console that never saw release, and how short-sighted Taito's sales team was about videogames: 'These things will never sell' Warhammer 40,000 games Darktide and Rogue Trader enjoyed a sales bump due to the popularity of Space Marine 2 Latest in Strategy RTS sequel Ashes of the Singularity 2 promises to let you gleefully watch hundreds of thousands of units blow each other up in 2026 Kingmakers, the medieval combat sim with tanks and M16s, warns that guns don't always win knife fights: 'Not all of your bullets will have an easy time taking down all enemy types' Choose to be an upstanding burgher or a criminal mastermind as The Guild series of medieval life choice simulators returns Zombies are on the lawn again: Plants vs. Zombies is coming back with a 'Replanted' remaster featuring the original campaign plus new game modes, co-op and PvP support, and more Total War: Warhammer 3's removal of ass ladders is a great start, but it's got a far bigger gate problem to contend with Stormgate is leaving early access before it's technically finished: 'We believe that our campaign and 1v1 are ready for a broader audience' Latest in News 'Consumers are not okay with okay': Take-Two boss says BioShock 4 is taking so long because the company's goal is 'to make the best entertainment, not necessarily the most entertainment' Finally, I can get a straight flush with cabbages: Our favorite idle farming sim just got a Balatro crossover Just 2 weeks after its release, this Diablo-style roguelike has already reworked its entire campaign to please action RPG fans looking for a challenge Id Software kicks off QuakeCon with a surprise release of Heretic + Hexen, an 'enhanced' bundle with cross-platform multiplayer, mod support, and more I cannot believe one of the best indie games of all time just got new DLC 17 years later Deliberately giving AI 'a dose of evil' may make it less evil overall, reads headline on ragged newspaper in the rubble of the robot apocalypse HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES LATEST GAME REVIEWS Best PCIe 5.0 SSD for gaming in 2025: the only Gen 5 drives I will allow in my PC Best graphics cards in 2025: I've tested pretty much every AMD and Nvidia GPU of the past 20 years and these are today's top cards Best gaming laptop in 2025: I've put the best of this new generation head-to-head and we have a winner Best gaming chair in 2025: I've tested a ton of gaming chairs and these are the seats I'd suggest for any PC gamer Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads Acer Predator GM9000 2 TB NVMe SSD review Biwin Black Opal NV7400 SSD review Fractal Design Scape review Framework Desktop PC review Audeze MM-100 headphone review PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. 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