Westwood Studios - History

History

The company's first projects consisted of contract work for companies like Epyx and Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI), porting 8-bit titles to 16-bit systems like Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Proceeds from contract work allowed the company to expand into designing its own games in-house. Their first original title was Mars Saga, a game developed for Electronic Arts and released in 1988. They laid the foundations for the real-time strategy genre with the release of real-time tactics game BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk's Revenge, one of the more literal translations of the classic tabletop game BattleTech. One of the company's first great successes was Eye of the Beholder (1990), a real-time role-playing video game based on the Dungeons & Dragons license, developed for SSI. Other publishers of early Westwood games included Infocom and Disney. Their company was eventually acquired by Virgin Interactive in 1992.

Well-known Westwood titles from the early 1990s include Dune II, the game that set the template for subsequent real-time strategy games, as well as The Legend of Kyrandia and Lands of Lore. Westwood's greatest commercial success, however, came in 1995 with the release of the real-time strategy game Command & Conquer. Building on the gameplay and interface ideas of Dune II, it added pre-rendered 3D graphics for gameplay sprites and video cinematics, an alternative pop/rock soundtrack with techno elements streamed from disk, and modem play. Command & Conquer, Kyrandia, and Lands of Lore all spawned multiple sequels.

In August 1998, Westwood was acquired by Electronic Arts for $122.5 million in cash. At the time, Westwood had 5% to 6% of the PC game market. In response to EA's buyout, many long-time Westwood employees quit and left Westwood Studios. Because of this and EA's newly imposed demands, games being developed by Westwood Studios at the time were rushed and left unfinished upon their release, namely Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun. All the subsequent games developed by Westwood were also heavily subjected to increased control by Electronic Arts, with some of them being cancelled.

Along with Westwood, EA had also acquired Virgin Interactive's development studio based in Irvine, California. It was managed by Westwood and became known as Westwood Pacific, and later EA Pacific. Westwood Pacific developed or co-developed games like Nox and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which takes place in an alternate universe to that of the original title Command & Conquer. One of the last games released by Westwood, Command & Conquer: Renegade (an action game, which mixed elements from first-person shooters and real-time strategy games) failed to meet consumer expectations and commercial goals Electronic Arts had set for it. In March 2003, Westwood Studios (along with EA Pacific) was liquidated by EA, and all willing staff were assimilated into EA Los Angeles. Their last video game was Earth & Beyond, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG).

At the time of its liquidation, Westwood employed a third of the original Westwood Studios personnel, some of which formed Petroglyph Games in April 2003, along with three of them (Brett Sperry, Adam Isgreen and Rade Stojsavljevic) forming Jet Set Games development studio in 2008, both based in Las Vegas, Nevada.