If you are into RTS games and are over the age of 30 than you are likely familiar with the very famous *Command and Conquer* series of games that were absolutely instrumental in pioneering a great many things that i love inside of what I consider to be my favorite type of game in existence. This is of course the Real Time Strategy genre (RTS) genre and a long time ago, *Westwood Studios* came out with a brilliant game called *Command and Conquer*.
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The idea behind this and many other RTS games is pretty simple but can also be like a game of chess: You gather resources and simultaneously build up your defenses while also preparing for an attack on enemy soil. If you do too much of any of these things you will end up losing the match. You have to find the perfect balance on higher levels in order to succeed and achieve victory.
*Westwood Studios* were kind of the first major players in the RTS field since they were also the driving force behind *Dune II* and the Dune series, depending on who you ask or where you look, was kind of that start of all RTS games.
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[src](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer)</center>
There have been a ton of C n C games over the years but if you look at the above chart you will notice that there was a 2 year period where they didn't make anything despite the fact that the games were still quite popular and were selling well.
This has everything to do with the fact that they sold themselves to the devil in 1998 and immediately problems began to happen. EA purchased *Westwood Studios* in 1998 and for some of the people that were involved in the transition, they consider it remarkable that they were able to stick around for the 5 years that they did last while working under EA's control.
EA (Electronic Arts) has a reputation for having rather absurd demands made by people that are actually not very familiar with the process involved with game creation. Rather, they have a team of MBA's who know nothing about game development and are only looking at financials and make impossible deadlines and demands of the people that work for them. This is exactly what happened in the 5 years that Westwood managed to survive with EA.
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By the time the last game was released which was called *Zero Hour* the game looked great but it was evident when you were playing it that it was an unfinished project that was rushed to market. Patches were released to address these issues but at that point the bad press had already hit the internet and of course EA blamed Westwood and Westwood was not really allowed to retaliate in comment since at that point they were EA's bitch.
EA then shut down Westwood Studios completely and liquidated the company, taking only a handful of people involved in the company along with them. I presume that these few people were the "yes men" that would do the bidding of EA no matter what.
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[src](https://timemachine.cncworld.org/images/ws.jpg)</center>
They went on to make a bunch more C n C games but as EA tends to do, they made it an objective to have a new game every year or so rather than focusing on having something that was actually good or different in any sort of real way. The end result was drops in sales and increased criticism that they were simply being lazy and rushing new content to market with little value added until they stopped making C n C games for 5 years starting in 2013.
One could argue rather successfully that the title had run its course by that point anyway but there is no denying the fact that they were really pumping out new titles too fast in the same fashion that EA releases a new NBA, FIFA, or NFL game every year despite the fact that other than updated rosters, the games are exactly the same as the previous year.
This might work in the sports world but think about what I consider to be the best RTS games of all time in *Starcraft*.... how many of those has there been in the past 25 years?
<center> <h3> 2 </h3>
<sub> 3 if you count Brood Wars </sub> </center>
Blizzard makes their fair share of mistakes as well, but they are nowhere near the level of profit chasing that is Electronic Arts or if they are, as all companies tend to be, they aren't so *obvious* about it.
I have no idea where the Westwood Studios people are these days but since they were instrumental in designing some of the best and most memorable games that I have ever played in my life I hope (and presume) they all went on to do great and wonderous things.
hiveblocks