The first installment of the series was released worldwide on August 31, 1995 and was simply named Command & Conquer. It was based on Westwood Studios' earlier strategy game Dune 2. The series was originally marketed to an Anglophone audience, though many of the games have been translated into other languages including German, French, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. The series is primarily developed for personal computers running Microsoft Windows, although some titles have been ported to various video game consoles and the Apple Macintosh. The later games of the series starting with Tiberium Wars have also been developed in parallel for Xbox 360. Another spin-off game, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, was developed for PC/Mac, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.
In 1999, American game marketer and developer Electronic Arts purchased Westwood Studios. Westwood was eventually closed down in 2003 and absorbed into EA Los Angeles which has become the current development center for the ongoing Command and Conquer series. Some of the original Westwood developer team remained at EA Los Angeles, but most left to form Petroglyph Games.
As of July 2010, the Command & Conquer franchise consists of eleven games and eight expansion packs with sales of more than 30 million units worldwide and EA has confirmed that a new game is in the earliest stages of development.
Common gameplay elements
The Command & Conquer games belong to the real-time strategy genre, with the exception of the first person shooter Command & Conquer: Renegade. A staple of the series is the parallel campaigns of various different factions to one central storyline. Games in the series also offered multiplayer game options, via LAN and modem connection. All games in the series have also offered online play.
All Command & Conquer real-time strategy games except Command & Conquer: Generals and its expansions have featured the "side bar" for navigation and control as opposed to many other similar games where the control bar is located on the bottom of the screen.
Command & Conquer gameplay typically requires the player to construct a base and acquire resources, in order to fund the ongoing production of various types of forces with which to assault and conquer the opponent's base. All available structures of the faction chosen by the player are constructed on-site at so-called "construction yard" - which typically begin as large-sized vehicles capable of deploying themselves into the aforementioned construction yards. When a construction yard has finished building a new structure, the player can select a spot near to a preexisting structure in order to place it, where the prefabricated building will then rapidly unfold in a distinctive manner.
In all games in the series except Command & Conquer: Generals and its expansion, Zero Hour, funds are acquired by specialized "harvester" units which bring their cargo (Tiberium for the Tiberian series of games or Ore or the more valuable gems for the Red Alert series) to a "refinery" structure. This in turn will convert the raw material into usable resources, expressed as credits. The raw materials themselves require storage space in the form of refineries and, in the case of excess, "storage silo" structures.
All factions have structures and units with similar functions at their disposal. However, they are adjusted to fit each faction's theme and have somewhat varying properties. Units can be classified into infantry, vehicles, and aircraft, each with their own subdivisions (note: in the Red Alert series there is also naval craft available). Unit effectiveness against opponents follows the rock-paper-scissors principle found in most real-time strategy games.
Virtually every type of structure in the series acts as a tech tree node, and additional units, structures and faction-specific abilities will become available as new structures are built and placed. Access to advanced units and abilities may be temporarily blocked if the required structures are destroyed or if they are not being provided with adequate power by the supporting "power plant" structures.
Multiplayer
Each Command & Conquer game has included the ability to play multiplayer games against other humans. Each box of Command & Conquer contains two CD copies of the game, immediately making multiplayer gaming possible with a single purchase of the game. Westwood Studios advertised this on the packaging with the slogan "A second copy, so you and your friend can destroy each other." This resulted in Command & Conquer becoming the first RTS game title to feature competitive online play, and this is considered the most pertinent outside factor in the success of Command & Conquer.[3] All games in the series up to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 also featured two CDs that could be used for this reason. However, later games did not.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 was noted for being the first RTS game to enable the campaigns to be played cooperatively online; others had only supported single player campaigns. However, it was only possible to connect to other computers through EA's servers and not with LAN play.
Games produced by Westwood use the proprietary Westwood Online system to facilitate multiplayer games over the internet; Renegade also supported Gamespy. Games under EA's development continued to use Gamespy, but dropped support for Westwood Online in favor of using EA's own servers.
