Code Like It's 198x

Westwood Studios

The Las Vegas studio behind Eye of the Beholder, Dune II and Command & Conquer

Companies & StudiosSource-checked

Brett Sperry and Louis Castle founded Westwood in Las Vegas in 1985. It began by converting other publishers' games, made Eye of the Beholder for SSI, and in Dune II (1992) set the harvest-build-fight pattern that real-time strategy followed. Virgin bought it in 1992; Command & Conquer (1995) sold well over a million copies; Electronic Arts paid $122.5 million for it in 1998 and closed it in 2003.

Visitors to Westwood Studios in 1993 found light tables for animators, storyboards pinned to the walls, a sound room padded with eggshell foam, an art museum and a break room full of free coin-op machines. Computer Gaming World thought anyone told about the tour would ask what films the company had made. It was a games developer in an industrial park near Las Vegas airport, and a few years earlier it had been known mainly for missing its deadlines. Over the next decade it made Dune II, the game whose pattern real-time strategy followed, and Command & Conquer, which took that pattern to a mass audience, before Electronic Arts bought the studio and then closed it.

Fast facts

  • Founded: 1985, in Las Vegas, as Westwood Associates, by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle.
  • Owners: independent until 1992; Virgin Games (later Virgin Interactive) 1992–1998; Electronic Arts from 1998.
  • Best-known games: Eye of the Beholder (for SSI), The Legend of Kyrandia (1992), Dune II (1992), Lands of Lore (1993), Command & Conquer (1995), Red Alert (1996), Blade Runner (1997).
  • Closed: 2003, when EA merged it into EA Los Angeles.

Westwood Associates

Sperry and Castle started the company in 1985. For its first years it worked for other publishers, and it did not always deliver on time. Computer Gaming World recalled in 1993 that towards the end of the decade Westwood had been “notorious for missing milestones”, and that the magazine’s editor, Johnny Wilson, used to greet Castle with “Missed many milestones lately, Louis?”

Much of the early work was converting other companies’ games to new machines. When Infocom advertised Westwood’s BattleTech: The Crescent Hawk’s Inception early in 1989, it introduced the developer as “Westwood Associates, creators of Phantasie III, Questron II and Summer Games”, titles from SSI and Epyx. Westwood’s own designs followed: Mars Saga, a science-fiction role-playing game for the Commodore 64, published by Electronic Arts at $34.95, and Hillsfar for SSI.

Eye of the Beholder

The game that changed Westwood’s reputation was Eye of the Beholder, a role-playing game for SSI’s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons range. Computer Gaming World announced it in October 1990 as a “point-of-view fantasy role-playing game” with a three-dimensional engine, VGA graphics and a point-and-click interface, the first in SSI’s line to use the second-edition rules. Retro Gamer later described it as blending “the 3D corridor-based exploring of Dungeon Master with the official Dungeons & Dragons licence”, and like Dungeon Master it ran in real time. Westwood followed it with The Legend of Darkmoon in 1991.

Real time mattered to what came next. Looking back in 2008, Retro Gamer reported that Eye of the Beholder had shown Sperry and Castle that “real-time decision making was a potentially very exciting strategy-gaming element”, and they wanted to take the idea further.

Virgin and Dune II

By 1992 the milestone jokes had stopped. Computer Gaming World found that publishers now promised a project would be on time because Westwood was doing it. That year Virgin Games bought the company. German magazine PC Games described Westwood, “recently taken over by Virgin Games”, as the Las Vegas team behind BattleTech, Hillsfar and the Eye of the Beholder series, now trying its hand at adventures. The Legend of Kyrandia, a fairy-tale graphic adventure, was its first game for Virgin.

Dune II followed at the end of 1992. Virgin held the Dune licence and wanted a strategy game. The team at Westwood, Mike Legg recalled, had been playing Herzog Zwei, and lead programmer Joe Bostic named Populous, Military Madness and Civilization; in 2013 Bostic credited Herzog Zwei too, “for the fast pacing”. Dune II was not the first strategy game played in real time. SSI’s Cytron Masters, Imagine’s Stonkers and Technosoft’s Herzog Zwei had armies that moved without turns years earlier, and which of them came first is still argued (the real-time strategy entry tells that story). What Dune II did was put harvesting, base building and unit production together, controlled with the mouse, in the form that Blizzard’s Warcraft borrowed in 1994 and Westwood’s own Command & Conquer made famous.

In August 1993 Computer Gaming World counted about 50 people at Westwood, up to 20 of them artists. Castle, vice-president of creative development, oversaw the art, where classically trained animators from Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and Disney drew storyboards and pencil tests. Frank Klepacki, “the composer of 90% of Westwood’s musical scores”, wrote on a synthesiser keyboard in his own office. The studio also made cartridge games for Nintendo’s machines, and in November 1993 Computer Gaming World’s Scorpia reviewed its new role-playing game, Lands of Lore, under the headline “Westwood’s New RPG Breaks With Tradition In Character”.

Command & Conquer

Sperry had named the next game before it existed. In January 1993 he told The One that Dune 2 ran on “Westwood’s Command and Conquer engine”. Command & Conquer came out on two CDs in September 1995: a near-future war over the alien mineral Tiberium, with filmed briefings between missions and the actor and director Joe Kucan as Kane, the leader of the Brotherhood of Nod. Edge grumbled that it was “an only slightly improved version” of Dune 2 and gave it eight out of ten anyway.

Players did not mind. By December 1996 Edge reported “well over one million copies” sold and called Westwood, now a team of about 90, “the most successful videogame company in the US today”. It visited as Command & Conquer: Red Alert neared completion, with SVGA graphics, network play and a green-screen studio that Edge called the biggest in Nevada. By 1997 Computer Gaming World was reporting a flood of “real-time C&C clones”.

Westwood did not only make strategy games. Blade Runner (1997), a Windows adventure set in the world of Ridley Scott’s film, advertised “over 70 real-time virtual actors pursuing their own agendas”. Computer Gaming World‘s Thierry Nguyen thought it did for “new-school adventuring” what LucasArts’ The Curse of Monkey Island did for the old school.

Electronic Arts

Inside Virgin, Computer Gaming World wrote in 1998, “the relationship soon became a case of the tail wagging the dog”: Westwood’s games made money while Virgin lost it, and Sperry had taken control of Virgin’s own development. When Virgin’s owners, Viacom and Spelling Entertainment, sold up, Electronic Arts bought Westwood in August 1998 for $122.5 million, together with Virgin’s internal development. Sperry and Castle signed five-year contracts with EA. Early in 1999 Castle told PC Player that Virgin’s American headquarters at Irvine, California, had become an official Westwood branch, finishing Virgin’s remaining projects under the Westwood label.

Under EA, Westwood released the true Command & Conquer sequel, Tiberian Sun (1999), Red Alert 2 (2000), the first-person Command & Conquer: Renegade (2002) and an online role-playing game in space, Earth & Beyond. Command & Conquer: Generals (2003) came from the former Westwood team in California, by then renamed EA Pacific. In January 2003 EA announced that it would close both Westwood and EA Pacific and merge them into EA Los Angeles. The Las Vegas studio closed at the end of March. A reader writing to Edge that spring blamed EA’s “franchise is king” mentality; looking back in 2010, Edge itself described how studios like Bullfrog and Westwood “were crudely assimilated into the group, often with disastrous results”.

Later history

Command & Conquer carried on at EA without Westwood, from Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars in 2007 to Command & Conquer 4 in 2010. Some of Westwood’s programmers, among them Bostic and Mike Legg, set up Petroglyph Games in 2003; Edge and Computer Gaming World introduced it as the Westwood veterans making LucasArts’ Star Wars: Empire at War. Petroglyph came back to Westwood’s games in 2020, when it developed the Command & Conquer Remastered Collection for EA, with Klepacki returning for the music. EA released the source code of the remastered games that year, and in February 2025 published the original source code of Command & Conquer, Red Alert, Renegade and Generals under the GNU General Public License.

Sources

  • Computer Gaming World issue 109, August 1993, pp. 31–34: “Virgin Bets With The Winners In Las Vegas”, tour of Westwood Studios (founded 1985 by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle; missed milestones; Virgin; about 50 staff; the artists; Frank Klepacki; Nintendo and Virgin as distributors; the break room).
  • Compute! issue 105, February 1989, p. 71: Infocom advertisement for BattleTech (“developed with Westwood Associates, creators of Phantasie III, Questron II and Summer Games”).
  • Compute!’s Gazette vol. 7 no. 5, May 1989, p. 50: Mars Saga review (Westwood Associates, Electronic Arts, $34.95).
  • Computer Gaming World issue 75, October 1990, p. 14: SSI’s Eye of the Beholder, “being developed by Westwood Associates”.
  • Retro Gamer issue 112, March 2013, p. 97: Eye of the Beholder II: The Legend of Darkmoon retro revival (Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master; the 1991 sequel).
  • PC Games (Germany), November 1992, p. 43: The Legend of Kyrandia; Westwood “recently taken over by Virgin Games”.
  • CU Amiga, January 1993, p. 25: Virgin buys Westwood; The Legend of Kyrandia released.
  • The One issue 52, January 1993, p. 39: Brett Sperry on “Westwood’s Command and Conquer engine”.
  • Computer Gaming World issue 112, November 1993, p. 24: Scorpia, Lands of Lore review (“Westwood’s New RPG Breaks With Tradition In Character”).
  • Retro Gamer issue 48, 2008, pp. 69–75: Command & Conquer retrospective (Mike Legg on Virgin and Herzog Zwei; Joe Bostic on Dune II’s other influences; Eye of the Beholder and real-time decision making).
  • Retro Gamer issue 114, May 2013, p. 55: Joe Bostic on Dune II’s influences, including Herzog Zwei “for the fast pacing”.
  • Edge issue 25, October 1995, p. 66: Command & Conquer review.
  • Edge issue 39, December 1996, pp. 48–49: Westwood Studios feature (“well over one million copies”; “the most successful videogame company in the US today”; a team of 90; the green-screen studio; Red Alert).
  • Computer Gaming World issue 156, July 1997, p. 49: “the hundred real-time C&C clones”.
  • Computer Gaming World issue 161, December 1997: Blade Runner advertisement. Issue 163, February 1998: Thierry Nguyen, Blade Runner short review.
  • Computer Gaming World issue 172, November 1998, p. 58: Ken Brown, “EA Acquires Westwood For $122.5M”.
  • PC Player (Germany), March 1999, p. 25: interview with Louis Castle (Virgin’s Irvine office now a Westwood branch).
  • Computer Gaming World issue 224, March 2003, p. 30: Westwood’s Earth & Beyond.
  • PC PowerPlay (Australia) issue 83, February 2003, p. 46: Generals and the Westwood team “now absorbed into EA and called EA Pacific”.
  • Edge issue 121, March 2003, letters: Westwood “now been dissolved”.
  • Edge issue 219, October 2010, p. 64: Bullfrog and Westwood “crudely assimilated”.
  • Computer Gaming World issue 248, February 2005, p. 60, and Edge issue 154, October 2005, p. 21: Petroglyph as former Westwood staff, Star Wars: Empire at War.
  • Wikipedia, “Westwood Studios” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): the name Westwood Associates; the closure announced in January 2003 and completed on 31 March 2003, citing GameSpot, “EA consolidates studios, closes Westwood”, 30 January 2003. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westwood_Studios
  • Wikipedia, “Petroglyph Games” and “Command & Conquer Remastered Collection” (accessed September 2026) (web, secondary): Petroglyph’s founding in 2003 by Joe Bostic, Mike Legg and Steve Tall; the Remastered Collection (5 June 2020) and Klepacki’s music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph_Games
  • Electronic Arts, CnC_Remastered_Collection and CnC_Tiberian_Dawn repositories, GitHub (web, secondary): source code published in May 2020 and February 2025 under GPL v3 with additional terms. https://github.com/electronicarts

See also

Checked. Verified against primary sources and signed off by a person.