HomeLAN - Can you tell us more about how you worked with Eugen and Atari on the premise behind the game?

Dale Brown - Atari wanted a lot more than a "typical" real-time strategy profile in which you build up bigger and bigger forces and pummel the enemy into the ground. They wanted "Hollywood reality" - a combination of the real-world military nuts-and-bolts stuff, a healthy dose of drama and conflict, and the excitement and imagination that comes in the gamer's world.

My job was to deliver the nuts-and bolts ingredient and the story line, but mold it into the game's universe. There are so many instances in a techno-thriller novel where you can't step too far away from reality because you leave the "real" world and enter a science-fiction world, which my readers wouldn't like. In the game world, you can step so much closer to other realms. I saw my task as keeping the game rooted in the "real" world but allowing for maximum exposure to other worlds.