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Here's a question for you that is less war and more straight culture. What makes a piece of media truly inspiring? What qualities does something need to possess so that things based on it will be great? I don't mean this in the sense of expertly turning your IP into a multimedia franchise through judicious licensing or whatever. I want to know what happens in the case of something like Dune where licensing doesn't seemed to be handled well at all. Yet it still not only managed to spawn a great movie. It also inspired a legendary board game, hugely influential video game, etc.
What makes Dune such fertile ground compared to, say, Lord of the Rings?
This paragraph threw me for a loop. My impression is that Lord of the Rings is way more of a cultural Thing compared to Dune. Like, there also LotR video games? Action adventure, turn based RPG, RTS, even an MMORPG! There are movie series both live action and animated. All these vary wildly in quality so I'm not sure savvy licensing is the reason for their existence and success. Not to mention Lord of the Rings influence on the development on fantasy as a genre of media in general.
Apologies for not commenting on the more general question on your post, which I don't have many thoughts on, but feels like a very specific cultural bubble to regard Dune as more fertile ground for inspiration than Lord of the Rings...
Right, but that is why I chose Lord of the Rings for comparison. For all of its impact, for all the media based on it directly and indirectly, it has a much worse pound for pound showing than Dune. Sure, it has a forgettable RTS, but Dune II practically invented the genre. Sure, one of the Lord of the Rings board games ended up being great, but Dune has, again, a hugely influential game that people loved so much they were still playing it when it had been print for nearly 30 years.
Was this just luck that Dune has such a stronger showing than a more popular, older IP? Or is there some quality that can be analyzed?
Aside from generally being unpleasant and mischaracterizing my post, I'm not sure what your point is.
Are you mad that I'm not listing more fun Dune media? That I'm not getting further into the weeds? Or do you think that talking about another game that you have already described as fun and unique somehow disproves my point about Dune having disproportionately better media than Lord of the Rings?
What do I have to argue against, even if I wanted to? You say that Dune II is mostly generic with its ships and units, as if that is somehow a strike against the idea. But a couple of other people already made the point that the ability to fill in the gaps and details of Frank Herbert's universe is one of the things it has going for it when creating media.
Are they wrong? Maybe. Feel free to make that argument. It could be interesting, but you haven't actually made it yet.
Instead you seem to think you have proven some point when all you have done is attack me, state some facts about Dune games, and declared that I am "wrecked" because of my "grand-sounding theory."
If you step out of your weird fanboy-rage for a second, you'll see that I don't actually have a theory at all. I have three statements, only two of which are at all controversial. One is the assertion that some media inspires higher-quality derivatives than others (even if the media itself is not necessarily higher quality). This is a hypothesis. It has none of the characteristics of a theory because it is currently a blank page. A thesis statement looking for a body.
My second assertion was that Dune has inspired quite a lot of high-quality media. This was an illustration of the hypothesis. Because abstracts without concrete examples don't get engagement.
My final assertion, the one that seems to have filled you with such weird, fanboyish rage, is that Lord of the Rings has a much lower average level of quality. This is also part of the illustration for comparison and contrast. This isn't a theory. Now, I'm not going to say that I don't understand why the statement is controversial, and I'd be happy if people were disagreeing in a way that even broached the thesis statement, but again, you aren't doing it. You haven't even actually engaged with the concept.
You are so mad that you think that you can somehow knock down my "grand-sounding theory" without even engaging it. You can't. Even if you were to somehow prove that I am totally wrong and Lord of the Rings has much higher quality media, that still wouldn't disprove my hypothesis. Because that would just fit the hypothesis in the opposite direction.
I didn't use the word prove, so I don't understand why you are once again attributing words to me to mischaracterize what I wrote. Is this intellectual dishonesty or just poor reading comprehension?
Edit: Oh, you think I "accidentally" admitted that this is unfalsifiable. Just poor reading comprehension, then.
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So could your question be rephrased as "why do Dune-licensed games have more impactful/genre-defining mechanics than LotR-licensed games"?
No, because I wanted a more universal examination. People just got really attached to the Lord of the Rings and Dune game comparison. Even the licensing aspect was less about importance for the principle and more about trying to head off nerdy arguments about what counts as influenced by these books. (E.G. how much inspiration does Star Wars take from Dune?)
I mean, if comparing Dune II to War in Middle Earth is a particularly useful comparison for insights, sure, compare away. But I was hoping for universalizable principles here, not just comparisons of these two franchises.
None. They both take inspiration from the same well, but Star Wars is much more open about the roots in the Saturday morning serials like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Star Wars starts off with "desert planet" but then leaves that behind for the basic "rayguns and rockets" plot (and none the worse for it).
Dune is Morocco IN SPAAAACE and the Fremen are Berbers IN SPAAACE and he is a lot more pretentious than Lucas about it all. Both of them are planetary fantasies, but Herbert is all "deep environmentalism philosophy man" and Lucas was "and then pow! zap! space battles! stormtroopers! smugglers in starships! the good guys win!" so he's a lot more fun.
It also lifts a lot of plot and characterization from a specific Kurosawa movie. Mostly changed for the better but the parallel is very transparent.
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I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that Lord of the Rings adaptations are less inspiring than Dune's unless you are ignoring the Peter Jackson trilogy entirely. Those are some of the most culturally significant films in recent memory. Not a month goes by where I don't hear someone quoting Gandalf, sharing a meme about the One Ring (this is one I encountered last week), comparing their political opponents to orcs, or otherwise referencing them. While Dune has also had a significant impact, this influence went under the radar for many people until the recent movie release.
For what it's worth, I had never heard of the board game until now despite having read all 6 of Frank Herbert's books and most of the Dune Encyclopedia. Most people I talk to about Dune know it has something to do with a desert, spice, and sandworms, but I am far more likely in my experience to find someone able to recite Théoden's speech at the Pelennor Fields from memory than I am someone who can recall the Litany Against Fear. If you are only looking at the most recent adaptations and comparing the Denis Villeneuve film to the Rings of Power show, then of course Dune wins hands down, but that hardly seems fair.
If your question was more narrowly focused on Dune II and the Dune board game being genre-defining as compared to LOTR strategy games and board games, then I'd wager that due to Dune's lesser cultural significance than LOTR and somewhat freer IP, developers were more willing to take risks and innovate than they would have with the Tolkien Estate breathing down their backs. Looking at the source material, it's clear that Tolkien left a lot more to work with than Herbert, so if it were a true free-for-all I'd bet on some Silmarillion adaptation wiping the floor with the best Dune has to offer (though if someone other than Brian Herbert wrote a proper Butlerian Jihad story that might stand a chance).
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LOTR's MMO was one of the best MMOs. For things outside of the movies, which LOTR still easily claims the better of them, Dune's universe is a bit more interesting when it comes to speculation. Middle Earth has a history. Dune has stuff. Its easy to create any sort of war or resource game (Age of Empire or Settlers of Catan IN DUNE)
Define "stuff."
Thousands of theoretical houses governing planets who could be at war with each other for any made up reason.
I mean, hell, you could make a strategy game depicting the Jihad as it happens between the original book and Messiah. Have two campaigns; one where you play as the Imperial house and work your way up to eventually meet face-to-face with Emperor Paul himself, and one where you're fighting for a band of houses trying to survive the wave of galactic murder Paul's ascension to the throne has unleashed.
That could be a fun 1P game, but RTS Dune is just low hanging fruit. You can be the Atriedes, the Harkkonnens, the Corrinos, etc.
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It is not obvious to me that "a Dune video game created the RTS genre" and "there was a Dune board game so popular people played it decades after it was out of print" is sufficient to conclude "Dune had a stronger showing" than Lord of the Rings in terms of cultural inspiration.
The influence Tolkien's worldbuilding and method of storytelling on fantasy as a genre seems difficult to understate. Not just on directly LotR inspired works but across a range of intellectual properties and media types. This is not to say Dune wasn't influential or inspirational but it does not really compare, to my mind.
But this is just vague handwaving. I'm not arguing the popularity of Lord of the Rings or its cultural impact. I'm talking about the impact, in turn, of the licensed media that followed.
Lord of the Rings, as a book series, is hugely impactful on the culture. Lord of the Rings the multimedia franchise is, on average, middling and most of it will be forgotten. Dune, on the other hand, has been less impactful overall. Yet, despite having far less adaptations and licensed media (before the most recent movie. I'm not young and free enough to keep up with everything that is coming out now), what exists is both of a much higher average quality and often hugely impactful on their own mediums.
Just shrugging that off is simply being obtuse and ignoring the actual subject.
I think there's two different things being claimed.
Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise better than the stuff produced for LOTR? Possibly. If you mean Rings of Power oh hell yeah.
Is the tie-in media for the Dune franchise more influential? Again, maybe, but I think it's more in the "niche sphere where people really really care about the RTS genre" and not "general game-playing public". I haven't played any of the LOTR games and I remember back when they were issuing board games under the licence, but I've heard about them and seen them advertised. I honestly don't remember seeing anything for Dune media.
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What you said at the end there - that there’s Dune related media that’s “hugely” impactful isnt clear at all. I can’t think of any.
Dune has produced one bad movie and one good movie.
LOTR has hugely influenced fantasy, music, video games and mich more. Dune has nothing much
I'd say Dune's resulted in some bangin' music.
Before clicking the link, my guess was this.
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Then maybe that is where I'm misunderstanding what you're asking. I was thinking of the two works in terms of their broad cultural impact, not of just the impact of their licensed multimedia. In that case I think there is a case to be made for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy of films but that's about it innovation wise. I have enjoyed a lot of the Lord of the Rings games but I don't think they did anything particularly innovative, certainly not compared to what Dune seems to have done (I haven't played it myself).
On the one hand, I'd say this actually must be my fault in writing clearly because almost everyone is responding with a focus on the books themselves rather than the larger multimedia franchises.
On the other hand, I am mostly getting a lot of tears about how the Lord of the Rings trilogy is better and posters didn't even know that the board game existed so how impactful could it be? All without even engaging the question. High decouplers? Yeah, okay.
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Are we forgetting Peter Jackson's LotR movies? They were far more impactful and frankly better than any Dune movie.
Also, LotR basically spawned the fantasy genre. Even within the LotR franchise, there are countless books that spun off from the main series.
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