Random bit of gaming trivia for you: the word “campaign” wasn’t always synonymous with “single-player story mode.” In fact, in the 16-bit era I recall playing numerous games in which the “campaign” was actually just one of several different game modes — it most commonly cropped up in flight sims, but occasionally made an appearance in other types of game, too.

Taking flight sims as the main example, a “campaign” mode tended to be what it sounds like: an ongoing campaign of the player against computer-controlled enemies, either through a linear sequence of missions like we have in many of today’s single-player modes, or through a more dynamic, strategic sort of affair that changed and evolved as the player took various actions.

One particular example I can think of was the then-popular flight sim Falcon 3.0, which was one of numerous F-16 simulators around at the time. Past incarnations of Falcon had generally seen players taking on one-off missions, raising in rank and collecting medals through grinding the same missions over and over again. What Falcon 3 brought to the table was what was regarded as one of the best campaign modes ever seen in the genre at the time — I’m sure it’s been bettered by all manner of other games since, but I remember it being quite impressive at the time.

Looking the game up to better refresh my memory, in fact, it seems that Falcon 3.0 was, in fact, one of the first games ever to incorporate a dynamic campaign mode, and this is what drew praise. In fact, so confident were developers Spectrum Holobyte that they even gave the campaign engine its own branding: “Electronic Battlefield.”

Electronic Battlefield was originally intended to be a campaign engine that transcended individual games and allowed for multiple different products to interlink with one another for network games. Three games eventually made it to market: Falcon 3.0 itself, MiG-29: Deadly Adversary of Falcon 3.0 (for it was tradition that the F-16s in flight sims at the time would spend most of their time fighting MiG-29s, their biggest rival from the Soviets) and Falcon 3.0: Hornet: Naval Strike Fighter, which simulated the F/A-18 Hornet. These three games could all talk to each other in network sessions, but I never got a chance to try it; sadly, this was in an age prior to widespread use of the Internet and online play in general, so when it says “network game” it actually means LAN play — a luxury only really afforded to those who worked in offices.

So how is this kind of “campaign” different from what we have today? Well, the main thing is that it’s not scripted, and there doesn’t necessarily have to be an “end”. Falcon 3.0’s campaign simulated a conflict in which the player is just one element; through completing or failing various missions, they could help or hinder the war effort as a whole, presumably eventually culminating in one side or the other declaring victory. I never saw that as I wasn’t really very good at flight sims, despite enjoying them as a young ‘un, but I could tell my efforts were having an impact on the virtual war as a whole.

It was kind of cool, really — despite the fact there was no ongoing “story” like in, say, the later Strike Commander (which again concentrated on F-16s, but had a much more arcadey flight model), there was a real sense of emergent narrative — of things happening due to your actions rather than just being plopped down in front of either a limited selection of missions, or randomly-selected scenarios. It was pretty neat.

I’m not sure why I blabbered on about all that — I just find myself thinking back to that every time a game makes me click on the word “Campaign” when what it really means is “Story”.