THE MAKING OF...

How our favourite games were born

COMMAND & CONQUER

READ ME
FIRST REVIEWED PCG 20, 93% PUBLISHER Virgin DEVELOPER Westwood Studios RELEASED 2007

THE JOURNEY OF THE SEMINAL REAL-TIME STRATEGY GAME: FROM DUNE, TO DRAGONS, TO DINOSAURS. By Dan Griliopoulos

152

APRIL 2012

PCG238.life_making.indd 152

2/28/12 11:52:03 AM

ack in 1985, in a computer store called Century 23 in the suburbs of Las Vegas, two employees decided to start a game development company in their spare time. Brett Sperry and Louis Castle decided to call it Westwood Studios. Westwood initially focused on porting 8-bit games to the 16-bit Atari ST, Amiga and Apple II GS. They were very exciting, says early employee Mike Legg, because they supported the mouse. Demand for games was growing quickly, and soon the duo needed more employees. The way the team tell it now, the studio just grew organically: they recruited from their high school friends and Century 23. They started working on bigger and bigger projects, including the D&D-licensed Eye of the Beholder, Legend of Kyrandia and realtime tactics game BattleTech: The Crescent Hawks Revenge. By the early 1990s, Westwood were one of the biggest studios in PC gaming, and theyd secured the licence to make Dune 2,, based on the books of Frank Herbert. To work on a new strategy game at the time seemed like commercial suicide, given that the genre was turn-based and widely believed to be slipping behind the nascent action genres, with only old tabletop wargamers still interested in playing. Rade Stojsavljevic worked at Westwood. The whole impetus for Dune 2 was: These turn-based strategy games are getting too damned complex. Lets just simplify the hell out of it we could even make it work in real time. A lot of people were saying, Thats ridiculous, theres no way. So Westwood created what would become the template for the real-time strategy game for decades. They built it loosely around the Dune fiction, but featuring such innovations as a world map, resource-gathering, base and unit construction, unique factions, the tech tree, and the fog of war. Its a formula that most RTSs havent shifted from substantially since including Westwoods own next project: Command & Conquer. Dune 2 was released in 1992, to critical acclaim and commercial success. So Westwood started developing an RTS of their own: Command & Conquer. The lead

programmer on C&C, Joe Bostic, says the inspiration was to recreate the imagination of sandbox battles with toy soldiers and tanks. We wanted to advance from Dune II. Joseph B Hewitt IV worked on the games art: From what I remember because Im old and I have a horrible memory we definitely wanted to do our own IP. That was the big catalyst... Bostic remembers his original pitch: It was for a fantasybased world where there were three factions: the humans with traditional medieval tech, the wizards with magic and the monster faction with access to dragons and other extraordinary fantasy beasts. Hewitt points out: it probably sounds very familiar if youve played World of Warcraft or StarCraft. That vision was quickly stymied, though. Sperry decided that something more contemporary was needed. The first Gulf

to be manna that rained out of the sky. But as the game moved to a near-future setting, it turned into an alien plant material, inspired by a B-movie called Monolith Monsters. It was at that point that the whole of Command & Conquer was plotted out, up to the current day. Hewitt explains: It was always a long-term plan: that aliens were terraforming Earth because those minerals were poisonous to them. So the Tiberium leeches all those minerals out into an easily collected pod. And they were changing the atmosphere, so that they could invade us. One of the largest changes from Dune II was the intuitive mouse control scheme. Bostic says: The biggest improvement was the drag-select of units and implied action with mouse click ie, click on enemy to attack, click on ground to move. In the old control scheme, the player had to click

Given the Nod

War was heating up, and Brett was really keen that we turn it into a modern military game that would have a wider appeal, says Hewitt. But C&C, of course, didnt end up being a real-world military RTS either. We didnt want to be constrained by contemporary technology, Bostic says, and the idea of a parallel timeline allowed us freedom to create. Not everything was abandoned from the fantasy concept Westwood retained the asymmetric factions. Youll notice Nod is very much light, fast units and stealth technology where GDI was very ham-fisted with bigger tanks and a Hulk smash type mentality. Contemporary events partly inspired this extreme asymmetry. The Gulf War at the time was very much the big American army going, Yeah, look, your forces are really nothing. So what would the next war be? Once the world learned that, where would it go? It would be counter-insurgency and guerrilla warfare. A lot more carried over from Dune II than the tropes of the nascent RTS genre. In the fantasy game, Tiberium was actually going

Westwood created what would be the template for real-time strategy games

to select a unit, then click a move button before telling the unit where to go. So while I was drawing the mouse cursors, I thought, Wait a minute! If I have a unit selected and I click on the ground, obviously I want to move there. Why do we need these buttons? I asked Joe, and he said, That makes sense. What if we want to deploy something? Well, we have two mouse buttons, so you right-click, I replied. Warcraft 2s press demo came out with the old system, Command and Conquer was released, and then Warcraft 2 came out they had switched to our control scheme! Now the engine was in place, but they needed a guerrilla faction someone to unite the third world against the first world. Writer Edie Laramore created Nod, throwing together biblical references and third-world politics. As Hewitt says: [ Its [Dunes] Fremen yet again. Its the poor people rising up out of nowhere and challenging the established leader. Of course, Kane is just manipulating all these people, but its an interesting concept about how, out of nowhere, a great power could arise pretty quickly.

The Win 95 version doubled maximum resolution.

Most players never saw the hidden dinosaur Funpark levels.

Cutting-edge CGI, circa 1993.

APRIL 2012

153

PCG238.life_making.indd 153

2/28/12 11:52:04 AM

THE MAKING OF...

How our favourite games were born

A properly-built and repaired base could hold out indefinitely.

Harvesters no longer had to fear sandworms.

Neither his face nor his beard ever seem to look any older.

To give Kane personality, they decided they wanted him to talk directly to you, in videos. Cryo Interactive had already used video in the first Dune game, through a pixel-based workaround. Frank Klepacki, who produced all the sound and music, says, It was like a reward for completing that part of the game: you got to see a new movie, and they were talking to you, so you felt like part of the story. Before Command and Conquer, the only game I saw video in was Wing Commander. They werent sure it would work, so local actor, schoolmate and studio friend Joe Kucan, who was working in a local childrens theatre and had been hired to oversee the games voice acting, was asked to produce a test scene. Hewitt, who had acted with Kucan, remembers it. When CDs were first hitting the scene, everybody would redo their game with actual voice acting. So he was

It proved difficult to stop the team working on C&C. Hewitt: When youre developing a game sometimes five, six or seven oclock rolls around and you see the parking lot is still full. What the hell was everybody doing? We were all playing it. There had to be a stern talk [with the team] about when it was appropriate to play. But such a thorough testing of the games balance turned out to be useful for its next key innovation: multiplayer. Bostic is clear: C&C was the first RTS multiplayer game. The multiplayer aspect is what really launched the RTS genre, as there is endless replayability when human opponents are involved. Klepacki remembers the moment he knew they had a hit when I started playing the game at the end of the night against others over speakerphone, taunting each other. Wanting to set up games and talk to opponents led to

That was actually in the initial release, it was just a flag that turned it off, says Hewitt. It was put in the Covert Ops add-on, but it was in there the whole time.

Youve got mail

hired to head up that area. And that original Kane video was just a test video, him just yelling at the camera; it was never meant to be used. I remember at the time, he mentioned the fact that Brett had made him Kane without ever really asking if he wanted to be Kane. He said, Im a professional actor, Im in the guild. We need to sit down and negotiate on this, because its not part of what I was hired to do. Then there was even talk that his voice wasnt menacing enough and they were going to dub over him. Similarly, much of the then-cutting-edge CGI was put in because the art team had been learning the new 3D Studio software, and had produced test animations that needed to be used. Eric Yeo, lead designer, found himself lumbered with a random selection of movies. Hewitt, who was just finishing work on a Lion King game, was moved over to the project and immediately set up a team to build a plot around this content. Even the in-game units were rendered first in 3D, then scaled back to 2D.
154 APRIL 2012

To give Kane personality, they decided they wanted him to talk directly to you

Westwood Chat, which led to Westwood Online, which Blizzard have admitted led to Battle.net and World of Warcraft. They showed the game at CES in early 1994. It was packed in a tiny Diversion booth with ten other games, on a single machine. There was a line, Hewitt recalls. You just had to fight people off to go see it. Despite the reaction, there was no surge of interest from the publishers, no extra staff just a push to get the game finished and out of the door. Which wasnt helped by the dinosaurs. Bostic and Hewitt dreamed the dinosaurs up between them. Hewitt recalls: I remember we were crunching and we said Lets do some dinosaur units... It kind of snuck through the team. Sadly, Sperry and one of the big muckety muck producers were having a meeting in one of the offices in the Vegas studio, when Sperry noticed a programmer working on a dinosaur mission. He didnt react well, Hewitt remembers. What the hell is that? said Sperry. Were trying to crunch! What are you people doing?

The game finally shipped in mid-1995. It was Westwoods bestselling title of all time, breaking a million sales and making 70-80% of their revenue. Even the expansions were million-selling, which was unique for the time. But Hewitt doesnt remember it as a huge moment. You know, I dont think I was really paying that close attention, he says. Everything Westwood had done all throughout the 90s, it came out and was a number one hit. Well, of course it was a number one hit. Not until 1999s Tiberian Sun did Hewitt get the size of their success. My email at the time was joseph@westwood.com, and I was getting Joe Kucans fanmail... so naturally I went looking on the web and I was like, Oh my god, this is a big deal. Stojalesvic agrees: I think what happened at that point is that it went from being a hit within a gamer community to really going mainstream. We thought: Oh shit, its time to grow up. The team feel that the RTS genre has only moved on in minor ways since C&C. It seems that having a unique thing or two that separates your game is a good thing, says Klepacki, as long as you dont mess with the recipe for RTS too much. Similarly, theyre intrigued by the upcoming BioWare C&C: 2 Generals 2, as Stojalesvic explains. BioWares an RPG studio. If theyre getting back to putting meaningful story and characters into games, thats huge. That sort of fell apart in the past several releases. Westwood didnt last long as an independent studio after C&C because of C&C C&C. It was absolutely the determining factor of why Westwood got bought out, says Stojalesvic. The costs just get so expensive when the studio steps up to that point, that if you have a miss and youre not capitalised enough, youre screwed. The studios sale, first to Virgin and then to EA, led directly to the its closure although much of the core team had left by then. It indeed was a sad day when the studio closed, it was the end of an era, says Klepacki. So many great people and great memories. And a lot of great work to show for it.

PCG238.life_making.indd 154

2/28/12 11:52:06 AM

GAMEOGRAPHY
he key entries in Westwood Studios huge catalogue of games since its inception in Las Vegas in 1985.
DUNE II (1989)

Based on the Frank Herbert novels and film, this established the basics of the RTS as we know it today. C&C built on these elements.
COMMAND & CONQUER: RED ALERT (1996)

Intended as a World War II-based prequel to the original C&C, this was changed to a sci-fi setting. Probably the best, silliest game in the franchise.
COMMAND & CONQUER 2: TIBERIAN SUN (1999)

This title was heavilydelayed, with a new isometric engine that simulated terrain height. Featured ludicrously expensive cutscenes.
COMMAND & CONQUER: RENEGADE (2002)

Renegade tried to bring the game series to the multiplayer first-person shooter format, but poor execution meant that it earned only a cult following.
COMMAND & CONQUER 3: KANES WRATH (2007)

After the unrelated Generals games, Command & Conquer 3 was a return to the Kane timeline. A decent game but unambitious.

APRIL 2012

155

PCG238.life_making.indd 155

2/28/12 11:52:07 AM