Over at
Planet CNC, C&C creator and legend Brett Sperry said this about C&C and the anniversary:
Ten years already! Happy Birthday to Command & Conquer and to all who made it real!
Firstly, my name is Brett Sperry, and I want to thank you and all the Commanders and fans out there who helped make Westwood Studios strong. We had a wonderful run! Your support and loyalty helped us make so many great games!
My role in C&C was primarily executive producer, lead designer, and visionary--which basically means I had this idea for an RTS with a unique set of rules, controls, and story/setting.
BUT the team deserves so much of the credit too. So many unknowns. Lots and lots of design, coding, and artistic evolutions went into the first C&C, no doubt. It was a huge game to build, and even though I kicked it all off with a particular vision in mind, it was a team effort. Without the talent, skill and dedication of everyone on that team, it wouldn't have been possible!
Command & Conquer, and its prototype/pre-cursor, Dune II, was perhaps one of our greatest offerings to gaming. What basically started out as a personal challenge to myself (must strategy games be slow and "turn"-based? What would a Real Time game look like?) evolved into early prototypes of what we now call an RTS. And thus Dune II was born.
It was a game with a completely new style of play. A real time strategy game with 3 different sides set in Frank Herbert's epic world. This game was easy to learn and addictively fun. We shipped it in 1992/93, and our fans went crazy. Dune II was wonderful. It felt like a great sportscar, a magnificent engine, with great handling BUT, it needed at least one more evolution-of-design for controls. And as much as I loved Dune, I wanted the next game to have a more contemporary story and setting.
No sooner was Dune II in beta, when I began to pitch Joe and the others new ideas on how to evolve the interface and game controls much further; the mousing back and forth, battlefield-to-menu-to-battlefield dynamic gave way to a combat field that was context sensitive/"smart". It wasn't until later in development that we took the bold step of cinematics (alas, video compression was poor back then--Forgive Us!) and we got Joe Kucan (Kane) and Eric Gooch (Seth) to play the leading Nod characters. Kucan was reluctant at first, but after our London-ECTS showing in 1993/94, he realized that A) fans liked him as a villian and B) the unfinished game was already getting rave reviews.
When C&C finally hit the stores, all our hard work was rewarded by the fans and critics! Time has flown by so quickly, and it's wonderful to see support and excitement over the original C&C still to this day. I thank you all.
And Happy Birthday Command & Conquer!
