AusGamers has posted an interview with RTS veteran developer at Blizzard, Allen Dilling, who talks about their upcoming trilogy closer, his history with RTS at Blizzard (including Warcraft), the series' future and touches on the long-lost StarCraft: Ghost.
Jason Hall, currently an indie developer and former Blizzard employee, has been sharing some really interesting stories from his long career in the industry for a while now. Some of them are truly insightful, while others may seem depressing.
I’m a little shocked that StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty sold only around 6 million copies. The original StarCraft did over 11 million. Maybe Blizzard was too leisurely in releasing StarCraft 2? Starcraft 2 came out 12 years after it’s predecessor.
Im surprised too. Starcraft was still a huge name in 2010. It was kinda the only new RTS around and other genres like MOBAs hadn't really kicked off yet. I do remember at the time sentiment around the game was
pretty angry the game was being split into 3 but I doubt that would have impacted sales to that degree
For a long time I believed StarCraft II sold on par or better than its predecessor. There was so much hype for the game. Plus it had a pretty strong E-Sports scene for a few years.
Myself and half a dozen friends all bought StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and played it religiously for a full year. While I bought the expansions, most of my friends did not. RPGs seem to be a generally low selling genre.
I'm not shocked at all. This was an early example of Blizzard being greedy. Instead of releasing a complete experience, splitting Starcraft 2 in 3 parts so it could make us purchase it 3 times if we wanted to know the whole story and play story mode with the other races.
I originally had that stance. However, Wings of Liberty, was just as long, if not longer than StarCraft 1. The expansions were of decent length too and added a good amount of additional content.
and people wonder why we are having mtx in everything. i blame the people who actual buy them.
It's interesting he used Brazil as an example of the importance of regional pricing. Nowadays many companies on Steam are setting their prices in Brazil as high as, if not more than, their price in USA. I simply refused to buy a few games when I noticed that's the case.
Gotta wonder why Starcraft: Ghost literally became a ghost.
One of the titles we missed covering. But our guess? Uneasiness between Platinum and Microsoft.
Platinum said they actually deserve a lot of the blame. Realistically both parties made mistakes. Platinum bit off more than they could chew at the time, and MS didn't quite understand how to just sit back and let the devs work their magic.
Hopefully the two can come together and try again because the game sounded really good.
If it was a single player game I think it would have had a better chance of coming out . Ms wanted it to be online co-op . Dragon games aren’t easy to make and making it co-op is even harder and to me that was the major factor of why it failed
Not sure where people are getting their info that MS 'wanted' it to be co-op. From it's first teaser it was shown to have some type of co-op feature. It was probably pitched to MS as a multiplayer co-op game and Kamiya has gone on record saying he bit off a bit more than he could chew. You can definitely see elements on what they wanted to do with Scalebound in Bayonetta 3.
https://www.gematsu.com/202...
@gangsta_red:
Largely because the game existed before MS wanted it. Another is that more if not all Xbox titles have been online coop. Lastly, in in-game continuity, it made no sense to have customized versions of the same character popping up for boss fights. At least, as a hyped feature of the game, I've never heard explanation for it.
Regardless of what a dev, who wants to do business with MS so likely isn't going to badmouth them, says. Of course they're going to share blame in what a client wanted, even if that one thing was the exact thing making the project "more than he could chew".
@godmars
"Largely because the game existed before MS wanted it."
Where are you getting this info from, because the story I've read is that Kamiya had the idea for a while and always wanted to make it but ultimately went with Bayonetta. He then pitched the idea to MS and then started to develop it. There may have been ideas for features from in other games that may have found there way to Scalbound, but Scalebound was not created beforehand.
"Another is that more if not all Xbox titles have been online coop."
That may be true for most MS games but that still doesn't mean it was mandated by MS for Platinum to do. And even if it was, Platinum agreed to do it, there wasn't a surprise by MS that they needed to add multiplayer halfway through development. That is not how third party development works, both parties agree through signed contracts beforehand what's expected with milestone deliverables.
"..it made no sense to have customized versions of the same character popping up for boss fights."
Not sure what you're not understanding, but there were customized versions of different players coming to help for boss fight. Maybe there was a mechanic to have characters equip different gear, the same type of features that is pretty standard found in multiple games of its type.
"Of course they're going to share blame in what a client wanted, even if that one thing was the exact thing making the project "more than he could chew"."
Kamiyah has never held back his opinions, he's been extremely outspoken in the past. Enough years has gone by for him to have told even a fraction of what you think might have happened and still not him or anyone from Platinum, from recent employees to any ex employee has said anything of what you are claiming.
The best sci-fi games ever made range from diving into the depths of humanity to finding hope among the stars.
Don't really agree on Dead Space being number one. But usually come down to preference. Alot of good games on the list. I was hoping to see Aliens vs Predator by Sierra on the list, as it was a great game. Anyways for me the number one is still Halo but Mass Effect was really good up to the infamous ending of the third game.
I would put Flashback on my list. Its got such a great tone and background design. The cutscenes were pretty good too.
DEAD SPACE 2 as number 1? Really? I've only ever played DEAD SPACE 1 (without finishing it) and, sure enough I liked it a lot, and have been yearning for getting to grips with an hd remastered trilogy for the PS4/XBox One/PS5/XBox Series X/S, but what about Deus Ex Human Revolution & Mankind Divided? Alienation (to quench our thirst for twitching fingers' top-down dual-stick shooters)? Or even Cyberpunk 2077 (once the game has been re-released and all the kinks have been ironed out)?
If not at the #1 spot, it seems to me these games deserved to be on the list somewhere.
But what really strikes me as unfair is, if you're going back to the PS3/XBox 360 era with DS2, how could you forget to mention Killzone 2 & 3? The Resistance games? When it comes to Sci-Fi FPS, it's inadequate not to pay your respects to those stellar franchises! Heck, even the Crysis trilogy should've been there IMHO.
