War Commander is Kixeye's next Facebook RTS, keepin' it hardcore

Yeah, son! Better believe it. What? Hey, if Kixeye is planning to bring the hardcore to Facebook, you got to start playing the part--nobody likes a bad trash talker. Formerly known as Casual Collective, Inside Social Games reports the creator of Backyard Monsters will release War Commander, the result of developers' Paul Preece and David Scott mission to "get hard" in its Facebook games.

The game is due out sometime this August, and the game is said to play a lot like the classic Command and Conquer series, with players able to select individual and group units--and there will be 27 playable units at launch. This represents the company's mission to present itself as the hardcore developer for Facebook games.

Though, with companies like Kabam saying the exact same thing with games like Kingdoms of Camelot, it looks like the battlefield for War Commander will extend beyond the browser. Now, can Blizzard just bring Starcraft to Facebook already?

Are you psyched to see Facebook get another hardcore RTS? Do you think this emergent genre and fanbase is just a fad, or is this genre set to grow into the official hardcore sector of Facebook?

Quote of the Moment: 'PC gaming press is discovering what to cover'

And they're mumbling and grumbling the whole way too. During an interview with [a]list daily, A Bit Lucky CEO Frederic Descamps said that "hardcore" games and social games are merging as more complexity and depth is introduced to Facebook games. However, the company's (which just launched hardcore Facebook game Lucky Space) CCO Jordan Maynard alluded to social gaming's effect on games media too.

"I think the PC gaming press is discovering what to cover," Maynard said to [a]list daily. "While initially there was a lot of rejection of the F2P space, games like League of Legends are making them rethink that. Facebook is on your PC so it is sort of PC gaming, but they didn't want to believe it."

And perhaps Maynard has a point: It's only recently that most traditional video game news outlets began to cover the social game scene. And even then it's been generally limited to Zynga and Playfish's efforts. Does this mean that Facebook games have "arrived"? Well, social games can only go up from here, one would guess.

As the two disparate game genres continue to close the gap, surely they'll garner even more attention from mainstream PC gaming press. But it makes you wonder: Do Facebook games even need to be legitimized by big time press outlets?