History of FED2k

How did FED2k start? I originally got the idea after learning from PCGamer that Westwood would be remaking one of my all-time favourite games, Dune II. When the site first opened I had never created a website so the first versions weren't much to look at. As you may have inferred from name FED2k the site was originally called the "First Ever" Dune 2000 website but was shortened soon after opening.

For the first few months the site was located at Geocities but on May 25 we opened at the Westwood Underground along with a few other Westwood gaming sites. It was at this point that site really took off, with the help of Bill9999, Cyberman0, and OverKills of WWU we started to receive more visitors and the site became well known for its coverage.

After a few delays in production Dune 2000 was finally released to mixed reviews. Many felt that the game just didn't stand up against some of the newer RTS games already out there. Many sites closed after finding the game not all they thought it would be. I decided to keep the site running and ended up being the only remaining active site covering Dune 2000. Eventually after people like DayOfWar and Samah created map editors and the small community stayed active. With the biggest archive of maps for Dune 2000 we kept interest in the game alive waiting for the next Dune game that was rumoured to be in development.

It was during the slow times after Dune 2000's release that I expanded the site to cover all of the Dune games as well as coverage of the Sci-Fi channel's miniseries and Dune in general. In the fall of 2000 Westwood announced Emperor: Battle for Dune and Cryo let us know they were developing a sequel to their first Dune game called Frank Herbert's Dune. In late 2001 Cryo announced their second Dune game Dune Generations, an online RTS game, giving us three games to cover.

Emperor was released in the summer of 2001 and received good reviews but never got the attention and advertising from Westwood it deserved. Westwood did release a map editor and mods were much easier to make then Dune 2000. Unfortunetly Emperor never caught on with the online audience and Westwood didn't support it for long leaving the community to fend for itself. Emperor is still the most active Dune game and there is a small but active community based here at FED2k.

Cryo's Frank Herbert's Dune was released in 2002 to mainly bad reviews and did not attract much attention. It was fairly well-done but was lacking in a few key areas. Generations was cancelled after money problems at Cryo and will most likely never be finished even though it looked promising.

With over five years covering Dune news and games we have been through the good and the bad times and have stuck through it all. And if all goes well we will still be here providing a home to Dune fans everywhere for the foreseeable future.

Jesse Reid [Gobalopper]