Frank Herbert’s seminal novel Dune has inspired a long and varied history of video game adaptations, including one of the industry’s most formative titles. In 1992, developer Westwood Studios released Dune II, now widely recognised as having created the real-time strategy (RTS) genre. Launching this month, Dune: Awakening is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMO), an extremely ambitious undertaking in a world in which only a handful of such games successfully exist at any one time (World Of Warcraft has been the exemplar for more than 20 years and nothing else has come close).

Developer Funcom has some form in this field, with a number of middling MMOs in its back catalogue, including Age Of Conan, Anarchy Online and Secret World Legends. In Dune: Awakening, players must gather resources, build shelters and battle the planet Arrakis’ gigantic sandworms, all while navigating the sort of political power play that Dune fans have grown to love. The game takes place in an alternate timeline in which Lady Jessica gave birth to a daughter, setting the stage for a radically different sequence of events from the traditional narrative, all taking place in a vast, ever-evolving open world.

There’s an unwritten rule in gaming that only five MMOs can exist at a time. And, with the growing prominence of live service games, that genre is more precarious than ever before. But thanks to its stellar IP, Dune: Awakening has a better chance than most to succeed in a very tight market.

Dune: Awakening is out now on PC; PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions planned for a later date.