C&C Labs News Wire

— Sunday, April 9, 2006 —

Posted By: Blbpaws at 1:56:32 PM ET

RTS Article at IGN

There's a pretty good (but long--7 pages) article on the history and development of Real Time Strategy games over at IGN. Here's a snip:
But of all of the granddaddies of the RTS genre, the biggest and most influential in the genre is undoubtedly Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty. While there have been a ton of titles released after Westwood dropped this big bomb, they're all basically more advanced derivatives of Dune II's basic game mechanics. Resources were harvested via collectors, bases were built, units were produced, battles were fought, and victory was achieved. Dune II is undoubtedly the single most influential title in RTS history and will live in the hearts of RTS gamers for all time for that simple fact. At least, those who were old enough to remember it.

The mania of real-time strategy spread and developers began expanding the basic model to create some truly entertaining titles. Warcraft and Command & Conquer further cemented the popularity of the genre and became influential in their own rights. "Warcraft was a real inspiration for us," remembers Ensemble Studio's Bruce Shelley. "Command & Conquer came out not long after that. We had a simple idea of making a historical game and borrowed ideas from these other games." Soon, games like Age of Empires, Total Annihilation and Starcraft brought the genre to new heights of success with deeper content and popular settings.


Head here for the whole piece.

Links