So, Creative Assembly's Total War franchise is apparently 15 years old this year. The franchise has evolved quite a lot since the 2D-sprited Shogun and Medieval back in the beginning of the millennium, that's for sure. Many fans, myself included, will argue that the franchise peaked with the original Rome: Total War, before the acquisition by SEGA. Since then, the developer definitely can't be blamed for not being creative (pun intended). The franchise has gone back and forth between feudal Japan and medieval Europe and Africa, to more recent battlefields in the Americas through Empire: Total War.  In addition to the main strategy franchise, Creative Assembly have tinkered with several spin-offs, including a mobile game and a third person action game (Spartan: Total Warrior, unmentioned in the video).

This year, it looks like they'll be experimenting with the controversial free-to-play model, in the form of an online multiplayer game called Total War: Arena and what seems to be a sort of "F2P persistent world"-Facebook game, called Total War Battles: Kingdom. The latter of which is both to be made available on the PC and tablets.

It's good to see that a franchise like this, even with all its problems, can still survive and thrive on the market today. It shows that gaming isn't all about shooting people in the face from a first person perspective. It's also about pillaging cities and wiping entire cultures off the face of the planet!