What are strategy games? And how do we define them to be one? Let's figure out the basics and the staples found in these specific types of games to get a better understanding of them, their relative objectives, and ultimately to enjoy them.

First off, let us define what strategy is. The term "strategy" comes from the Greek word, “strategia”, meaning generalship (just so in case you’d wonder why the term is predominantly used in warfare). A strategy is defined as a plan of action, or policy - designed to achieve a target, or an overall objective. In gaming standpoint (and the lot of strategy games attuned to war games and similarly themed conflict/s), strategy befalls to the art of planning and directing your overall operations and movements in a given situation (most of the times crappy situations to boot - that's why you'll need a strategy in the first place).

The single most gratifying aspect of these types of games is that it commences its players towards having them afloat a situational awareness – to gather their coherent thoughts to put up a sensible plan to overcome or put an end to any encountered engagement or difficulty. Strategy games appeal to this infrastructure of delivering entertainment to its players - games in which the players’ self-directed actions put an effect or consequences to the outcome of the conflict.

That too is the reason why we always see strategy games in a war setting (or anything close to having an affixed conflict between at least two factions for a story). These games are mainly categorized based on the spontaneity of the game – whether they offer dynamic interactivity with the player in real-time (real time strategy) to engage on the given situation, or involve them into chunks of phases to respond onto sequenced turn of events (turn based strategy) to deal with the underlying conflict. With the exponential growth of online and mobile games, they even merged game worlds you’d typically find impossible a few years back (such as MMORTS games).

The original concept behind strategy games - is to situate players with a computer AI (artificial intelligence) opponent - to emulate a barrage of strategic decisions, in respond to the player’s course of actions. At the latter course of time, massive and dynamic gaming worlds paved the platforms and opportunity to get multiple players battling each other within a network of computers. Games like Command and Conquer, and Star Craft – probably created the hype over these games, and the rest was history.

These days we can easily take a quick time off our work, pick up on our phones, and instantly engage to strategy games like never before. They’ve grown to several sub-genres, even offered in different platforms, with different plots, and different challenges. But one thing remains the same – they are always keen to situate us in a hell-hole lot, left to figure the best and "strategic" way out.

A lot of us are inclined to these games without even knowing what genre they befall in – not that it matters, the point is that people tend to engage to these types of games for they easily offer a challenging experience that is both exhilarating and entertaining. But with a little more backing into their types and all, you’ll earn yourself quite a footing towards picking the right type of game for you, and of course - topping the notch into these types of games.