E3 2012's secret trend: crowd-control strategy

A few trends have been identified at E3 this year, based on the trailers shown and games announced: shocking violence, scripted shooting, helicopters and bows. I noticed another one that has randomly bubbled up among Japanese companies: crowd-control strategy games.

Of course, the most noticeable exemplar of this sudden trend is Pikmin 3, but it's not the only game to show up this E3 that is about guiding a swarm of little critters around to fight big enemies and destroy obstacles. XSEED showed off Acquire's rhythm-based Orgarhythm, in which a strutting god is surrounded by element-based troops, and Konami brought the Vita sequel to Little King's Story.

Platinum Games sort of got into the act as well with its Wii U launch window game Project P-100, which is still about recruiting and controlling a bunch of random citizens; however, you have less individual control of them than in the other games, and instead you use their pure mass to form a weapon. It still totally counts for the purpose of an informal article, though.