Our strategy gaming veterans finally tackle the game they mention every episode, joined by Beyond All Reason’s community manager PtaQ and game designer Tim to explore how passionate volunteers built one of the most ambitious community-driven RTS projects ever attempted, transforming a Total Annihilation mod into a standalone epic-scale strategy experience.

LISTEN LINK: https://criticalmovespodcast.com/listen

This episode provides an unprecedented look inside Beyond All Reason’s development process, featuring detailed discussions with the game’s community manager and lead designer about managing 60,000 Discord members, coordinating volunteer contributors across multiple disciplines, and the challenges of designing for both newcomers and 20-year veterans. The conversation explores the evolution from Total Annihilation mod to standalone game, the complexities of open-source game development, upcoming campaign and faction additions, and why this free community project has “ruined other RTS games” for its developers. The hosts examine what makes epic-scale RTS gaming unique, the philosophy behind community-driven development, and how Beyond All Reason plans to revitalize the strategy genre.

Critical Moves Podcast Episode 46 Show Notes

Episode Details

Title: Beyond All Reason Deep Dive: The Ultimate Community RTS
Hosts: Jack, Tim (Beyond All Reason Game Designer)
Guests: PtaQ (Beyond All Reason Community Manager)
Episode Length: ~75 minutes

Episode Summary

After years of mentioning Beyond All Reason in nearly every podcast episode, Critical Moves finally dedicates a full discussion to the ambitious community-driven RTS project. The conversation features Beyond All Reason’s community manager PtaQ and game designer Tim, providing unprecedented insight into how volunteer contributors have transformed a Total Annihilation mod into a standalone game supporting tens of thousands of active players. The discussion reveals the complexity of coordinating open-source development, the challenges of designing for diverse player skill levels, and ambitious plans for campaign content that could establish Beyond All Reason as a complete RTS package rather than just a multiplayer experience.

The Community-Driven Development Model

Managing 60,000 Volunteers

Taku describes the overwhelming responsibility of community managing for Beyond All Reason, wearing multiple hats including game design, balance, promotion, support, and moderation for a 60,000-member Discord community. The volunteer nature of the project creates unique challenges, as traditional management approaches don’t apply when contributors work purely from passion rather than financial incentive. This creates both incredible dedication and potential for burnout, requiring careful balance between organization and creative freedom.

The meritocracy-based decision making process gives influential roles to contributors who invest the most effort, but managing diverse opinions across such a large community remains one of the project’s greatest challenges. Internal conflicts arise precisely because everyone cares deeply about the game’s direction, creating passionate disagreements that require diplomatic resolution.

The Art Team Revolution

The project recently established formal art team structure with dedicated directors, project managers, and team leads for modelling, texturing, music, narrative, and environmental design. This represents a shift from the chaotic early days toward more corporate-style organization while maintaining the volunteer spirit that drives contribution.

The challenge lies in creating enough structure to prevent duplicated effort and ensure consistent quality without imposing bureaucratic burdens that discourage volunteer participation. Contributors join by creating free content for the game, with official team membership based on sustained quality contributions rather than formal application processes.

Game Design Philosophy: The Ragnar Method

Deconstructing Legacy Systems

Tim introduces the “Ragnar Method,” a design philosophy that questions every inherited system from Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander by asking whether they would include each feature if designing the game from scratch. This approach helps formalize design decisions that were previously taken for granted due to decades of familiarity.

Examples include questioning whether players should be able to transport their commander (the king piece) in fragile aircraft that can lose the game instantly, or examining unit interactions that feel natural to veterans but might confuse newcomers. This systematic deconstruction helps create proper design documentation for systems that evolved organically over years of community development.

Designing for Extreme Skill Ranges

The game design challenge involves simultaneously serving players who have never encountered RTS games alongside 20-year veterans seeking maximum competitive optimization. A unit’s range advantage might be meaningless to new players who barely move units, while expert players can exploit that same range to create unbeatable tactical advantages.

Tim describes evolving from a confrontational designer focused on personal preferences toward someone who considers multiple perspectives and player groups. This maturation reflects the broader challenge of community-driven development, where individual opinions must serve the collective good rather than personal entertainment preferences.

Technical and Legal Challenges

Intellectual Property Navigation

Beyond All Reason deliberately removed all copyrightable content from Total Annihilation to avoid legal challenges from current franchise owner Wargaming. This meant recreating every asset while maintaining spiritual connections to the source material, a massive undertaking that transformed what could have been a simple mod into an original game.

The legal constraints actually benefited the project by forcing creative solutions and original content that distinguished Beyond All Reason from its inspiration. This process demonstrates how legal limitations can drive innovation when approached constructively rather than as obstacles.

Open Source Modding Complexity

The project struggles with modding support infrastructure, currently requiring all modifications to exist in the main repository since no separate mod hub exists. This creates difficult decisions about approving community modifications that might not align with core design philosophy but represent significant volunteer effort.

The technical challenge involves creating Steam Workshop-style infrastructure for a free game while maintaining the open-source philosophy that enables community contribution. The solution requires balancing accessibility for casual modders against maintaining quality standards for official content.

Upcoming Content and Future Vision

Campaign Development: Technical and Narrative

Beyond All Reason is developing both mission API systems and comprehensive lore to support campaign content. The world-building effort has produced a 300-page internal lore document that will be selectively revealed to establish basic setting elements without overwhelming players with excessive detail.

The campaign approach emphasizes Chris Taylor’s philosophy of minimizing time between installation and explosive action, avoiding lengthy exposition in favour of immediate engagement. However, the team wants their narrative to stand independently rather than serving as mere mission setup, creating tension between accessibility and depth.

The Third Faction: Legion

Development of the Legion faction represents Beyond All Reason’s first major departure from the symmetrical Armada/Cortex balance inherited from Total Annihilation. This asymmetrical faction design challenges players with different strategic approaches while maintaining the epic-scale combat that defines the game’s identity.

The faction addition demonstrates how community development can exceed original scope limitations, adding content that enhances rather than dilutes the core experience. Legion’s completion depends on volunteer 3D modelling for naval units, illustrating how community bottlenecks affect development timelines.

Steam Release Strategy

The team deliberately maintains “alpha” status while providing a fully playable experience including multiple PvE modes, campaigns, and 1v1 through 8v8 multiplayer. This unusual approach allows continuous improvement without the pressure of commercial launch expectations.

Steam release awaits completion of campaign content, faction reworks, and other elements that would satisfy mainstream RTS expectations. The “one shot” philosophy recognizes that Steam launch represents a crucial moment requiring a complete package rather than iterative improvement.

Marketing and Community Building

Unconventional Advertising Strategies

PtaQ’s analytical approach to marketing led to discovering Linux subreddits as an ideal target demographic, combining appreciation for open-source gaming with technical skills that could translate into development contributions. This strategy successfully recruited numerous contributors who became integral team members.

The physics background enabled systematic testing of marketing approaches, treating promotion like engineering problems with measurable outcomes. This methodical experimentation revealed effective channels that wouldn’t be obvious through traditional gaming marketing approaches.

The Free-to-Play Philosophy

Beyond All Reason commits to remaining free due to its community-driven development model, where contributors volunteer effort based on passion rather than profit expectations. Charging for community-created content would violate the “by players, for players” philosophy that motivates participation.

Future monetization might support project infrastructure without charging for core content, but the fundamental commitment remains providing free access to all gameplay elements. This approach distinguishes Beyond All Reason from commercial projects while enabling sustainable development through community investment.

Music and Audio Direction

Community Composition Challenges

The project works with multiple volunteer composers who have significant artistic freedom within loose stylistic guidelines established by existing tracks. The challenge involves creating thematic consistency across diverse contributors while maintaining the creative freedom that motivates volunteer participation.

Recent efforts focus on establishing clearer musical identity with recognizable leitmotifs for factions and main themes, similar to how other franchises create instantly recognizable audio signatures. This requires balancing artistic direction with community contribution flexibility.

Dynamic Audio Systems

Beyond All Reason features dynamic music systems that respond to combat intensity, shifting between calm construction phases and explosive warfare automatically. This technical sophistication demonstrates how community development can exceed commercial game audio complexity through passionate specialist contributors.

The Epic Scale RTS Vision

Beyond Traditional RTS Limitations

Beyond All Reason embraces the “epic scale” RTS philosophy that distinguishes it from micro-management focused alternatives. Players control hundreds or thousands of units simultaneously with strategic zoom capabilities that enable godlike battlefield perspectives, emphasizing strategic decision-making over mechanical skill.

The exponential economic growth model eliminates resource scarcity constraints that limit other RTS games, enabling continuous expansion and massive military build-ups. This creates gameplay focused on strategic positioning and long-term planning rather than efficient resource optimization.

Accessibility Through Scale

The 8v8 multiplayer focus reduces individual pressure by distributing responsibility across team members, making competitive play less intimidating for newcomers. PvE modes provide stress-free alternatives for players seeking explosive spectacle without social pressure or performance anxiety.

This design philosophy directly addresses common RTS accessibility barriers by providing multiple engagement levels from casual base-building to hardcore competitive optimization, all within the same core gameplay framework.

Development Team Evolution

From Players to Designers

Both Tim and PtaQ evolved from passionate players into key development roles through sustained community contribution and demonstrated expertise. This progression illustrates how open-source projects can cultivate talent that might not emerge through traditional industry pathways.

Tim’s transformation from confrontational player with strong opinions into collaborative designer considering diverse perspectives reflects the maturation process that community leadership demands. This personal growth parallels the project’s evolution from chaotic mod to organized game development effort.

Volunteer Coordination Challenges

Managing volunteer contributors requires different skills than traditional project management, since standard incentive structures don’t apply. Success depends on maintaining enthusiasm and creative ownership while providing enough coordination to prevent wasted effort and maintain quality standards.

The “herding cats” analogy captures the fundamental challenge of organizing passionate volunteers who contribute based on personal interest rather than assigned tasks. Effective leadership involves channelling natural enthusiasm rather than imposing external direction.

The Unsolved Game Philosophy

Infinite Complexity

PtaQ describes Beyond All Reason as an “unsolved game” with virtually unlimited strategic possibilities, contrasting it with chess where optimal moves can theoretically be calculated. This infinite complexity ensures that even decades-long players continue discovering new tactical approaches and strategic combinations.

The depth becomes apparent through extended play, with surface-level explosive spectacle gradually revealing sophisticated tactical and strategic layers. This design creates natural progression paths from casual enjoyment to expert mastery without requiring different game modes or artificial complexity gates.

Learning Curve as Feature

Rather than treating complexity as an accessibility barrier, Beyond All Reason embraces the learning journey as a core appeal. Players who invest time are rewarded with increasingly sophisticated strategic options and deeper understanding of interconnected systems.

This philosophy attracts players seeking long-term strategic challenges while potentially intimidating those wanting immediately accessible experiences. The design choice reflects community values prioritizing depth over broad market appeal.

Contact & Links

About | Contact | Meet the Team | Get Involved | Forum | Episodes
Patreon | Discord | Reddit | Twitter / X | Facebook
Instagram | Twitch | Steam Group | Steam Curator
YouTube | Spotify | Apple | Amazon
Email: [email protected]

Beyond All Reason: https://beyondallreason.info

Episode Verdict

This episode successfully delivers the comprehensive Beyond All Reason discussion that Critical Moves listeners have been anticipating, providing unprecedented insight into one of the most ambitious community-driven game development projects in recent memory. The conversation with PtaQ and Tim reveals both the incredible achievements and ongoing challenges of volunteer-based development, while demonstrating how passionate communities can create gaming experiences that exceed commercial alternatives in scope and innovation. The discussion effectively balances technical development details with broader philosophical questions about open-source gaming, community management, and the future of strategy game development.

Next Episode: Double Vision: The True State of 4X