A Planet of Sand

Frank Herbert's "Dune" novel is about a lot of things: politics, economics, philosophy, religion, sociology, and ecology.  It's also about psychoactive drug use...hey, it was written in the 60s...what do you expect?  The thing I like about "Dune" is how it flips the atypical sci-fi dynamic of technology-affecting-society.  By that I mean, a new kind of social order affecting technological development.

For the uninitiated, "Dune" postulates that humanity established an interstellar empire before nearly disintegrating due to an overdependence on artificial intelligences.  In the aftermath of a great social upheaval, all "thinking machines" were banned, essentially requiring all electronics to be hardwired with dials and switches being the inputs and gauges and counters being the outputs.  There are no keyboards or touchscreens.  Everything is analogue, nothing is digital.  Obviously, this is a very ineffective way to run an galaxy-spanning government.  However, to offset some of the difficulties there are certain in-fiction innovations such as the "Holtzman Effect" (that greatly eases space travel) and "Mentats" (a small number of people specially conditioned to function like human computers).  Even with these advancements, humanity has settled into a state of quasi-feudalism with individual families (or houses) managing planets like fiefdoms.  It's a rich setting that is ripe for intrigue and discovery, but does it have any potential for a video game adaptation?

Between the now-defunct Cryo Studios and Westwood Studios, there are actually five titles set in the "Dune" universe.  Four are RTS games and the fifth an adventure game.  There was also an ambitious MMO in the works that never saw the light of day.  I've gone over my own notions of what a "Dune" game could be in another blogpost found here.  I've also seen a wide variety of suggestions around the internet ranging from a bog-standard RPG to a mobile "Spice Mining Tycoon" Simulator, and even "Mentat Math" game for educational purposes.  I can't really speak to the feasibility of any of these suggestions, but I believe the franchise has potential somewhat paradoxically because of what I don't like about it.

"Dune" has a lot of great and fascinating ideas, but I feel that the execution of the novel (or more specifically, the nitty gritty of how the story is told) is somewhat lacking.  I think this is the reason we have seen so many variations on Dune's themes over the years.  Just off the top of my head there is Star Wars, Battletech, Warhammer 40k, Tremors, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Jupiter Ascending, Homeworld, Fading Suns and the Red Rising Saga.  Only one of these IPs is first and foremost a video game property.  When you think about how much exploration groundwork that has been done in various forms of media, it's obvious that there's a lot of directions a new "Dune" video game could go in.  Sure, it could be about Arrakis and the Spice...but that certainly need not be the primary focus.  There are many ways a video game could explore or expand on the fiction given the breadth and depth of the setting.