Rainbow Six: how Tom Clancy, Red Storm and Ubisoft made history

The Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six series has churned out 13 main games, six expansions and two mobile spin-offs since 1998. Its title has become synonymous with the tactical shooter genre. And the name of the person in the title made a decisive contribution to this: Tom Clancy.

The US author had his breakthrough in 1984 with his debut novel, The Hunt for Red October. Most people will have heard of its 1990 film adaptation starring Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin. The submarine thriller about hostile superpowers during the Cold War marked the start of a series of novels, most of which revolved around military special forces.

As Clancy wasn’t satisfied with doing movie adaptations only, he founded Clancy Interactive Entertainment. Together with a small game studio and a publisher, the submarine simulator Tom Clancy's SSN, which was based on the novel of the same name, was created in 1996. The military know-how was provided by former British Navy Captain Doug Littlejohns. It was the first of over 40 games to bear the author’s name as a label. The game was so successful that the three companies were merged in the same year and Clancy founded Red Storm Entertainment with Littlejohns. Again, the novel served as the namesake.

Realism instead of mindless shooting

However, the course for the empire that’s still going strong today was not set until two years later. Before that, Red Storm was developing a tactical game like Risk, followed by a real-time strategy game with aliens. The team then ventured into a genre that was still unknown at the time: the tactical shooter. In fact, Red Storm didn’t have any previous experience with shooters, according to developer Greg Stelmack.

The project was initially named Black Ops after the term for a secret military operation, but was later renamed Rainbow Six. The story’s based on Clancy’s eleventh novel of the same name, which was being written at the same time. Rainbow being derived from Rainbow Nation, as South Africa was called after apartheid. Seeing that the game doesn’t exclusively involve US specialists, Rainbox Six fits better. In the US Army, six stands for the rank of captain. Although the main character in the game is better described as a Major General, Rainbow Six simply sounds better than Rainbow Eight.

The game was hailed to be drastically different from the Doom and Quake clones that were popular at the time. Instead of fast, futuristic shooter action, Red Storm focused on authentic weapons, realism and a slow, tactical approach. The aim was to simulate real counterterrorism operations – at least as far as that was possible for a game. «In the real world, you send in 40, 50, 100 guys all at once to take out a group of terrorists. Whereas that might be interesting to watch, we realised that there’s no way that the player could control a 40- or a 100-person team» said designer Brian Upton in a behind-the-scenes interview. The special thing about Rainbow Six is that you don’t control one person, but several teams.

The game begins with a planning phase, during which you draw the course and strategy on a blueprint of the level. Eight special units have to be divided up and guided through the level using coloured lines. Although the game provides a template, individual strategies make it particularly alluring. The player gets to decide which weapons to use and which doors should be blown open or whether bomb defusing kits are needed.

Only when the planning’s complete do you take on the role of the special unit yourself. And that’s when the next surprise awaits. Unlike typical shooters of the time, there’s no running around and shooting everything in sight. Even a single hit is fatal and there’s no coming back to life. Your opponents don’t hesitate and are extremely accurate. However, they’re not bulletproof either and can be taken down with a well-aimed shot. A well thought-out approach and targeted use of equipment is essential for the success of a mission.

Teamwork instead of quick reflexes

The aspect that was going to pave the way for Rainbow Six: Siege, the most successful part of the series to date, was its multiplayer mode. Frenetic death matches against other players were everywhere in the late 90s thanks to Quake and Unreal. This made the much slower, but more tactical team battles in the first Rainbow Six offer a completely different experience. Instead of giving orders to bots, players organised themselves via voice chat – long before TeamSpeak, let alone Discord, existed.

Before Rainbow Six was presented to the public for the first time at E3 1998, the people behind the game were getting very nervous. «We agonised over a lot of design issues in Rainbow Six. We had this complicated planning phase followed by the action phase, which no one had done before. We agonised over the fact that we weren’t going to have any power-ups. [...] and we weren’t sure any of that was going to be fun,» producer Carl Schnurr recalls.

The game fair in Los Angeles came at just the right time. «The first real sign we had something truly magical on our hands was E3 1998,» said Schnurr. The two playable missions of Rainbow Six had players coming in droves. Many came back several times and brought their friends or bosses along. Fuelled by this boost of motivation, Red Storm completed the remaining development work in a few months. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six hit stores on 21 August of the same year. The game was a hit with both critics and players and triggered a wave of tactical shooters. Delta Force, Conflict: Desert Storm, Swat and Counter-Strike all owe their success to Red Storm.

Just one year later, Eagle Watch was not just an expansion, but also the next part of the Rogue Spear series. A mode still popular today had its premiere in it: Terrorist Hunt. It involves you and your friends hunting down computer-controlled terrorists. The snow map from Rogue Spear later served as inspiration for the chalet in Rainbow Six: Siege.

Ubisoft takes the reins

In the year 2000, Red Storm was taken over by the French publisher and developer studio Ubisoft. Over the coming years, Rainbow Six spin-offs, ports and expansions were developed by various Ubisoft studios. This also applied to the console version of Rainbow Six 3. This differs significantly from the PC version and is technically based on Splinter Cell, another Tom Clancy book.

However, the growing popularity of consoles also meant that the series was increasingly ditching complexity in favour of more action-packed gameplay. It lost its influence and reached a low point in 2006 with Critical Hour. The Xbox-exclusive game scored a meagre 54 per cent on Metacritic.

But the turning point happened that same year. Another Ubisoft studio released Rainbow Six: Vegas. Thanks to Unreal Engine 3, it took the critics and players by storm with its outstanding graphics and realistic animations made possible by motion capture. Although there were just three operatives to choose from and the gameplay was more action-focused than at the beginning of the series, the cinematic staging was spoken of in glowing terms. As was the premiere of the snake cam to look under doors. It may not have caused the same amount of excitement as it did when it was introduced in Splinter Cell four years prior, but it’s been part of the repertoire ever since. Just like abseiling from roofs to get into windows.

From botched project to smash hit

And lastly, Patriots turned into a complete debacle. It followed the solid but not particularly innovative Vegas 2 and was Ubisoft’s attempt at trying something new. Yes, Ubisoft strikes again. Red Storms preferred to focus on the Ghost Recon series, which was aimed at single players and was being developed at the same time.

The Patriots campaign was meant to be played from two perspectives – from the anti-terrorist’s unit and from the terrorist organisation True Patriot’s one. The game was officially unveiled way before it was completed. Part of the team was taken away to work on the next Tom Clancy series: The Division. In 2014, Ubisoft announced that Patriots was being discontinued. However, fans didn’t have to suffer for long. At E3 that same year, Rainbow Six: Siege was unveiled. A multiplayer-focused reboot that took full advantage of the console generation of its time.

Siege offered impressively realistic graphics as well as unprecedented destruction physics. It was a central aspect of the game and allowed teams to enter not only through windows, but through walls, ceilings and floors. It’s what gave the series a new dynamic. The second major feature was the operators. They were divided into different classes, featured unique abilities and enabled new tactical approaches.

After several delays, Siege was released in December 2015 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One. Despite controversial elements including a fee-based season pass to unlock new operators faster, the game was a complete success. To this day, it’s still actively played by millions. Siege is one of the most popular e-sports titles ever. In fact, it’s the second time the Community’s picked it as a game for the Digitec Playground.

The current Rainbow Six story doesn’t end in Siege, but in Extractions. It’s also the game that most people have probably forgotten. It’s a spin-off of Siege and contains several operators from it. Extractions is also primarily a multiplayer game. As the title suggests, it’s an extraction shooter. Together with your team, you fight your way through sections infested with alien parasites to extract certain items. The game wasn’t particularly well received by critics or fans.

So what’s next? First, there’s our very own Digitec Playground, where the best Rainbow Six: Siege teams from Switzerland will be competing against each other. And then? The game has its tenth anniversary coming up in 2025. I haven’t heard any rumours regarding a next part of the tactical shooter series. However, it’s safe to say that Ubisoft won’t be put off by the Extractions flop. If there’s one thing Ubisoft’s good at, it’s milking series. Besides, Rainbow Six has by no means reached its best-by date.