South Koreans Aren't Playing StarCraft II

vansau

Mortician of Love
May 25, 2010
6,107
0
0
South Koreans Aren't Playing StarCraft II



South Koreans love StarCraft, but they totally aren't digging StarCraft II.

In case you don't know this, StarCraft is incredibly popular in South Korea. So popular, in fact, that many people claim the RTS title is the <a href=http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-27/tech/south.korea.starcraft_1_starcraft-ii-gaming-market-internet-cafes?_s=PM:TECH>country's national sport. As a result, you'd think that the recently-released <a href=http://www.amazon.com/Starcraft-II-Wings-Liberty-Pc/dp/B000ZKA0J6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289590009&sr=8-1>StarCraft II would be just as popular as its predecessor. Surprisingly, it turns out the exact opposite is true.

It turns out that the country's population is avoiding StarCraft II, though it's still playing StarCraft like crazy. According to recent statistics, only two or three percent of South Koreans are playing StarCraft II. This figure has got to be immensely discouraging to Blizzard, which spent $30 million on an ad campaign specifically targeted at South Korean players.

According to Geek.com, the reason for StarCraft II's failure in the country is because of Blizzard's mandatory Battle.net: "Starcraft is a multi-million dollar industry and e-sport in South Korea, sure, but Blizzard never saw a dime of that, so they introduced mandatory online Battle.net into Starcraft II, as well as a proviso making sure that any events and tournaments are authorized by Blizzard themselves."

Hopefully Blizzard will take this as a lesson and move forward with some better ideas about how to not alienate an entire country. Still, knowing that you wasted $30 million has got to smart.

Source: Geek.com

Permalink
 

Flishiz

New member
Feb 11, 2009
882
0
0
Not to mention that you could play Starcraft on any computer in sight, but playing a copy of the sequel will set you back if your computer can't handle it too well.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
20,364
0
0
It's actually slowly moving in Blizzard's favor; the major networks - and some of the superstars - are starting to switch over.

It's probably not nearly as quickly as big blue would have liked.
 

VitusPrime

New member
Sep 26, 2008
438
0
0
It's still interesting to see that there wasn't a zerg (har har) of people buying the game though, seeing as Starcraft there is the thing...
 

GideonB

New member
Jul 26, 2008
359
0
0
I'd expect this. South Koreans like games that don't change (much anyways) like Maplestory with its GRIND heavy gameplay, but I guess Blizzy shouldn't try to control the tournament crap or whatever. Therefore Starcraft 1 prevails and it's all good :D
 

Ne1butme

New member
Nov 16, 2009
491
0
0
With some of the major players moving over (Boxer, Jaedong), i'm sure we'll see a shift towards SC2. We'll know that Sc2 has taken over when Flash switches and we see that his normal 'Walk out with a huge mech push' doesn't work too well in Sc2.
 

AngryMongoose

Elite Member
Jan 18, 2010
1,230
0
41
Personally I think they just don't want to adopt the slight changes in competitive balance. Happens any time a sequel comes out to a competitive game.
 

rembrandtqeinstein

New member
Sep 4, 2009
2,173
0
0
No LAN still equals no sale for me. I'm all old and don't even have gaming friends, it is just the principle of it. And SC1 was and the expansion were day 1 buys.

And if D3 requires an online connection or activation to play single player that will also be a lost sale. I bought 3 copies of d2 and 2 of the expansion.

Anyone old enough to remember spawn copies? You now how blizzard actually encouraged people who didn't own the game to play it?

Or how about the d2 demo containing den of evil and blood raven?
 

Blind Sight

New member
May 16, 2010
1,658
0
0
And this is why they should've included LAN in Starcraft 2...once you start restricting the way a game is played, of course it's going to have problems becoming extremely popular.

I actually just played through the campaign of Starcraft 2 and then stopped altogether, once you get through the neopolitian ice cream that is the campaign, with all its extra units and upgrades, vanilla multiplayer and skirmish just seems...underwhelming.