BUME

BUME is an acronym for "buildings-units-micromanagement-economy", which describes a sub-genre of real time strategy video games. The terms are sometimes used synonymously, although BUME is more specific. Real time strategy has grown to include sub-genres like Dota and tower defense which do not fall into the BUME sub-genre. The term "classic" real-time strategy is sometimes used too. The acronym is also a play on the word Boom, emphasising the combat between units and the destruction of enemy bases that these games tend to focus on.
Examples of BUME games include Warcraft III and Dune 2.
Seminal titles
Although BUME games have an extensive history, some titles have served to define the popular perception of the genre, in particular the games released between 1992 and 1998 by Westwood Studios and Blizzard Entertainment.
Westwood's Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty (1992) featured all the core concepts and mechanics, such as using the mouse to move units, and gathering resources, and as such served as the prototype for later games. According to its co-designer and lead programmer, Joe Bostic, a "benefit over Herzog Zwei is that we had the advantage of a mouse and keyboard. This greatly facilitated precise player control, which enabled the player to give orders to individual units. The mouse, and the direct control it allowed, was critical in making the BUME genre possible.”
The success of Dune II encouraged several games which became influential in their own right. Warcraft: Orcs & Humans (1994) achieved great prominence upon its release, owing in part to its use of a fantasy setting and also to its depiction of a wide variety of buildings (such as farms) which approximated a full fictitious society, not just a military force. Command & Conquer became the first popular BUME game to utilize competitive multiplayer. Command & Conquer, as well as Command and Conquer: Red Alert, became the most popular early BUME games. These two games contended with Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness after its release in late 1995.

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