In September 1993 Alan Emrich of Computer Gaming World previewed a space strategy game from MicroProse and borrowed a joke from the greeting-card rack. “I give MOO a XXXX rating,” he wrote of Master of Orion, “because it features the essential four X’s of any good strategic conquest game: EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate.” The label stuck. Within a decade developers were calling their own games “4-X”, and the name now covers a family of games older than the joke: the ones that start you with a single colony, city or ship on a map you cannot yet see, and leave you, hundreds of turns later, ruling the world or the galaxy.
Fast facts
- The name: Alan Emrich, Computer Gaming World, September 1993, previewing Master of Orion.
- The four X’s: explore an unknown map; expand by founding colonies or cities; exploit their resources through production and research; exterminate rivals, or beat them some other way.
- Ancestors: Walter Bright’s Empire (1977), commercially released by Interstel in the 1980s; Strategic Studies Group’s Reach for the Stars (1983).
- The landmark: Civilization (MicroProse, 1991), designed by Sid Meier and Bruce Shelley.
- The namesake: Master of Orion (Simtex for MicroProse, 1993).
- Settings: human history (Civilization), space (Reach for the Stars, Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations, Stellaris), an alien planet (Alpha Centauri).
Before the name
The shape of the 4X game was there long before anyone counted the X’s. Empire began as Walter Bright’s “Wargame of the Century”, written in 1977. Amazing Computing traced its history in 1988: Bright wrote it while at Caltech, rewrote it for the PDP-11, and saw it spread from machine to machine. Interstel’s authorised version had the player explore an unknown world, capture cities and set each one producing armies, fighters, transports or warships. Ahoy!’s AmigaUser warned that “the first hundred turns are just a warm-up during which players explore the surrounding territory and get production underway”. Interstel’s box carried its own warning: “This program is highly addictive. Considerable otherwise productive time might be lost. Play only during vacations.”
In 1983 the Australian company Strategic Studies Group took the idea into space. Computer Gaming World introduced Roger Keating’s Reach for the Stars as “a strategic simulation of colonization expansion and conflict in space”, from a designer who had until then written wargames for SSI. It came out for the Apple II and then the Commodore 64. Ten years later Emrich still named it as one of the “strategic space game classics” that Master of Orion drew on.
Civilization
Civilization (1991) gave the form its widest audience. The player started with a single band of settlers in 4000 BC, founded cities that grew on food and built with shields, researched a tree of advances from pottery to space flight, and could win by conquering every rival or by sending a spaceship to Alpha Centauri. Computer Gaming World’s first description of it in 1991 said players explored the world “in an Empire-style manner”. The magazine later ranked it its number one game of all time. Its grip on players became a catchphrase: an Amiga magazine reviewing the 1994 AGA version warned that “You will find yourself thinking ‘just one more turn’, and before you know it 500 game years have passed”, and Australia’s PC PowerPlay recalled in 1996 that “Thinking ‘just one more turn’ at 3am on a weekday morning wasn’t uncommon.”
Master of Orion and the name
Simtex’s Master of Orion, designed by Steve and Maria Barcia and Ken Burd and published by MicroProse, was the game the label was coined for. MicroProse’s producer had described it to Emrich as “Civilization in space”. In the preview, Emrich found most of the 4X vocabulary already in place:
- Research: six fields of technology, “computers, planetology, weapons, etc.”, each of which “can be pushed up 99 levels”.
- Diplomacy: non-aggression pacts, alliances and trade, with alien ambassadors arriving to propose “war against ‘common enemies,’ swapping technologies or other such matters”, and the option to “threaten, backstab” instead.
- Espionage: spy networks that could steal technology or sabotage factories and planetary defences.
- Ship design: fleets built from components on four hull sizes, limited to six designs in service at once.
He called the pull of the game “gaming gravity”: “no matter how busy one is with other matters, it pulls a gamer’s body into orbit around it and creates black holes where weekends used to be.” Wireframe’s 2020 history of space games calls Master of Orion “not the first 4X strategy game, but certainly the one with the biggest impact”.
What makes one
The games share a structure more than a setting. The map starts hidden, so early turns are spent scouting. Growth compounds: each new city or colony adds production that pays for more. Research opens new units, buildings and abilities, and the order in which a player takes them is a strategy in itself. Rivals can be fought, bargained with or outgrown, and the better games offer more than one way to win. Civilization had two, conquest or the space race. In 2002 IGN Unplugged’s preview of Stardock’s Galactic Civilizations promised that it could be won “by virtue of political power, economic dominance, or technological superiority”, and that its largest maps “could take a couple of months to finish”.
The price is time. A game lasts hours or days, and much of the pleasure is in the long middle, where every turn offers one more thing nearly finished. That is the “one more turn” the reviewers kept describing.
After 1993
Real-time strategy took most of the attention in the late 1990s, but turn-based empire games kept coming. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (1999), from Meier’s new studio Firaxis, began where Civilization’s space race ended. In 2001 PC Zone reported that Quicksilver’s Master of Orion III wanted to add “an elusive ‘Fifth X’: eXperience” to games its makers described as “‘4-X’ games”. IGN Unplugged welcomed Galactic Civilizations in 2002 as part of “a resurgence of turn-based strategy games, especially in the subcategory of 4X games”, alongside Master of Orion III and Civilization III. By then the label had spread well beyond its home: PC Gamer noted in 2002 that the “‘XXXX’ camp” was “popularised by space-based strategy games like Master of Orion, but … can generally be applied to most non-combat focused strategy titles”.
The form is still being reworked. In 2020 Wireframe wrote that Endless Space “took 4X strategy to new heights, then Stellaris popped up and said ‘Yeah, I can do that, too’”.
Sources
- Computer Gaming World issue 110, September 1993, p. 92: Alan Emrich, “Sneak Preview: Masters of Orion” (the XXXX rating; Simtex and the Barcias; Reach for the Stars and Armada 2525; “Civilization in space”; research, diplomacy, spies, ship design; “gaming gravity”).
- Computer Gaming World issue 11, July 1983: Reach for the Stars by Roger Keating. Issue 12, September 1983: Strategic Studies Group of Sydney and the Commodore 64 version.
- Ahoy!’s AmigaUser issue 3, November 1988: Arnie Katz, Empire review (Walter Bright’s 1977 “Wargame of the Century”, Interstel, the first hundred turns).
- Amazing Computing vol. 3 no. 12, December 1988, p. 40: Stephen Kemp, Empire review (Caltech, the PDP-11 and PC versions, the box warning).
- Computer Gaming World issue 86, September 1991: first description of Civilization, “in an Empire-style manner”. Issue 89, December 1991, pp. 86–90: Alan Emrich’s Civilization preview (4000 BC to Alpha Centauri, cities, advances, conquest or the space race). Issue 165, April 1998: “CGW’s #1 all-time game”, and Alpha Centauri at Firaxis.
- Amiga Game Zone issue 1, 1994: Civilization AGA review (“just one more turn”).
- PC PowerPlay (Australia) issue 1, May 1996: CivNet review (“just one more turn” at 3am).
- Computer Gaming World issue 113, December 1993: Master of Orion review (MicroProse, $59.95).
- PC Zone issue 105, August 2001: Master of Orion III preview (“‘4-X’ games”, the “Fifth X”).
- IGN Unplugged issue 12, April 2002: Galactic Civilizations preview (Stardock; victory conditions; map sizes).
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 115, November 2002: the “‘XXXX’ camp”.
- Wireframe issue 40, June 2020: history of space games (Master of Orion, Endless Space, Stellaris).