Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Real-time strategy" in English language version.
The inspiration for Dune II was partly from Populous, partly from my work on Eye Of The Beholder and the final and perhaps most crucial part came from an argument I once had with Chuck Kroegel, then vice president of Strategic Simulations Inc ... The crux of my argument with Chuck was that wargames sucked because of a lack of innovation and poor design. Chuck felt the category was in a long, slow decline, because the players were moving to more exciting genres ... I felt that the genre had a lot of potential – the surface was barely scratched as far as I as [sic] concerned, especially from a design standpoint. So I took it as a personal challenge and figured how to harness realtime dynamics with great game controls into a fast-paced wargame . . . Herzog Zwei was a lot of fun, but I have to say the other inspiration for Dune II was the Mac software interface. The whole design/interface dynamics of mouse clicking and selecting desktop items got me thinking, 'Why not allow the same inside the game environment? Why not a context-sensitive playfield? To hell with all these hotkeys, to hell with keyboard as the primary means of manipulating the game!
SSI's most famous non-CRPG game is probably Cytron Masters (1982), one of the first (if not the first) real-time strategy games.
Homeworld was the first fully three-dimensional RTS game to be released.
Early computer strategy games adhered firmly to the turn-based concepts of their board game ancestors, where—by necessity—players had time to plan their turns before their opponents had a chance to move. Real-time strategy changed all of that so that games would begin to more closely resemble reality: Time was limited, and if you wasted yours, your opponents would probably be taking advantage of theirs.
It wasn't until some time after the game was in development that I decided to call it "real-time strategy"--it seems obvious now, but there was a lot of back and forth between calling it a "real-time war game", "real-time war", "wargame", or "strategy game". I was deeply concerned that words like "strategy" and "wargame" would keep many players from even trying this completely new game dynamic. Before 1992, wargames and strategy games were very much niche markets—with the exception of Sid Meier's work—so my fears were justified. But in the end, it was best to call it an "RTS" because that is exactly what it was.
Although games such as Populous and SimCity are certainly played in real time, these give rise to the "god game" genre, which includes such titles as the city-builder series from Impressions, Will Wright's innovative designs, and much of Peter Molyneux's work, including the upcoming Black & White. Games in this genre tend to appeal to their own fans, and while there definitely is an overlap between these two genres, gamers generally see them as distinct from one another.
You can't really talk about the real-time strategy genre without giving a nod to Dune II, the title that kicked off the phenomena.
Early computer strategy games adhered firmly to the turn-based concepts of their board game ancestors, where—by necessity—players had time to plan their turns before their opponents had a chance to move. Real-time strategy changed all of that so that games would begin to more closely resemble reality: Time was limited, and if you wasted yours, your opponents would probably be taking advantage of theirs.
It wasn't until some time after the game was in development that I decided to call it "real-time strategy"--it seems obvious now, but there was a lot of back and forth between calling it a "real-time war game", "real-time war", "wargame", or "strategy game". I was deeply concerned that words like "strategy" and "wargame" would keep many players from even trying this completely new game dynamic. Before 1992, wargames and strategy games were very much niche markets—with the exception of Sid Meier's work—so my fears were justified. But in the end, it was best to call it an "RTS" because that is exactly what it was.
You can't really talk about the real-time strategy genre without giving a nod to Dune II, the title that kicked off the phenomena.
Although games such as Populous and SimCity are certainly played in real time, these give rise to the "god game" genre, which includes such titles as the city-builder series from Impressions, Will Wright's innovative designs, and much of Peter Molyneux's work, including the upcoming Black & White. Games in this genre tend to appeal to their own fans, and while there definitely is an overlap between these two genres, gamers generally see them as distinct from one another.
