Blizzard Explains Tough Decisions Behind StarCraft II Trilogy
- Thread starter Tom Goldman
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I assume nothing, which is why I repeated them.TerranReaper said:
Ok, let's put these in parallel:
Lead Designer in an Advert for his game - we'll omit the part where he doesn't actually say the trilogy was designed for fun - as that's a reasonable supposition.
But wait - Kotick's goal over the past 10 years "to take all the fun out of making video games."
Ok, so there's no fun there, even if there could have been.
Let's take a look at the rest." not for profit,"
"and an incentive program that rewards "profit and nothing else"."
So, Blizzard's Lead Designer, in an friendly article on a site that prints his full interview later on tonight (in about an hour) says it was all for fun, not for profit.
Kotick, the CEO of Blizzard says fun was crushed, it's all for profit.
Honestly? Personal feelings aside? Who are you going to believe?
BTW, look at Posts Two and Three and try and correlate the amounts together.
I'm sorry Sir...I forgot to ask you where you had that confirmed in writing by Blizzard. AFAICT prices are never fixed until release date.lacktheknack said:
I agree, but here's the kicker: This is all our fault.FieryTrainwreck said:
When people start inflating things like water, food and medicine, we need governments to step up. Because those are essential things everyone needs. We can't just say "sorry, we won't buy food anymore!". You can't live without food and clean water, and in today's world you probably won't live long without medicine...
...But videogames? They do this because we, as in the "gamer" community, are weak willed fucks who'll give into anything. "This game now costs 100?!", "What!? That's absurd!... But...It looks nice...I'LL NEVER -*preorders*". The MW2 fiasco was the most brutal example of exactly this.
We regularly bend over, and so they fuck us. And make no mistake about it: they'll continue to fuck us. In fact, they'll only find new and more inventive ways to fuck us till we decide to stand up and say "...heeyyy... Stop that.". Bet you whatever money you want if next time Activision releases some piece of crap rehash at an absurd 70 bucks and split in three, if all people go "Yeah, no thanks. Didn't sign up to be robbed blind" they'll start dropping the price and raising the quality again really damn quick.
But they won't do that, because we won't do it. And so I say: You keep at it people. You deserve what you get.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/starcraft-2-expansion-packs-what-we-know/The_root_of_all_evil said:
If nothing else, I'd bet my life that they won't be full price. Sure, Blizzard hasn't signed it in writing, but also, Blizzard aren't stupid.
Sounds like Company of Heroes to me. Though I don't know the prices of the expansions when they were released. Anyone care to enlighten me?
Didn't really get it how many missions they are going to put in the expansions but I don't think 15-16 missions is too few.
Didn't really get it how many missions they are going to put in the expansions but I don't think 15-16 missions is too few.
This is the part that I don't get. If each game offers as much single player content (and by that, I mean specifically the campaign) as Wings of Liberty, even if it has absolutely no impact on the multiplayer, why should it be treated as an expansion pack in terms of price? Wings of Liberty easily offered more content for my dollar than most games I've bought in the last year in the campaign alone. Indeed, in the last calendar year, the only games that offered me more play time in a single run were Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2.Matey said:
As long as we're getting a full content experience with every "game", which by all indications we did with Wings of Liberty, I'm fine with Blizzard splitting the title up. Hell Wings of Liberty is already longer than both Modern Warfare titles and both Kane and Lynch titles.
Serious question. Are you willing to put a bet on the line for that? Make it interesting, say a fiver? I'll bet a fiver against them being $30. (or $29.99)lacktheknack said:
Kotick, the CEO of Activison-Blizzard says fun was crushed, it's all for profit.The_root_of_all_evil said:
Honestly? Personal feelings aside? Who are you going to believe?
BTW, look at Posts Two and Three and try and correlate the amounts together.[/quote]
Considering Kotick was the CEO of Activision itself, I'm not too informed on his position in the decision-making of Blizzard itself. Again, I state that Blizzard has at least some sort of independence from Activision and therefore, I'm more inclined to believe the lead designer in his words. If the lead designer can say something like that and not lose his job, there must be some validity to his statement. Realistically speaking, there is no business that isn't out to make profit, it may not be as high as a priority, but it still exists. Until I actually see that article, I can't really make a concise answer to your question.
Sure, why not? Assuming you mean five dollars, as opposed to, say, five grand.The_root_of_all_evil said:
Sadly, we won't find out for another 16 months or so.
What a load of shit (from the blizzard dude, not the poster).Tom Goldman said:Blizzard Explains Tough Decisions Behind StarCraft II Trilogy
The StarCraft II trilogy was developed to add more fun to the game, not for profit, according to Blizzard.
When Blizzard first announced that StarCraft II [http://www.amazon.com/Starcraft-II-Wings-Liberty-Pc/dp/B000ZKA0J6] was going to be divided into three games, each with a campaign focusing on a single race, fans took it to mean that they were going to have to pay three times for a single game. In a recent interview with Game Informer, StarCraft II lead designer Dustin Browder details Blizzard's thought process behind the division, and assures gamers that they're better off with a trilogy than a single title.
Browder revealed that Blizzard decided to divide StarCraft II into three parts in the "middle of development," and that it "was not the opening move." As Blizzard kept wanting to add more and more depth to StarCraft II, creating one game simply wasn't an option.
"At one point we had 17 or 18 missions per campaign, so we were looking at making 50-some missions," Browder said. "Even then, they didn't have a lot of choice and options in them. The critical path was still fairly linear, and we wanted more missions than that."
For Blizzard to put out the product of the quality it wanted, more content was necessary, but that would have been setting Blizzard up for "a 10 or 12-year development cycle." After what Browder calls "hard talks" and "the screaming and throwing of things," the decision to create a trilogy was made.
Browder admits: "It still took us forever," and though he believes fans are getting plenty of value out of the StarCraft II games, he does feel for the fans that only have interest in the Zerg and Protoss campaigns that'll have to wait. Still, he reveals: "We were looking at maybe a 12-mission campaign for each race ... [that] wasn't going to be as fun." And we may be getting even more content in StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm - the upcoming Zerg-focused title - than there was in Wings of Liberty, with Browder saying it'll possibly have "a larger campaign, with more details on Kerrigan, [and] a more in-depth look at what it means to be a Zerg."
Sounds good to me. So can we please all stop saying that we're paying three times for one game now?
Source: Game Informer [http://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/09/18/starcraft-ii-wasn-t-originally-planned-as-a-trilogy.aspx]
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Problem is that even if the final mission count for 3 SC2 games will be higher than the SC1 mission count the story of SC2 was so tiny and bad that the progress of 3 SC2 games will most likely be shorter than one single SC1 game.
A lot of stuff happened in SC1, every mission pushed the story onwards somehow. SC2 was simply a bad, bad version of ME2 where you upgraded some stuff and found some crew members (that didnt even fight with you in the end >.<). The only real story progress worth its salt in SC2 were the missions you DIDNT play the terrans (with the possible exclusion of the finale). Worst blizzard game ever.
It's not wrong for the consumer to want the best deal.Caliostro said:
But something's "value" is PRECISELY what people will pay for it.
So Activision hikes the price of MW2, and it's the fastest selling entertainment launch in history? What that says to me, is for all of his crazy Bond-Villain-Esque soundbytes, Bobby Kotick was right about one thing - games are too cheap. People are willing to pay more, so therefore games are worth more. If they weren't worth that much, people wouldn't pay for them, at least not in that magnitude. Think about it like this.. new games have always been in the 40-60 dollar range. Since like, the 80s. If you account for inflation, games have been getting cheaper and cheaper every single year since they were invented.
First of all, I'd be willing to bet it will be around the 50 bucks mark, and there's still no confirmation that it won't be, but even if it is 30 bucks, here's the rundown: 60 (70 in some places) + 30 + 30 = 120 bucks. Ok, so, in a best case scenario which I honestly don't see happening, you're ONLY paying almost three times as much for one game. Much better!lacktheknack said:
Edit: Derp.
Done plenty of it.lacktheknack said:
I mean it's fine if you want do disagree, but from everything I've seen, and read, including this article with Blizard making a case directly, I still think they are charging for the game three times.
Just because someone disagrees with you, doesn't mean they haven't done research, or in some way ignorant. It just means they don't agree with you.
What's more the entire point of this getting an Escapist article is that there are plenty of people who think the same thing. Probably more of them than agree with you if Blizzard feels the need to issue statements to begin with. If it was a minor bit of dissent that wasn't affecting anything they wouldn't have bothered.