

Comparing its complexity to Dallas, Barry recalled that "when the game was restored at 5 P.M., a lot of regular work stopped". He stated that it had "far better support than many of the application programs used in the business", with a published manual and regular schedule. Tim Barry in May 1981 described in InfoWorld a multiplayer, real-time strategy space game that ran ("and probably still is") on an IBM System/370 Model 168 at a large San Francisco Bay area company. The genre initially evolved separately in the United Kingdom, Japan, and North America, afterward gradually merging into a unified worldwide tradition. As a result, designating "early real-time strategy" titles is problematic because such games are being held up to modern standards. Games sometimes perceived as ancestors of the real-time strategy genre were never marketed or designed as such. The genre recognized today as "real-time strategy" emerged from an extended period of evolution and refinement.

These resources are in turn garnered by controlling special points on the map and/or possessing certain types of units and structures devoted to this purpose. In a typical RTS game, it is possible to create additional units and structures, generally limited by a requirement to expend accumulated resources. In a real-time strategy game, each participant positions structures and maneuvers multiple units under their indirect control to secure areas of the map and/or destroy their opponents' assets. The term "real-time strategy" was coined by Brett Sperry to market Dune II in the early 1990s. By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to play. Real-time strategy ( RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time".
