“In direct lineage, it was the father of the globally successful Command & Conquer franchise, in that its code was used as a basis of the first game of the series. Yet in terms of wider influence, the battles first fought out on the vibrant sands of Arrakis continue to echo through modern videogaming. While Dune II’s designer and programmer Joe Bostic humbly maintains that RTS games would have evolved eventually, with or without Dune II, the fact remains that he was instrumental in creating them. No Dune II, no Warcraft, no StarCraft and, arguably, a completely different timeline for global esports.Yet Dune II actually invented very little and its key elements had already been seen across a handful of existing titles. The genius of the development team at Westwood Studios was to stand on the shoulders of giants to perfectly balance the tactics of wargaming against the time-critical awareness of arcade games”