248: A Master Craftsman

[John Funk]

A Master Craftsman

How do you follow up one of the best-selling games of all time, a game that was so successful it spawned an entire sport and became the archetype for its genre? If you're Dustin Browder, Lead Designer of StarCraft II, you do it very, very carefully. John Funk speaks with Browder about the immense pressure - and satisfaction - of creating Blizzard's next great RTS.

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[Aptspire]

Seeing how Blizzard tries its very best to deliver a full game and listens to its massive fan-base, I can see that the second game will either be a huge hit, or even bigger than the first one's release...
I, for one, have been watching many beta matches (almost daily) and I will buy it when it comes out

 

[steeple]

great article... youv'e got to hand it to them, blizzard knows EXACTLY how to approach and create games, and its awesome to see that they're doing the same with SC2

though i would like to know what new races the developers had in mind...

 

[Dooly95]

I wish Blizzard would give in and put in LAN. I'd rather not get this whole movement to remove LAN and dedicated servers as a method of DRM.

 

[Polock]

Starcraft 2 is a lotta lotta fun. Great article, I love knowing what goes on in developers minds.

 

[incrediblegeek]

I would buy SC2 in a minute if it had LAN support. As it stands, I won't be able to play it because my college blocks the gaming ports on campus.

 

[Fenixius]

While I'm looking forward to it enormously, I just can't see the point of having constant Battle.net support for Single Player people. If you like Campaign, then I don't see the possible advantage to not being able to play if your net is down. Other systems have methods of dealing with what happens to achievements you earn while offline, or if you go to a LAN without a 'net connection. I think CnC4 showed us all that unlocking stuff in Singleplayer for Multiplayer is a terrible, terrible idea. So I'm failing to see how Battle.net can -possibly- help me, if I don't care about multiplayer.

...but to be honest, if they put in "use map settings" so I can play tower defense, etc, I'm sold anyway.

 

[John Funk]

While I'm looking forward to it enormously, I just can't see the point of having constant Battle.net support for Single Player people. If you like Campaign, then I don't see the possible advantage to not being able to play if your net is down. Other systems have methods of dealing with what happens to achievements you earn while offline, or if you go to a LAN without a 'net connection. I think CnC4 showed us all that unlocking stuff in Singleplayer for Multiplayer is a terrible, terrible idea. So I'm failing to see how Battle.net can -possibly- help me, if I don't care about multiplayer.

...but to be honest, if they put in "use map settings" so I can play tower defense, etc, I'm sold anyway.

You don't need to be online to play Campaign, there's an offline "Guest" mode. You just won't earn achievements or get the cool stuff like painting your own emblems on your SCVs.

 

[matrix3509]

One thing I don't understand is why he said there won't be a cover system. The original Starcraft had a limited cover system. Put your units behind a tree and you could be sure that they would defeat a force of equal strength. Hell, there were scores of UMS maps that were built around exploiting that very thing.

 

[Tharwen]

I would buy SC2 in a minute if it had LAN support. As it stands, I won't be able to play it because my college blocks the gaming ports on campus.

[a href="http://www.your-freedom.net/"]Try this[/a] for unblocked internet, but be warned, the trial has time limits and is slow, but the ping shouldn't be too bad. If you want to pay for it I'd recommend the vouchers, not the time packages. Don't pay for anything until you manage to get the trial working.

 

[John Funk]

One thing I don't understand is why he said there won't be a cover system. The original Starcraft had a limited cover system. Put your units behind a tree and you could be sure that they would defeat a force of equal strength. Hell, there were scores of UMS maps that were built around exploiting that very thing.

The full transcript is going up on WarCry later, but how he explained it was that it was pretty significant, which meant that matches got bogged down JUST going for cover.

 

[Fenixius]

If you like Campaign, then I don't see the possible advantage to not being able to play if your net is down.

You don't need to be online to play Campaign, there's an offline "Guest" mode. You just won't earn achievements or get the cool stuff like painting your own emblems on your SCVs.

I thought I heard them say that you can only save your progress through the campaign if you connect to Battle.net. Maybe I heard wrong. I'll dig around for the article.

Edit: Hrm. I can't actually seem to find the article. I remember hearing about it working like Uplay: you log in, and all progress is saved to the cloud, not your computer. I've found plenty of mentions of cloud storage capability when I googled about just now, but none seemed to say whether it was optional or whether it was compulsory. I found a mention on a blizzard website "can be saved online" or something like that, which implies that it's optional, but I'm still concerned that it's going to be compulsory. If anyone on Escapist ever gets a chance to ask, I'd appreciate a clarification <3

 

[Brickcups]

I see what you guys at The Escapist are trying to do with this issue. Trying to get me worked up over Starcraft 2 again PSSSSSSSSSSSSH! Well i'll have you know... it's working. =P

 

[John Funk]

If you like Campaign, then I don't see the possible advantage to not being able to play if your net is down.

You don't need to be online to play Campaign, there's an offline "Guest" mode. You just won't earn achievements or get the cool stuff like painting your own emblems on your SCVs.

I thought I heard them say that you can only save your progress through the campaign if you connect to Battle.net. Maybe I heard wrong. I'll dig around for the article.

Edit: Hrm. I can't actually seem to find the article. I remember hearing about it working like Uplay: you log in, and all progress is saved to the cloud, not your computer. I've found plenty of mentions of cloud storage capability when I googled about just now, but none seemed to say whether it was optional or whether it was compulsory. I found a mention on a blizzard website "can be saved online" or something like that, which implies that it's optional, but I'm still concerned that it's going to be compulsory. If anyone on Escapist ever gets a chance to ask, I'd appreciate a clarification <3

I'm almost positive that they said (at Blizzcon, perhaps?) playing as a guest would only rob you of the integrated Battle.net features like friends, stat tracking, achievements and decals. But you can still play the Campaign all the way through - it's just MEANT to be played while you're logged in.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

A good overview of Blizzard's mentality in general and StarCraft in particular. Nice work!

 

[Sillyiggy]

The lack of LAN support is certainly disappointing. How big it is going to be now that broadband connections are so prevalent remains to be seen.

I have known a few people who claim they are not going to buy StarCraft2 because of it. Who knows whether they will really follow through on it, StarCraft was a big part of most people's lives in my area but the lack of anything better than dial-up at the time meant LAN parties.

Even then though, there are plenty of people who have internet connection woes. People who are going to have to consider whether they want to purchase a game where the designers made a purposeful decision to not let them play with their friends. Maybe the pseudo-LAN may be enough.

Clearly though, this game will be huge. This 'one' negative decision on Blizzard's part will not chip away enough consumers to not make this game a great success. It does however feel like an unnecessary chip away from their sales, plus I would not be surprised if a hack surfaces that will just force LAN supporters away from the checkout at a game store and into the pirating community (assuming it is possible, I in no way claim to have any idea how hard a LAN version of StarCraft 2 would be to hack).

 

[John Funk]

The lack of LAN support is certainly disappointing. How big it is going to be now that broadband connections are so prevalent remains to be seen.

I have known a few people who claim they are not going to buy StarCraft2 because of it. Who knows whether they will really follow through on it, StarCraft was a big part of most people's lives in my area but the lack of anything better than dial-up at the time meant LAN parties.

Even then though, there are plenty of people who have internet connection woes. People who are going to have to consider whether they want to purchase a game where the designers made a purposeful decision to not let them play with their friends. Maybe the pseudo-LAN may be enough.

Clearly though, this game will be huge. This 'one' negative decision on Blizzard's part will not chip away enough consumers to not make this game a great success. It does however feel like an unnecessary chip away from their sales, plus I would not be surprised if a hack surfaces that will just force LAN supporters away from the checkout at a game store and into the pirating community (assuming it is possible, I in no way claim to have any idea how hard a LAN version of StarCraft 2 would be to hack).

I honestly think that this will be one of the times where a pirated version will be legitimately worse than the one legit consumers buy.

Pirated version: You get hacked LAN, whoo. This means you can play with people you know IRL and all of the other pirates. Since it won't be played on dedicated servers, there's no way to stop hackers.

Real version: You get a global multiplayer network of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. You get all the cool Battle.net features, you get the matchmaking system, you don't have to worry about people hacking since if they get banned they need to shell out an extra $50.

It's playing with a few hundred pirates over Hamachi (meaning you need to manually set up games) vs playing with a few hundred thousand legit players over Battle.net at the click of a button. For me, it's no contest.

 

[Wareve]

Im just thinking afew months in the future...

"This just in, North and South Korea have both declared war on the popular gameing company Blizzard. Solders are raiding company buildings and takeing hostages. The leaders of both nations have said that one hostage will be killed for every hour that LAN support fails to come through."

One hour later...

"An update on the Korea, Blizzard war. Blizzard still refuseing to put LAN in Starcraft 2. More details as thay arrive."

 

[Kiithid]

Im just thinking afew months in the future...

"This just in, North and South Korea have both declared war on the popular gameing company Blizzard. Solders are raiding company buildings and takeing hostages. The leaders of both nations have said that one hostage will be killed for every hour that LAN support fails to come through."

One hour later...

"An update on the Korea, Blizzard war. Blizzard still refuseing to put LAN in Starcraft 2. More details as thay arrive."

That's a fun idea, on a more... "serious" glass googles, wars could be made with Starcraft, instead of sending youngsters to death for no reason. At least one could say those zerglings died for the country.

 

[incrediblegeek]

I would buy SC2 in a minute if it had LAN support. As it stands, I won't be able to play it because my college blocks the gaming ports on campus.

[a href="http://www.your-freedom.net/"]Try this[/a] for unblocked internet, but be warned, the trial has time limits and is slow, but the ping shouldn't be too bad. If you want to pay for it I'd recommend the vouchers, not the time packages. Don't pay for anything until you manage to get the trial working.

I've actually used that before, but found it too slow and unwieldy for regular use. I also don't like the idea of paying money to do something I could do free elsewhere. Thanks though!