Tiberium

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Tiberium is a fictional crystalline material featured prominently in the Command and Conquer series of real-time strategy video games. In each Command and Conquer game, these crystals are both the tools and spoils of war; the crystals are used by the player to purchase new units and buildings, and each faction is battling for control of the crystals.

Tiberium can be thought of as, in effect, money, with everything that one builds in the game costing Tiberium. It only appears around special Tiberium-generating trees, and is harvested by harvesters, machines which seek out and harvest the material.^[1] Without Tiberium, a player loses, so the general strategy of the game is to harvest as much Tiberium as possible.^[2] However, devoting resources to harvesting has to be balanced against devoting resources to other things, such as offence and defence.^[3]

Mike Verdu, executive producer for Electronic Arts, describes Tiberium as being at the centre of the fictional C&C universe: "This enigmatic crystal is at the core of our gameplay as well as our fiction. [...] Tiberium is our Force, our Spice, our One Ring, and our Matrix. Everything in our game world is defined by its relationship to Tiberium."^[4]

In the game universe, Tiberium grows out of the ground, in what Verdu describes as "oddly beautiful fields of green crystal that [kill] everything around them". The substance is radioactive and toxic, causing genetic mutations in plants and animals, but also a source of energy that can be harvested with ease. It replicates by converting everything around it into more Tiberium, and is gradually covering the whole of the Earth. It gives off radiation, which in the game universe is harnessed both for energy and as a weapon. In Verdu's words it is both "a gift and a curse — a resource and a plague".^[4][5]

At the point in the game universe's timeline when Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars is set (the year 2047), the surface of the Earth is zoned according to how far the Tiberium plague has spread. The Red Zones, which comprise approximately 20% of the Earth's surface, are wholly uninhabitable because of Tiberium; the Yellow Zones, which comprise approximately 50% of the Earth's surface, are not yet fully polluted with Tiberium; and the remaining Blue Zones are habitable.^[4][5][6]

The original inspiration for Tiberium comes from the 1957 B-movie The Monolith Monsters.^[7] For the development of Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars, Electronic Arts commissioned some scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to provide a white paper describing the biophysics of Tiberium, its atomic structure, its method of transmutation, the form of the radiation that it emits, and the way to harness it for powering machinery and weapons — giving it the same treatment as would be suitable for a scientific journal article on a real substance.^[4]

Verdu^[8] gives the following scientific analysis of Tiberium from the perspective of the game universe:

Tiberium is a dense "dynamic proton lattice" held together by exotic heavy particles. When Tiberium comes into contact with other matter, the heavy particles randomly collide with the nuclei of the target matter, smashing it to pieces (in the case of smaller nuclei) or incrementally knocking off protons or neutrons (in the case of heavier nuclei). Tiberium captures a fraction of the protons that are ejected during this collision process and incorporates them into its own structure, thus transmuting matter into more Tiberium. Whenever one of the heavy particles — a muon or tauon — collides with an atomic nucleus, fission occurs, which results in the production of alpha, beta, and gamma radiation as well as other forms of electromagnetic radiation (like infra-red). During the transmutation process, nuclei that Tiberium has come into contact with may be changed into nuclei with different (usually fewer) numbers of protons or neutrons.

—Mike Verdu, Living with Tiberium

Tiberium is of extraterrestrial origin. Exposure of human beings to Tiberium, which can be through touch or inhalation (rain or smog carrying particles of Tiberium from Red Zones to Yellow Zones being one feature of the game's storyline) either results in death or extreme mutation, the mechanism (or purpose) for the latter not being revealed in the game. Verdu describes Red Zones as being "like the surface of an alien world". Part of the game storyline comprises scientific speculation that an alien species is using Tiberium to terraform Earth to its own requirements.^[8]

This effect on both humans and materials has consequences for harvesting. Unprotected infantry passing through a Tiberium deposit are at risk, both from direct exposure to Tiberium itself and thus conversion into Tiberium and from secondary radiation burns and radiation poisoning as others are contaminated and converted around them. Soldiers, tanks, and other vehicles in Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars thus have protective shielding against Tiberium. However, this shielding is imperfect, since it simply slows down the process of conversion, it being based upon the fact that some materials take longer for Tiberium to convert than others. (There are other shields against Tiberium. "Sonic resonators", devices that emit sound at particular frequencies, stop the spread of Tiberium and are used in Blue Zones to ensure that Tiberium deposits there are contained. However, such devices are too large and unwieldy for mobile use.) Partial contamination of a human, which can occur within 20 seconds, requires immediate treatment in the medical bay of an infantry support unit known as an Armory. Contamination of vehicles requires a utility vehicle known as a Rig.^[9]

Tiberium, is, in Verdu's words, a "simple" and an "elegant" piece of game design. It is a resource that drives both the overall storyline and the economy of actual gameplay. Its several properties, including the tradeoff between harvesting it and the damage that it does to harvesters in the process, make game strategy more complex for players. Tiberium deposits provide foci for conflict, and the depletion and regrowth of such deposits both controls the pace of game play and prevents a runaway economy.^[9]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Dave Morris and Leo Hartas (2004). Strategy Games. Thomson Course Technology. ISBN 1592002536.  — a general discussion of harvesting in strategy games

[edit] External links

• PCNC Encyclopedia, containing information on Tiberium