and this happened 12 years ago, I just wasn't paying attention. If you were alive and gaming back int those days, you may have been one of the people that absolutely loved C&C and not the music factory variety.
Westwood Studios was largely responsible for the popularity of RTS games and it's quite tragic that they were thrown out the way they were by EA, who I consider to be one of the most evil video game companies in existence.
From the moment I first played this game I was hooked. It wasn't my first experience with RTS (real time strategy) games but it was the longest one that I had played. The first one I ever played was Dune 2 and it remains one of the only games that my father ever had a real interest in.
Let's stay on topic though: C&C was such an amazing franchise that carried on for a long time. I don't know how many of them were actually made but it was a lot of them and I enjoyed all of the ones that I played.
I think that they took a hit when Starcraft hit the market, because that game was so incredible, especially the multi-player that still has huge tournaments to this day, that nobody was going to be able to keep up with it.
I still think that Command and Conquer was an excellent franchise but it was rather unceremoniously shut down in 2013 by EA, which had purchased Westwood Studios in 1998. I guess considering how cut-throat EA is, it is pretty remarkable that they kept Westwood around for a full 15 years.
These graphics look very basic by today's standards but honestly, the graphics were not a very big part of the appeal to me and thousands of other fans that played them. The big deal about this, and most other successful RTS games is that it is a very balanced game where you must monitor more than just your units but also your resource gathering and R&D to get you better mobile attack units as well as defenses. This same system is used in almost all RTS games and C&C innovated a lot of this.
Like a lot of things though, just because you came up with the idea doesn't mean that you are going to be the best at it and the RTS market is not a big one... there simply isn't enough space for 2 huge companies to coexist in. When Blizzard decided to get involved, Westwood simply didn't have an answer for them, and Warcraft and Starcraft quickly became the RTS fan's game of choice.
There was also an issue with monetizing the game beyond the initial sale price and this is an unfortunate aspect of the gaming society that we find ourselves in today. We live in a time where the most profitable games are actually "free" where as far superior games that cost $60 for the full game all at once, don't have the continued ability to make more and more money year after year with updates. EA specializes in milking the absolute hell out of their customers so when C&C wasn't able to do that, I think this was an instrumental factor in them deciding to shut Westwood down.
For me, this game company will remain one of my favorite ever and I was basically addicted to C&C for many years. I can still hear the rather monotonous soundtrack playing in my head right now.
EA did go and remaster some of the games and then sell them again, which is kind of a dirty way of providing people with new games but hell, everyone does it. Just look at all the hype surrounding Oblivion Remastered right now. People are going gaga for a game that was first released nearly 20 years ago.
Will C&C see something similar happen? Well I'd like to say yes but I honestly don't think it can happen. There just isn't enough money in it with today's audience. Blizzard has been talking about releasing Starcraft 3 in 2025 but they have been very tight-lipped about providing fans with any information about it leading to people starting to think that maybe it isn't going to happen.
We will always have the simple days though, the early 2000's were a wonderful time in gaming because it was the start of a time when almost all households had a powerful computer in it.
Now that I've talked a lot about this, I may mosey on over to Steam and pay a mere $20 for the entire remastered collection.
