When did C&C fail?

[Space Satan]

C&C was the greatest RTS of its time. limitless potential, recognizable franchize, perfect for tournaments. But it failed and vanished into oblivion, consumed and raped by EA. And Warcraft with Starcraft franchizes rose to prominence and assumed complete domination with Warcraft III and Starcraft releases.
But prior to this, there were a period of time when C&C could outperform Warcraft\Starcraft.
But then it failed. I always wanted to know why.
1. C&C vs Warcraft II. 1995
Both games have been released in 1995 with C&C 4 months earlier than WCII. C&C was first to implement assymetric units gameplay, when Warcraft II had symmetric grunt-footman, ogre-knight etc. approach. WCII established a fog of war as a new standart for RTS games and added importance of recon to the game. C&C had free resource harvesting and WCII limited it to mines. Yet both games fared well in multiplayer and catered to different audiences- fantasy and magic vs Sci-fi. Westwood and Blizzard had parity here and both games became a classics of video gaming, both improving RTS genre in their own.
2. Tiberian Sun(1999) vs Starcraft(1998)
Starcraft roared into RTS genre and defined it so much that to this day it is THE only RTS remaining that have at least somehow large audience. Korea phenomenon aside, at the start Starcraft proved that it learned from cmain competitor's shortcomings and could fix them. Starcraft:

• had ultimate unit assymetry approach, with three sides with completely different gameplays.
• was fast. It was fast on 486, on Pentium, on Athlon, it was fast on anything.
• had a singular storyline. With all three sides sharing their story parts
• had continuous support

Tiberian Sun showed first signs that Westwood ability to learn from their own mistakes and design flaws is lacking. Arriving later than Starcraft theyr were no longer the only Sci-fi RTSon the field. Also Tiberian Sun:

• had separate storylines. Which meant that NOD will always be the losers and GDI will always win. No singular storyline, every campaign played for itself, making NOD campaign useless when sequel will arrive.
• was slow. Voxel graphics was 3D for tanks only, infantry still were sprites. Yet voxel graphics made graphic accelerators like 3Dfx and early nVidia into a slo-motion show.
• lacked support. There were FOUR patches(pre-firestorm) and only one of them adressed game balance, while Starcraft had seven during same time period and ALL of them had balance adjustments and multiplayer optimizations.

Blizzard outperformed Westwood completely here. Getting ahead in almost every aspect.
3. Firestorm vs Brood War
Both Expansions advanced the plot. But if with Starcraft all sides were interested and had a solid addition to to their storylines, Firestorm continued from GDI victory, making NOD story branch of Tiberian Sun stillborn. No competition here, Firestrom added minor fixes and three new units for all sides, while Brood War overhauled entire gameplay. Medic alone made terran infantry a force to be reconed with.
4. Tiberium Wars(2007) vs Starcraft II(2010)
In 1998 Westwood, after commercial failure of C&C Renegade, was consumed by EA, which started by firing laying off most employees. By that time C&C was a shadow of its former self and Blizard used 500$ as toilet paper. Yet Tiberian Wars arrived in good shape. Reworked with aims to compete for RTS competitive scene. With quite fast engine, somehow utilitarian UI and the first C&C game with singular storytelling for all sides. BUT. We are talking about EA. Game had virtually no support there were seven patches, released in a span of 6 months, all with balance adjustments...and then no patches at all. Having grabbed all cash, EA axed all support and stopped communicating with community. By the time Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty early beta arrived game was dead already and there were no one to compete with. Red Alert 3 faced similar fate with axed support and bad balance. To add salt to the injury Tiberium Wars used GameSpy to run their multiplayer games and after its stutdown online plays could be accessed only via custom made alternatives and programs.
5. C&C4: Tiberian Twilight
Endgame. Game was so badly recieved that it became a tombstone of a franchize. It was obvious to everyone that EA used it as their typical shovelware and a cashgrab. Game was universally abhorred and had no redeeming features.

My conclussion:
Tiberian Sun marked the downfall. Westwood aimed to make the first 3D RTS game and produced a cumbersome and crude Tiberian Sun. Failing to determine vital parts of audience demands they staggered and could not catch up with the Blizzard. Unable to make C&C franchize into a continuous story they stick with Dune approach of separate stories, they failed to unite fans of all warring sides to s single plot. Lack of support killed any involvement with multiplayer games.

 

[Jacob]

Very insightful post. What about the Red Alert series though?

 

[thesheeep]

I just want another Renegade
That was a fun game.

I liked the C&C games, of course, but never got into them that much. The battles were just over way too fast for me, everything felt like it was made of paper and the RPS was too extreme for me.
When other games with longer lasting battles arrived, I didn't really look back.
Though no kind of resource collection has since matched the feeling of the good old harvester, slowly chomping away a resource field and carrying it back. I miss that.

 

[Turtle-Zone 3000]

Tiberian Sun was somewhat neutered by it being rushed to release due to EA.

Heres a doco on Westwood.


Heres a postmortem on Tiberian Sun.
https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131595/postmortem_westwood_studios_.php

It seems they had a lot planned but a lot went wrong.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Tiberian Sun was somewhat neutered by it being rushed to release due to EA.

Yeah, you can see it for example in how unit promotions don't do anything.

 

[Volrath]

Tiberian Sun was the pinnacle of the entire series.

 

[Zeriel]

I think this comes down to business mistakes more than failures of game development, which is the case for most companies that went the way of the dodo. Westwood's top suits were obsessed with making MMOs when they were still new, and they ditched C&C as a focus to do that. Even so, in that period where Warcraft was taking over and there hadn't been a C&C game in ages the C&C compilation packs were one of the biggest sellers in gaming. It's only when EA took over and drove the series into the ground that it really hit rock bottom.

Reference material

 

[Space Satan]

BattleCast was awful platform and awful system for replays. And I mean REALLY awful.

 

[Space Satan]

Tiberian Sun was the pinnacle of the entire series.

Multiplayer game and even singleplayer was a slog. It was so slow that most people without top rigs just couldn't play it. Starcraft had no such problem. Balance was awful and noone intended to fix it. First real balance patches and community interactions arived only with Tiberium Wars

 

[Volrath]

It had the best singleplayer campaigns of the franchise.

 

[vota DC]

I think you should compare first C&C to Warcraft 1 and not 2.
Dune started the race, Warcraft 1 was first Blizzard rts then C&C is the Westwood answer.

C&C lacked fleet that Warcraft 2 had. For Dune there are obvious lore reasons, for C&C? Maybe because it would remain more different from Red Alert? Other brilliant ideas like the subfaction choice during campaign in Emperor Battle for Dune isn't in any C&C game too. Emperor was rushed too with the silly giant worm at the end every time but with more development time they could had delivered something different with Harkonnen fremenhugger being a different outcome than Harkonnen allied with Tleilaxu.

I don't like too much united storyline, everything become a soap opera. It is boring making a faction win all battles and the other lose all battles, but there is also a mixed approach. For example Dark Reign doesn't have exactly a united campaign where you play with one faction and then with another but a single where half are imperium's victories and other half are freedom guard's victories, you can choose freely both factions and change at every battle, you could choose to play the loser's side but sadly it won't change the outcome of the campaign. Best approach is the "racing" campaign in Age of Wonders 1: you have the feeling that another "commander" like you is getting the job done, winning battles and racing toward the ultimate objective, that was lost in both the sequels.

 

[Zeriel]

I forget which one it was, but there was a C&C or Dune game where there was a world map you would select territories to invade. Actually, come to think of it, they might have done that multiple times, but one of them was highly scripted, whereas I seem to recall another that was purely sandbox, with each "territory" being its own map.

Warlords Battlecry also did this really well.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

C&C failed when EA started assuming control. It's that simple.

Theory completely skips over the Red Alert series which pretty much invalidates the whole conclusion made. Without Westwood, there is no C&C: Tiberium Wars is a hollow shell of the series and, while not a waste of hard drive space, cannot hold a candle to the actual games.

 

[Edija]

I forget which one it was, but there was a C&C or Dune game where there was a world map you would select territories to invade. Actually, come to think of it, they might have done that multiple times, but one of them was highly scripted, whereas I seem to recall another that was purely sandbox, with each "territory" being its own map.

Warlords Battlecry also did this really well.

Emperor Battle for Dune (2001)?

And C&C objectively failed when they took out cutscenes with real actors...

But to be serious for a second, it was Generals along with a few other things. Not because of the game itself but because RTS became less popular and there wasn't the whole GDI/NOD - Allies/Soviets lore involved. Otherwise, C&C was stuck in a peculiar position. It failed to modernize, since modernization along the lines of the new Relic RTS games like Company of Heroes would've been seen as blasphemy, while the old mechanics of the C&C games are objectively not as smooth as the newer ones presented by Relic. There is a certain charm in the old mechanics but its a problem when they become a burden. I would have no problem with a C&C game working along the lines of CoH, would be great for me personally. But I'm sure some people would see it negatively. There are a few relatively good C&C games that came out after CoH in 2006. Infantry combat could've been modernized to be on par with CoH, vehicles as well, but I think the devs saw it as a risk and not as an opportunity. I mean the whole RTS evolution that came from Dawn of War all the way to Company of Heroes was ignored by EA.

 

[Space Satan]

I think you should compare first C&C to Warcraft 1 and not 2.
Dune started the race, Warcraft 1 was first Blizzard rts then C&C is the Westwood answer.

No. Dune was the first RTS but first competitions was C&C vs Warcraft II. Both C&C and Warcraft II had multiplayer, both were roughly at the same level and both started to implement mechanics that would define RTS genre for decades. Warcraft I was just a fantasy dune.

C&C lacked fleet that Warcraft 2 had. For Dune there are obvious lore reasons, for C&C? Maybe because it would remain more different from Red Alert?

Warcraft II fleet was rudimentary, a kind offlavour. It would lose nothig should it not be there.

Other brilliant ideas like the subfaction choice during campaign in Emperor Battle for Dune isn't in any C&C game too. Emperor was rushed too with the silly giant worm at the end every time but with more development time they could had delivered something different with Harkonnen fremenhugger being a different outcome than Harkonnen allied with Tleilaxu.

Emperor was on FOUR CD-disks. That was expensive back then. To the point where it was easier to takeit from a friend, play a bit and forget it.

I don't like too much united storyline, everything become a soap opera. It is boring making a faction win all battles and the other lose all battles, but there is also a mixed approach. For example Dark Reign doesn't have exactly a united campaign where you play with one faction and then with another but a single where half are imperium's victories and other half are freedom guard's victories, you can choose freely both factions and change at every battle, you could choose to play the loser's side but sadly it won't change the outcome of the campaign.

Look at Starcraft universe and Warcraft III. Blizzard made consistent storylines into a solid MMO foundation and Starcraft II was a success even for single-player game.

I forget which one it was, but there was a C&C or Dune game where there was a world map you would select territories to invade

Dune. just map changed.

 

[Space Satan]

Theory completely skips over the Red Alert series which pretty much invalidates the whole conclusion made. Without Westwood, there is no C&C: Tiberium Wars is a hollow shell of the series and, while not a waste of hard drive space, cannot hold a candle to the actual games.

No, Red Alert astarted as a reskinned C&C and different cutscenes. Then Red Alert 2 soldified the franchize with wacky and weird tech retrofuturism and not serious and parody plot. Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 came closest to being a online scene competition to Blizzard games. And both could be decent online RTS' should EA not stop its support and balance efforts. During Starcraft II beta stages Gamereplays Red Alert section had as many players as Starcraft. But once everyone realized that EA will not patch the game players just fled to SCII. Simply because they knew that Blizzard will support it for years to come. Same with tiberium Wars, it was a good RTS, with new and reworked mechanics, but during one tournament there were a scandal. EA in efforts to promote TW and KW organized several nline tournaments but, being EA, made everyhing shitty and half-assed. So several players made lots of smurfs and in the end some fought matches with THEIR OWN SMURFS as you could register shitload of new accounts in GaySpy. That is to demonstrate EA's utter lack of conmpetence in dealing and managing their games.

 

[Zeriel]

I forget which one it was, but there was a C&C or Dune game where there was a world map you would select territories to invade. Actually, come to think of it, they might have done that multiple times, but one of them was highly scripted, whereas I seem to recall another that was purely sandbox, with each "territory" being its own map.

Warlords Battlecry also did this really well.

Emperor Battle for Dune (2001)?

And C&C objectively failed when they took out cutscenes with real actors...

But to be serious for a second, it was Generals along with a few other things. Not because of the game itself but because RTS became less popular and there wasn't the whole GDI/NOD - Allies/Soviets lore involved. Otherwise, C&C was stuck in a peculiar position. It failed to modernize, since modernization along the lines of the new Relic RTS games like Company of Heroes would've been seen as blasphemy, while the old mechanics of the C&C games are objectively not as smooth as the newer ones presented by Relic. There is a certain charm in the old mechanics but its a problem when they become a burden. I would have no problem with a C&C game working along the lines of CoH, would be great for me personally. But I'm sure some people would see it negatively. There are a few relatively good C&C games that came out after CoH in 2006. Infantry combat could've been modernized to be on par with CoH, vehicles as well, but I think the devs saw it as a risk and not as an opportunity. I mean the whole RTS evolution that came from Dawn of War all the way to Company of Heroes was ignored by EA.

I don't think there's actually any proof that "old" C&C mechanics were rejected by the market. If anything, it's a case of developers evolving on their own, and then the market rejecting them. When they moved away from singleplayer-centric focus on basebuilding towards multiplayer-centric focus on micro, thats when the RTS genre went from being the biggest genre in PC gaming that sold tens of millions of copies in an era when 200K was considered a blockbuster to a tiny niche that barely exists beyond SC2 (which, incidentally, was far less "big" than its more traditional, less micro predecessor).

 

[vota DC]

Warcraft 1 was fantasy Dune 2 even less deep since it lacked flying units (Dune 2 you couldn't control them but was interesting that only very few units could hit your aviation) or special terrain units but it had multiplayer.

Warcraft 2 fleet was very deep: the resource ship (tanker like the aoe fish ship), the transport ship, the anti air ship, the combat/artillery ship and the stealth ship. Every ship had a role, submarine a little less because they were too expensives, short ranged and slow so they ruined their surprise effect. But even some land units had limited use: you had 4 units from the barracks and footman had no use at all when the knight is available.
Age of Empires series what has? 2 combat ships in first game: galley with the upgrades and artillery ship, that was 1997 then they introduced the fire ship in 1998 that was supposed to counter combat ship still even in age of kings mass galleon win even against counters. Warcraft 3 while introducing the Starcraft asymetric system improving muche the serie with the other hand did a great damage removing ships and encouraging leveling heroes rather tha massing huge armies (your peon extract even less gold with many units).
Think about the improvements: Wacraft 3 with huge armies, fleet and an underground like Armies of Exigo. Heroes that level during the campaign like Warlord Battlecry. Instead we have a single game with no sequels despite the lack of competitors that is very sad.

BTW Dark Reign (1997!) was more more more deep than Starcraft and Tiberian Sun, but it was a little mess. If decent competitors survived I guess Blizzard would be inspired by many ideas from Dark Reign that are still innovative today.

 

[Undead Phoenix]

Theory completely skips over the Red Alert series which pretty much invalidates the whole conclusion made. Without Westwood, there is no C&C: Tiberium Wars is a hollow shell of the series and, while not a waste of hard drive space, cannot hold a candle to the actual games.

No, Red Alert astarted as a reskinned C&C and different cutscenes. Then Red Alert 2 soldified the franchize with wacky and weird tech retrofuturism and not serious and parody plot.

Red Alert is arguably the most popular C&C of all time and Red Alert 2 sitting in third. You can't just discard them as a reskin when they were clearly so very popular. Red Alert 2 had an active multiplayer scene for years after its initial release.

Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 came closest to being a online scene competition to Blizzard games. And both could be decent online RTS' should EA not stop its support and balance efforts. During Starcraft II beta stages Gamereplays Red Alert section had as many players as Starcraft. But once everyone realized that EA will not patch the game players just fled to SCII. Simply because they knew that Blizzard will support it for years to come. Same with tiberium Wars, it was a good RTS, with new and reworked mechanics, but during one tournament there were a scandal. EA in efforts to promote TW and KW organized several nline tournaments but, being EA, made everyhing shitty and half-assed. So several players made lots of smurfs and in the end some fought matches with THEIR OWN SMURFS as you could register shitload of new accounts in GaySpy. That is to demonstrate EA's utter lack of conmpetence in dealing and managing their games.

Both Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 3 are post-Westwood. It sounds a lot like you're agreeing with me

 

[vota DC]

Red Alert 1 introduced the fleet, the novelty value wasn't that huge but at least they did an interesting job with huge difference: while on land they had some common units, some similar units and a couple of totally different units, on sea we have Soviets with just submarines and Allies with three different surface ships.

 

[Space Satan]

BTW Dark Reign (1997!) was more more more deep than Starcraft and Tiberian Sun, but it was a little mess. If decent competitors survived I guess Blizzard would be inspired by many ideas from Dark Reign that are still innovative today.

It was RTS with innovativeness for the sake of innovativeness. Yet they showed nothing new with resource gathering, which they copied from Warcraft. Strange units and ai behaviour settings which contributed nothing to the gameplay. The only way I could enjoy it was to set 4x4 skirmish, which resulted in massive clashes. But the game was completely unsuitable to online play

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

Needs more Red Alert. Those games eclipsed the mainline C&C games in popularity. The rushing of Tiberium Sun and all the EA crap is what killed C&C. Although the whole RTS genre kinda died back since the golden years so I'm not sure if Westwood had survived if they could have changed the tides.

 

[vota DC]

Was just badly amalgamated, for example Taelon resource was really lame (you had electricity anyway, you just need more space for power plant) while water was innovative because when depleted was never really depleted just you gather it slower and needs time to recover....and you could also contaminate water. Artillery was properly done, real life artillery work that way. The underground transport was brought to Tiberian Sun later. Burrow units were here and were later brought to Starcraft but I think it was in Warwind before.

 

[Space Satan]

while water was innovative because when depleted was never really depleted just you gather it slower and needs time to recover

You know, that was implemented in Dune 2, with worm producing random patches of spice.

 

[vota DC]

Dune 2 spice blooms were pre placed, they implemented spice respawn with blooms in Dune 2000.