At Blizzcon, Blizzard announced that Starcraft 2 will be announced as a trilogy. The first version will be the Terran Campaign. The second and third versions will be the Zerg and Protoss campaigns. While for PR purposes they are called ‘expansions’, Blizzard has confirmed the three products will be stand-alone products (which is why they are not ‘expansions’). All three will have multiplayer. The first version will have be able to be multiplayer for all three factions. The Terran Campaign is said to be around 30 missions and is done in a very RPG and unique way of single player.
The multiplayer will NOT be the same for the three versions.
We asked whether that meant the multiplayer suite in each game would be exactly the same, and he said, “More than likely, the successive products will add multiplayer content; we haven’t decided right now what that is.” That brought up the question as to how multiplayer would work if some players only buy the first game while others only buy the second or third games. He said that they haven’t made any determinations yet as to how that would work.
Oh Blizzard. How predictable this all was.
First of all, those who are saying that Blizzard is doing this to gain more money, or that WoW influenced them, or that Activision is telling them what to do are all wrong. Blizzard is one of the very few game companies around which can essentially do whatever they want. They can take as long as they want on a game. They can not release a game if they don’t want to. Publishers aren’t going to mess with the golden goose. After WoW, Blizzard has free reign to do anything, absolutely anything, it wants.
What we do know is that Blizzard’s developers generally have the freedom to do what they want. The cause of the Starcraft 2 trilogy is not coming from a corporate plan to rape the consumer. It is coming from developer narcissism.
Developer narcissisim has been found to be rampant throughout much of the industry lately. Developer narcissism is the developers having a tunnel vision of making a ‘better product’ that they forget the outside world and end up overshooting the customer needs. An example of developer narcissism would be to make a 200 hour single player game. Who has the time to play a 200 hour game? Someone would have to rearrange his or her life to play that game (the people who do this we call the ‘hardcore’). Most people are unwilling to rearrange their lives around a video game. In the same way, people are unwilling to rearrange their lives around a TV show or movie. Digital entertainment is popcorn to the consumer, never the main dish.
Developer narcissism has been traced earlier in Blizzard. When World of Warcraft came out, which it became such a big hit, a developer was caught giving information to a hardcore raiding guild on details of an upcoming dungeon. Some developers apparently identified with the ‘hardcore’ and catered to their desires of yet even more elaborate high end dungeons. The problem here was that this was not the reason why WoW became big in the first place. After the backlash, Blizzard figured out their mistake and realized they needed to keep generating content for those who could not particpate in high end raids.
The way how Blizzard makes a RTS is to create the multiplayer first (as that is where all the gameplay gets ironed out) and use that gameplay to make the single player campaigns. I expect this method is used for almost every successful RTS. As Blizzard gets done ironing out the multiplayer Starcraft 2 gameplay, only then can they really make the single player campaigns.
Unfortunately, the Starcraft 2 developers have Big Ideas about how the single player campaign should be. These grandiose ideas of RPG and mission selection concepts would delay the single player campaign way, way beyond the time needed for games such as Warcraft 3. Since Blizzard developers can do almost anything they want, they, of course, are not going to ‘tone down’ their vision. They decide they want to go through with it.
It reminds me of a saying from Iwata: “What is fun for the developers is not necessarily fun for the consumers.” And what is fun for the consumers is not necessarily fun for the developers. The developers think this idea is COOL, and they get to have so much fun with it. However, the consumers do not think it is fun or ‘cool’ at all.
Rob Pardo reveals the developer narcissism:
Pardo then turned the game off, and it was time to make the announcement: he said that with all of this adventure gameplay and all of these cinematics and missions Starcraft II was just getting too big — they wanted every race to have its own filled-out story, complete with options and branching paths and full characters. And so, said Pardo, they had three options: cut back and do less, open up and make three games, or delay the game greatly while still compromising. He asked the audience what they would have done, and they cheered when given the option Blizzard chose: there will be three different Starcraft II games, one for each race.
Translate the bold and what Blizzard developers really want to do is be ‘artists’ and make the singleplayer into a Magnum Opus. It is the natural instinct of developers to want to do ‘bigger and better’ of what has gone before. However, it is a grave mistake to treat the definition of quality by the definition of the product. Rather, the only measure of quality is the definition given by the consumer. (For a rather easy example of this, look at the PS3 versus the Wii. The PS3’s quality was defined in a product prism, be it better technology, more features, etc. The Wii’s quality was defined by how consumers absorb it, how they fit it into their lives. Since consumers define what is quality, Wii’s sales speak for themselves.)
How do customers consume the RTS game? This is a fun question. Almost always, the customer plays the single player campaign. The reason why is because the customer is scared of multiplayer due to not knowing any of the units or gameplay. In other words, the customer plays the single player as a tutorial to understand the multiplayer.
Sure enough, the Blizzard RTS games all used the single player as an entertaining tutorial from Warcraft 1 onward. The first missions were very easy and used starting units. Later missions would use more advanced units and get the player used to them. An entertaining story tied all these missions together and gave purpose as to why the conflict exists in the first place. Once one campaign was over, it would switch to another faction and the process would start all over again. This change of perspective was highly entertaining and customers were willing to play through all the single player campaign because of it.
There are some people who do play the game primarily for single player. However, almost all of these players majorly suck in multiplayer. The dirty secret is that these players’ game tactics only really revolve around turtling (surrounding their base with high powered towers and units) and advancing the tech tree. It is no wonder they always die in multiplayer. Nevertheless, these players breathe in the story, lore, and cinematics of the single player game thinking that it is the meat of the game. It isn’t. It is merely the sizzle. The steak is the multiplayer and always has been. Blizzard RTS games aren’t designed around singleplayer but multiplayer. Starcraft 2 is no exception.
One can trace some of this developer narcissism back to Frozen Throne actually. Most of the missions had absolutely nothing to do with multiplayer gameplay. There were new units, that one fought against or played with, as well as new factions not available in multiplayer. Many missions were non-base missions which were merely a group of units going through puzzle like caves. “What the hell is this garbage?” I thought as I destroyed countless Naga. Apparently, the developers were taking the storyline and characters of Warcraft 3 a little too seriously. Most of this was written off as simply setting up World of Warcraft. Now, it appears Blizzard RTS developers were beginning to overshoot the single player campaign.
One bad tactic some people are doing is saying that those unhappy with the ‘trilogy’ should be ‘overjoyed’ by it, that they should be on their hands and knees thanking Blizzard. This is condenscending and is not addressing the concerns these unhappy customers have.
Customers care about purchasing a complete product. This is why there is so much anger at DLC and other things that are sold after the game comes out. No one wants to pay for a content patch. However, expansion packs are considered complete products. If companies put up expansion packs as downloadable purchases, no one complains. But only by breaking it into pieces, the customer feels nickel and dimed because the customer does not feel he or she is purchasing a complete product.
Rob Pardo says Starcraft 2 The Terran Campaign is a complete product because it has 30+ missions as the original Starcraft had 32 missions. Rob Pardo does not define what is a complete product. Only the customer does.
If customers say a game feels empty and not complete, and the developer disagrees, who is right in the end? Developer can argue with customers all he wants, but the customers are the judges of quality, not the developers, nor the game journalists.
What Blizzard needs to ask is, “Why does the customer not feel this is a complete product?” The answers are pretty obvious:
-Lack of tutorial introduction (which is what single player campaigns are) of the Protoss and Zerg.
-Lack of variety in the single player (30 missions of the same race will grow boring no matter how ‘amazing’ the missions are. The Protoss and Zerg Terran missions are missing the point of perspective which the Protoss and Zerg campaigns bring).
-Unfinished story.
-Unfinished multiplayer (as Pardo admits, we will likely have to buy the game thrice for multiplayer updates. It won’t stay just the single player campaigns because everyone would, and rightly so, pirate the Zerg and Protoss campaigns)
Anyone remember the first Red Alert? It came on two discs which had a different campaign each. Both had full multiplayer. Westwood (God bless them!) intended people to buy Red Alert and lend the second disc to a friend where they could play multiplayer together (and the friend could play a campaign). This is one of the big reasons Red Alert was successful.
Now imagine Starcraft II and its trilogy. When the Zerg Campaign comes out, the dutiful Blizzard fan purchases it. However, this fan has a friend who wants to play. No problem. He lends the old Terran Campaign to him and the two can play multiplayer without that friend ever having to buy the game. Blizzard will never allow this. The fact that they had not thought this far confirms the trilogy is a result of developer narcissism rather than a business model approach.
What I would like to see is Blizzard fans get together and make deals with each other on borrowing the trilogy parts. Starcraft Player A and Starcraft Player B buy the Terran Campaign. Starcraft Player A buys the Zerg Campaign and gives it to the to Starcraft Player B when he is done. Starcraft Player B buys the Protoss Campaign and gives it to Starcraft Player A when he is done. You see what a mess this is presenting? Blizzard obviously is stuck in their ‘we-developers-are-genius’ world and are not considering customer behavior.
What is sad is that customers are more than willing to purchase expansion packs, even multiple ones, for Starcraft. Blizzard knows this which is why they are trying to spin the trilogy into ‘expansions’. But if they are stand alone products, then they are anything but expansions.
What is not said but felt is that the customer feels insulted by this move. Why? It is because Blizzard is not considering customer behavior. STARCRAFT WAS NEVER ABOUT SINGLE PLAYER ANYWAY. Single player is not why the game got big in Korea. Single player is not why the original game is still played today. So why the hell is Blizzard focusing so much on the single player?
It is because they want to, customers be damned. They are so caught up in believing how ‘beautiful’ their Starcraft 2 baby is, that only the most fleshed out campaigns will do. They couldn’t wait for an ‘expansion’ for them to do their experimental single player campaign. Oh no. Blizzard developers are angels, I hear. They float around on a plane of existence above those of measely customers. They are so brilliant, so genius, so incredible, instead of customers complaining (how dare they!), customers ought to be on their knees and begging forgiveness from the great Blizzard gods. This is how arrogant they have become.
This issue will not go away. Blizzard’s reputation, while high, will take a hit for it. Sure, they will make money from it. But remember, it is easier to lower a company’s brand than to raise it. And everyone is agreeing that Blizzard’s best days seem increasingly behind them. (I’ve had warning signs on Starcraft 2 ever since I heard developers refused to remove the Zerg queen even though they haven’t been able to make it work after two years. Don’t they know the Queen destroyed the Borg? Why would Zerg need such a matriarch instead of being a cool collective? And why insist it stay in the game when it is nothing more than a buff unit? It is likely because they have single player ‘story’ plans for it. Ugh.)
One very shrewed observer told me another reason than ‘developer narcissism’ of why the trilogy is taking place.
“You don’t get it, Malstrom. While developer narcissism certainly has a part, it doesn’t explain the business reason.”
“You’re right. Starcraft isn’t about single player anyway. Are you saying that it is an excuse to say the released product is not finished?”
“Yes. Very, very few games are as anticipated as Starcraft II is. Remember when Warcraft 3 came out, while a very, very good game, it did disapoint a little.”
“I do remember!”
“Starcraft 2, while likely high quality, is going to disapoint. It is simply the nature of the beast with all this anticipation around it. Even if the game does everything perfectly, fans will say, ‘meh, it is OK. It could have been better!'”
“You are right that the higher the game is on its hype pedestal, the further it falls. Starcraft 2 is not out so it is in abstract. Everyone imagines the game to be *perfect*. But since no game is ever *perfect*, Starcraft 2 can only disapoint despite its quality.”
“Exactly! And this is the real reason why the developers have gone way overboard on the single player campaign in the first place. They are no where near starting the Protoss and Zerg campaigns.”
“You mean…”
“The only way for Blizzard to sidestep the inevitable disapointment that Starcraft 2 will bring when it is released (due to how hyped it is) is for it to release a product that is still not yet *done*.”
“So when zealot fans play Starcraft 2 and, once the hype leaves their brains, they feel disapointed, they will not complain because of the two other parts of the trilogy coming out?”
“Yes! And Blizzard gets to easily fix anything that people did not like in the Terran Campaign.”
“So what you are saying is that the decision of the trilogy is because Blizzard lacks confidence in Starcraft 2 in the context of surpassing the legendary Starcraft 1. This is why the necessity for the ‘game isn’t fully done’ for the trilogy.”
“All this bullshit Blizzard is spewing about it being ‘choice’ for customers is really about a ‘safety net’ for Blizzard.”
Whether one believes the move for a trilogy is to fulfill the appetite for developer narcissism or for Blizzard to create a ‘safety net’ for saving the Starcraft franchise from extreme hype and inevitable letdown from such lofty heights doesn’t matter. What matters is that the Starcraft 2 trilogy is designed for Blizzard’s benefit, not for the customer’s. A customer oriented company, no longer. Blizzard might as well be described now as a developer oriented company, inwardly looking, rather than outwardly. The old Blizzard I knew, who included Kali with Warcraft 2 to make the game more enjoyable for customers, to the allowance of puds, to the ‘spawning’ of the game onto multiple computers… that company is gone.
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