A decade or so ago there was a period when all videogames and especially all Unreal Engine videogames had to be brown and grey and dingy. "The Gears of Warrification of graphics," we used to call it, huddled up in the chest-high trenches with our Xbox 360 controllers. Survival MMO Dune: Awakening threatens to bring that back in a big way: the novel and films on which it’s based unfold, after all, on an entire planet made of sand.
What Lorcana, Magic, Star Wars: Unlimited, and others can learn from the dead Dune TCG
07.03.2024 - 18:13 / polygon.com / Frank Herbert
Trading card games aren’t just popular with players. They’re also incredibly popular with executives, as they can be lucrative for publishers and distributors alike. Magic: The Gathering became a $1 billion brand for Hasbro in 2023, which went quite a long way to improving its bottom line, if we’re being honest. As the company increases its Universes Beyond offerings, incredibly powerful tools for selling cards to people not yet comfortable playing a game of Magic, how can other TCGs hope to compete? What must new games like Disney Lorcana, Star Wars: Unlimited, Altered, and the more established Flesh and Blood do to thrive? A few possible answers may lie in the story of the 1990s-era Dune: Collectible Card Game.
The TCG market in 1997 was not so different from today. Magic: The Gathering reigned supreme. Dozens of competitors and a few blatant cash grabs had all come and gone. Every new game sought either a new gimmick, a popular IP, or another way to offer something Magic did not. Enter the company Last Unicorn Games with Dune: CCG, which asked players to turn the wheels of a galaxy-spanning political machine in the hopes of being admitted to the Landsraad, the main political body of the Dune universe. Dune: CCG was built from the sand up to be a multiplayer game, not unlike Magic’s community-made format of choice, Commander. Rather than always paying a straight cost in mana to play a card from their hand to the table, players could bid against one another to inflate the costs of the choicest cards. To win, players had to accumulate both favor on the political stage and the valuable resource spice from Arrakis. There was even a third resource that helped to further complicate things.
Adding to the cognitive load was the fact that each player brought two different decks to the table. The House deck included most of the cards and types: generic characters, military units, events, etc. Cards in the Imperial deck represented main characters and locations from the Dune story. The cost of these powerful allies and unique locations could be inflated from their base price based on the bidding system, known as petitioning. As the game progressed, players developed their positions, amassed resources, and launched attacks at one another until one player emerged victorious.
If you know Frank Herbert’s Dune, you know that’s pretty spot on. So, while Dune: CCG succeeded in capturing the feel of the universe that inspired it, looking back it’s very much a game from a different time — a time when designers pushed the limits of what could, or perhaps should, fit within the framework laid down by Magic.
But it wasn’t all bad. Let’s look back at the Dune CCG, and four lessons it teaches from which all modern TCGs
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gamesradar.com
26.03.2024 / 17:03
Dune author Frank Herbert's script for an unmade adaptation contains some seriously weird additions
Dune has had its fair share of adaptation attempts. Denis Villeneuve and David Lynch brought Frank Herbert's sci-fi novel to the big screen in 2021 and 1984, respectively, while Ridley Scott and Alejandro Jodorowsky also made their own efforts that never came to fruition.
polygon.com
18.03.2024 / 16:09
Watching Dune during the war in Gaza
In 1974, my aunt and uncle returned to the United States from a honeymoon world tour. Over the course of their travels, they ventured through India, Afghanistan, Iran, and Turkey, before winding up in Israel, where my aunt’s sister — my mother — had recently lived for two years on a collective kibbutz.
gamesradar.com
08.03.2024 / 12:25
Departing from the books, Dune MMO confirms religions, but "Leading people on a holy war is not why you arrive on Arrakis"
Dune: Awakening's developer says religion will have a reduced role in the upcoming open-world survival MMO compared to its source material.
pushsquare.com
07.03.2024 / 00:13
Dune: Awakening Takes Place in Alternate Timeline, Devs 'Sort of Sidestep Religion' | Push Square
Hot on the heels of yesterday's gameplay reveal, we've learned more about Funcom's upcoming MMO, Dune: Awakening, which remains shrouded in mystery. Crucially, we knew the story would take place in an alternate universe set a few years before the events of the Frank Herbert books or Dennis Villeneuve films and would ignore one of the most critical aspects of its universe, religion, for undisclosed spoiler reasons. Now you've got our attention!
screenrant.com
06.03.2024 / 14:57
Dune: Awakening Makes One Change From The Book & Movies With Major Implications
Visually, looks like it's set in the world of Denis Villeneuve's movie adaptations, with the studio behind these films, Legendary, having shared assets with the development team at Funcom, as well as inviting them on set. Despite this, the game's story has made at least one massive change from the book and the movies that could have major consequences going forward.
techradar.com
06.03.2024 / 11:49
Dune: Awakening to focus on 'topical' war 'between humans and artificial intelligence'
Joel Bylos, chief creative officer at Funcom and creative director of Dune: Awakening,has stated that the game will focus on a «topical» war «between humans and artificial intelligence.»
destructoid.com
06.03.2024 / 06:43
Your chaser for Dune: Part Two is a new look at the Dune: Awakening survival game
Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two film wormed its way through theaters over the weekend, and if you’ve still got sand in the brain, there’s plenty more where that came from. Namely, Funcom shared a closer look at the upcoming Dune: Awakening survival game, which is in the works for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
destructoid.com
06.03.2024 / 00:45
Ranking the Dune video games, from worst to best
Denis Villeneuve’smovie adaptations of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, Dune, has become a cultural and commercial hit. That’s big for Team Hollywood, but I still have a hard time believing that Dune has done more for movies than it has for video games — so long as you ignore the kerfuffle over whether it influenced Star Wars.
pushsquare.com
05.03.2024 / 21:42
Dune: Awakening Scorches in Stunning PS5 Survival Gameplay | Push Square
The Spice is undoubtedly in the air, with Part Two of Dennis Villeneuve's Dune film adaptation of Frank Herbert's epic sci-fi series now in theatres. Striking while the iron is hot, we also got a stunning gameplay trailer from Funcom for the upcoming survival MMO Dune: Awakening, which was revealed in August 2022 and prophesied to come to PS5 someday.
techradar.com
05.03.2024 / 18:29
Dune Awakening will let you choose between the Harkonnen and Arrakis factions, plus a third that will arrive after launch
Developer Funcom has confirmed that Dune Awakening will let you join guilds under two factions, along with a third that is yet to be revealed.
gamesradar.com
05.03.2024 / 13:41
Dune survival MMO had to go to the author's family to get permission to cut "ridiculous" sandwalking and the book's extremely explosive shields
Dune Awakening had to make some changes to its source material, and the developers needed express permission to make that happen.