In 1992 a game was released by a developer started by Louis Castle and Brett Sperry, then called "Westwood Studios" their game was titled "Dune II: the Battle for Arrakis." (see North American box art and gameplay video clip below) Taken from the epic styles of traditional war-games past like those of publisher Avalon Hill, specifically their game Dune. The game has up to six players, select a race, build a stronghold and attack your opponents for resources and power. The object of the game is to seize opponents strongholds. This is done with a player driven strategy of economics, military, religion, and treacherous diplomacy. The Dune video game had one primary difference. Rather than turn-based systems of the Avalon Hill games, the video game is meant to be occurring in "real-time", that is, without turns. The core gameplay of Westwood's Dune II involved picking a race, building a stronghold, and taking over opponents strongholds. The real-time elements centered around three major activities, building and upgrading units and strongholds, managing and gathering resources for military and industrial needs, and finally, combat with opponents and sand-worms.
In a war-game the player is given vast agency, in the direction of armies on battle maps. In
Dune II it was if
H.G. Welles "Little Wars" had come to life for us not in the parlor but on the screen. This perspective is neither 3rd person, nor omnipotent, it is a multitude of perspectives, a strange space above men, but below gods. Without attachment to a central perspective the player is free to manage and direct a seemingly living war-game strategy system. Now called
Real-Time Strategy Games (RTS) the video game type has been in constant evolution for the almost 20 years since it's inception. Like the entire game industry itself,
RTS has evolved from a graphics and cinematics standpoint,
but RTS has seen a slow evolution in storytelling.
Let that not diminish the sheer genius of the collective iterative innovation of the RTS game type itself. Unlike other styles of videogames RTS puts the player in charge of an army of his/her own creation and sets them free in a virtual sandbox to play. Though "Dune II" did have one predecessor, a little known title called "Herzog Zwei" in which the player commanded individual units in an effort to destroy their opponent's base. What is most interesting from a storytelling standpoint was the perspective, or seeming lack there of, the games seemed to have little to do with the stories of individual characters, they exist somewhere between 2nd person omnipotent and 3rd person and allowed the player to 'command vast armies'. From it's inception the stories for RTS where all seemingly war-based, even 1st generation RTS titles like Blizzard entetertainment's groundbreaking 1994 fantasy game "Warcraft: Orcs and Humans" was nevertheless about war.
Lee Sheldon, writer and designer, has written a very good op-ed piece for Game Career Guide on game writers. Lee and I have butted heads on more than one occasion about the narrative designer role in game development, but I think at the end of the day our goals are the same. I’d even dare to call him a narrative designer. Lee advocates innovation, craft, education, and vision. He has a talent that has spanned many media formats, and his wisdom speaks for itself. Read the full article at GameCareerGuide.com
