A few weeks ago Patrick Wyatt posted a really awesome blog about the making of the first StarCraft that we posted in the BW forums here. There is another part of it out today about how SC1 went from a game meant to fill an empty spot in Blizzard's release schedule to a more serious A-level title, and as with last time it's a fascinating read.
In my previous article about StarCraft I talked about why we rebooted the project and changed it from a follow-on to Warcraft — derisively called “Orcs in space” in 1996 — into the award-winning game that we were finally able to deliver after two more years of hardship. But one noteworthy source of inspiration didn’t make it into my previous article, and that’s what I’m going to write about today.
Blizzard first brought StarCraft to the attention of the gaming public at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in June of 1996. At that point the game had only been in development for a few months so it was no surprise to the development team and other staff members that it wasn’t markedly different from its immediate antecedent, Warcraft II.
With the success of previous Warcraft titles and of Command and Conquer from Westwood Studios, the RTS genre attracted competitors. The race to build the next great RTS was on, and consequently Blizzard was about to be publicly embarrassed by its choice to show so early in the development lifecycle. Just a short walk away from the Blizzard booth was that of another game which appeared to be better than StarCraft in every respect: Dominion: Storm over Gift 3, from Ion Storm.
It’s 1996 and you want to buy an RTS game. Would you pay money for this?
Dominion Storm
Or this?
StarCraft at E3 in 1996
Trade show espionage
During the early years of Blizzard — back before the company was even called that — the entire development team would attend trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and E3. We’d spread out over the show floor and “research” (that is, play) products at our competitors’ booths, getting an early look at what other game studios would be launching over the next year. It was an opportunity to analyze gaming trends, learn about technological advances, evaluate new user interface techniques, and review gameplay. Even better, our competitors would facilitate this learning by demoing the games and answering our questions, and of course we’d do the same for them back at our booth. This is one reason game publishers have a love/hate relationship with trade shows, along with high costs (tens of thousands of dollars for a few feet of floor space) and excessive distractions for the dev teams, is that other studios are like hungry wolves looking for prey to devour.
In the early years, when our games were programmed for 16-bit game consoles, our programming staff would review soon-to-be-launched Super Nintendo (SNES) titles, and would crowd around games trying to puzzle out how their developers had accomplished some feat of technical magic and derring-do. The SNES was an odd combination of a glacially slow 2.58 megahertz (not gigahertz) processor with a tiny 64 kilobytes (not megabytes or gigabytes) of memory coupled with exotic microchips designed to rapidly blast bits onto the screen — if you could figure out the right incantations to make it all work.
We’d stand staring at a game talking in phrases that only a few thousand folks in the whole world — most of them working for Nintendo — knew anything about. Someone would toss off an idea like “perhaps they’re using the hblank interrupt to set the scroll register to adjust the view distance in mode 7″, and we’d all do our best to wrap our heads around that idea, learning a great deal in the process. Our artists and designers would be similarly wowed by their own show-floor discoveries.
It was an exciting experience to see so many new ideas in just a few days, and we’d come back from the shows both energized by our findings and exhausted by the brilliance and audacity of our competitors.
Better yet, these trade shows were held in exotic venues like Las Vegas where we’d get to stay out late drinking and gambling before dragging our hung-over selves back to the trade-show floor. Staffing the booth during the early mornings was always challenging, and required a careful evaluation of who would be the best advocates for the game after nights of excess — would it be the hardy-partiers, with their higher alcohol tolerance, or the more abstemious members of the team — the lightweights? While it might seem that the lightweights (myself included) were a better bet, just a few drinks more than usual might cause us to miss a morning event due to a catastrophic hangover.
For the privilege of getting access to the insights to be found on the show floor our dev team staff would be stacked like cordwood in cheap motel rooms far from the convention centers to save the company money. We stayed in a hotel so far into the rotting core of Chicago that several on the team felt the necessity to carry steak-knives as protection against the perceived threat of muggers. And who could forget when one of the two elevators caught fire and was put out of service, necessitating fourteen-floor hikes morning and evening.
Back on the show floor after these escapades, Blizzard staff members would discover great games on the show floor and would — like honeybees returning to the nest — communicate their findings so other devs could seek them out to harvest insights.
As the Ion Storm booth was next but one over from our booth it was no surprise that we quickly discovered in Dominion Storm a stunningly better entrant into the real-time strategy (RTS) genre than our company’s paltry efforts, which was all the more humiliating given that StarCraft represented our third foray into the genre.
Yay. Forgot about this. Thanks for reminding me :D
Edit: Wow just read this. That fake demo sitautuon was just mind blowing. lol Who would have known that the game was fake and because of that SC was rebooted.
The entire idea that StarCraft was re-birthed because of a fake demo Ion Storm gave is incredible, it's such an odd piece of history that really changed the course of how games are viewed.
The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
Story like this is another example of how much I appreciate what Brood War came to be. Stars seem to have aligned perfectly for the game to become and give birth to what had been such amazing memories.
On September 28 2012 08:15 Hesmyrr wrote: Story like this is another example of how much I appreciate what Brood War came to be. Stars seem to have aligned perfectly for the game to become and give birth to what had been such amazing memories.
Think of all those things that never came to pass because the stars didn't align for them.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Well the focus on sales and making games more casual friendly is a product of these earlier game developers being so successful I'd imagine. When the industry is growing I feel like the focus on the business aspect is important, but not the driving force of game development. Seems like larger companies have important long term goals to deliver on so other things become the focus.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Well I think your tldr may be idealizing things a bit. It's certain a romantic thing to believe, that the developers are most left alone, but these days depending on the company, who knows?
He did dumbed down his blog a little bit and made it more accessible which is a good thing. Also it was supposed to be a 2 part thingy but i think it's not quite over yet, i really want to read about the story behind the pathing of the units in StarCraft.
if you look at the Blizzard games that were developed with Patrick Wyatt and co on the team and on the later games without them makes you think how much the greatness of games like Starcraft and Diablo 1 can acutally be attributed to them and not the remaining Blizzard.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Well the focus on sales and making games more casual friendly is a product of these earlier game developers being so successful I'd imagine. When the industry is growing I feel like the focus on the business aspect is important, but not the driving force of game development. Seems like larger companies have important long term goals to deliver on so other things become the focus.
I think the Allen Adham thing is a good reminder that there was never a golden age amongst company owners where they were all about the game and not the money. Allen seems like he was exactly one of those money guys. But it kinda reminds me of Frank Zappa's thoughts on the decline of the music industry. Again there was still the money focused owners, but they didn't really know what would sell, so all sorts of accidental, crazy experimental things got released. But once they found success they become much more focused on what target groups will or will not want so they can repeat the success.
On September 28 2012 13:48 aqui wrote: if you look at the Blizzard games that were developed with Patrick Wyatt and co on the team and on the later games without them makes you think how much the greatness of games like Starcraft and Diablo 1 can acutally be attributed to them and not the remaining Blizzard.
I think it's a little extreme to think that way. Reading through what Patrick wrote, it seems like a significant factor in the quality variance from game to game isn't really driven by the developer themselves, but rather by how rushed the dev cycle was and what sort of audience the game was targeted towards.
Games in general, nowadays, are marketed towards far less of a "core" audience than games were in the late 90s. For example, no gaming executive will let his developers combine a groundbreaking concept with market-limiting violence into the same package nowadays, whereas in the 90s, that was commonplace since the entire market as built around the concept of "moar gibs for your money."
So good, thanks for posting. I can't imagine what it must have been like to find out that demo was a fake after it drove them so hard to the point of breaking so much ground with starcraft. Amazing stuff.
I have always wanted to play that old wc2 engine based alpha. Space instead of water and minerals instead of trees... fine. But how developed are the races and units? So curious, what are those like fucking flying strawberries? And the stop button is a stop sign with "stop" written in a zergy font? Too good! Someday they gotta let us have it.
Really interesting reads. Clicking around now on some of his other articles and came across this gem:
"I believe that Warcraft was the first game to use this user-interface metaphor. When I first implemented the feature it was possible to select and control large numbers of units at a time; there was no upper limit on the number of units that could be selected.
...
Later in the development process, and after many design arguments between team-members, we decided to allow players to select only four units at a time based on the idea that users would be required to pay attention to their tactical deployments rather than simply gathering a mob and sending them into the fray all at once. We later increased this number to nine in Warcraft II. Command and Conquer, the spiritual successor to Dune 2, didn’t have any upper bound on the number of units that could be selected. It’s worth another article to talk about the design ramifications, for sure."
This new blog entry seemed less technical but it was still great. Allen seems like an ass, but once you start a business it's always going to be about money first and everything else second.
Seems the developers were a bit more resistant back then.
Westwood definitely liked their RTS games. Dune 2000 has always been my 2nd favorite to BW/SC2. Sadly it lacks any real depth as the vast majority of units/buildings are shared between races, but it's still a very hard game. Some of the campaign missions are real pain in the asses.
I loved this blog and the previous ones that Wyatt has done. I also recommend reading the article he linked about what happened behind the Scenes at Ion Storm.
On September 28 2012 18:22 lost_artz wrote: Westwood definitely liked their RTS games. Dune 2000 has always been my 2nd favorite to BW/SC2. Sadly it lacks any real depth as the vast majority of units/buildings are shared between races, but it's still a very hard game. Some of the campaign missions are real pain in the asses.
It was just a remake for people who never played dune2, dune 2 X c&c/red alert set of rules.
But it was good remake a specially Frank Klepacki's Soundtrack like all of his soundtracks.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
I think you're trying to interpret a limited detail anecdote in a specific way that fits your beliefs
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
Maybe that holds true for Blizzard, but having read the article about ION Storm that Wyatt links I don't think you can say it applies to game development as a whole.
On September 28 2012 08:01 heyoka wrote: The entire idea that StarCraft was re-birthed because of a fake demo Ion Storm gave is incredible, it's such an odd piece of history that really changed the course of how games are viewed.
Pretty insane eh.. I probably would have gotten into Quake or CS had that never happened.
EDIT: It's kind of a shame though when you think about Blizzard's approach nowadays. They could improve b.net immensely if they took some cues from other developers but it doesn't seem to be that big of a deal to them.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
Maybe that holds true for Blizzard, but having read the article about ION Storm that Wyatt links I don't think you can say it applies to game development as a whole.
That Ion Storm article is ridiculous. T-T I'm glad I don't work at a company like that but I'm always leery of getting suckered into a situation like that...
I thought he already touched base with the "Oh crap, our alpha build isn't even close to the other competition. Heck, he even mentioned Ion Storm, but this is still fun nonetheless when he talks about staying on the outskirts of Chicago and carrying steak knives for protection lmao.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
THIS x1000 I couldn't of said it better. But I would of used more caps.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
From my reading, it seems more like they were in the business of making games. They saw what appeared to be a vastly superior competing product and realized they needed to improve theirs or it wouldn't make any money. This coincided with new delivery media (CD-ROM) requiring bigger and better game assets to stay competitive, so the development process was extended. In both cases it was about selling a game that was good enough to sell, it seems to me.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
That seems unfair. This piece notes how Bliz's biz team had a target to push out games at X rate and the ion storm article he links mentions making "Burn games" to exploit contracts with publishers. It's the usual battle between risk,uncertainity and art.
Sure we're seeing more games target women and softer demos but well frankly that's the point. Back then they were selling to a much smaller audience in a much smaller industry.
I love this blog. And what I take away most from it is the power of small yet talented groups as opposed to large and beurocratic businesses when it comes to making games. Blizzard, like many other game companies, made gold. Now they, like many other game companies, make shit. But lo and behold, the small-scale indie-scene is on fire.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
haha how soccer moms played this game! :D Couldnt help but laugh at that!
On September 28 2012 19:38 hellsan631 wrote: I loved this blog and the previous ones that Wyatt has done. I also recommend reading the article he linked about what happened behind the Scenes at Ion Storm.
This article was really cool. I knew that the original alpha build of SC was God-awful, but I didn't realize that they got their asses kicked by their neighbors at E3.
I then almost died laughing when I went to the link about why ION Storm folded and saw that they were the same company that made Daikatana. I just can't get over the fact that SC is an amazing game because of Daikatana.
On September 29 2012 09:36 tsuxiit wrote: Damn, what a unique and incredible company Blizzard used to be.
It still is, or never was whichever one you prefer... If you actually read that article you will see that everyone who thinks that things were all about games back then more so than they are now is wrong... It's just that back then no one really knew the proper marketing formula for video games, so tons of products flopped and companies would be perpetually going broke and coming back up again under a different name thanks to the impending internet/technology bubble.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Yes exactly how i feel about the subject. To me it seems this change of mind came some years ago, though i can't exactly put my finger on the when
S the Others this one is awesome and also read the one he linked to wow that was some sick shit (http://www.dallasobserver.com/1999-01-14/news/stormy-weather/all/), even though you shouldn't believe everything you read online I have lost a bit of respect for Romero
Made me bookmark this blog, and discover through this article the shitstorm about Daikatana (well, further that just "Romero + the first biggest fail in the videogame industry" :D)
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Yep.
People were trying to make a good game. So it was a great success and they made a lot of money. Now people try to make a lot of money and therefore to make a good game. Can't blame them. They have shareholders, huge financial investments on their shoulders, enormous competition... Of course the former option produces something potentially extraordinary, the other one produces... well, you know.
The best game I have seen in the last years is Dwarf Fortress. It's a completely non-lucrative project. No marketing, no shareholders pressure, no commercial strategy. Just guys trying to make something as good as possible. And if less people plays it because it is not user friendly, well, fuck it, it doesn't even matter.
More money =/= better perspectives of awesomness. Often, it's exactly the opposite. People should remember that, including when thinking about esports. And that's also something I witness every day in my field, which is music. Britney Spears, or Lady Gaga are supposed to make money and be succesfull, so they do their best to make good music. Ray Charles, Wagner or Bob Dylan wanted desperately to make good music, and they eventually became succesfull. I think we will remember Dylan for being a great artist, and ady Gaga for being very popular. It doesn't even matter that Wagner made money, and it doesn't really matter what kind of music Britney Spear does.
Pretty cool read on the guys blog, that first version of SC looked crazy bad. Glad that one company showed fake stuff so we ended up getting a good SC rather than that one. Interesting to see some insider view of things that goes on with game companies behind the scenes, pretty cutthroat business.
"So anyway I fixed lots of bugs. Some of my own, sure, but mostly the elusive bugs written by other tired programmers. One of the best compliments I’ve received came just a few months ago, when Brian Fitzgerald, one of two best programmers I’ve had occasion to work with, mentioned a code-review of StarCraft; they were blown away by how many changes and fixes I had made over the entire code-base. At least I got some credit for the effort, if only well after the fact!"
On September 29 2012 05:21 Osmoses wrote: I love this blog. And what I take away most from it is the power of small yet talented groups as opposed to large and beurocratic businesses when it comes to making games. Blizzard, like many other game companies, made gold. Now they, like many other game companies, make shit. But lo and behold, the small-scale indie-scene is on fire.
I don't see how Blizzard makes crap games nowadays. I think it's more an issue of nostalgia clouding your views. SC2 is a great game hands down. D3 is a great game hands down. WOW is a great game hands down.
The one thing that has changed is the amount of money required to make a AAA game--i.e when 100mil is on the line, you can bet your ass business people (sadly) will be involved. Indie games are low risk thus can take a chance, which in turn is giving us some truly awesome games.
Forget making a WoW or Starcraft movie, there should be an Orcs in Space movie, this is amazing to read about. It would blow away Fist Full of Quarters if they would drop a movie about an oldschool game developer's story.
Patrick's recent blogs on StarCraft's development are amazing (and you must go read his linked article regarding the turmoil that went on over at Ion Storm). His most recent one reminded me of something Michael Abrash (of Quake and more recently Valve software fame - one of the smartest software guys in the world imo) wrote back in the 90s and it's still up on Bluesnews. http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/chap64.shtml
Basically he talks about a friend of his, Tom Wilson, who had heard that a rival video card manufacturer had used a technique (FIFO buffers specifically) to boost their chipset's performance. Wilson, wracked his brain and pushed himself and his thinking to the extreme to try and figure out what his competitor was doing. In the end he came up with an idea that while not perfect, seemed good enough.
Turns out his competitor hadn't really done anything particularly brilliant and his solution was actually far more effective and dramatically increased the performance of the chipset he was working on.
It's amazing how during this era of computing, individuals could still make a massive difference. It's also remarkable how we see time and time again, when faced with competition how brilliant people can be.
It's funny that despite it's sheer level of dysfunction, we have Ion Storm to thank for our favourite game being as good as it ended up being.
On September 29 2012 05:21 Osmoses wrote: I love this blog. And what I take away most from it is the power of small yet talented groups as opposed to large and beurocratic businesses when it comes to making games. Blizzard, like many other game companies, made gold. Now they, like many other game companies, make shit. But lo and behold, the small-scale indie-scene is on fire.
I don't see how Blizzard makes crap games nowadays. I think it's more an issue of nostalgia clouding your views. SC2 is a great game hands down. D3 is a great game hands down. WOW is a great game hands down.
The one thing that has changed is the amount of money required to make a AAA game--i.e when 100mil is on the line, you can bet your ass business people (sadly) will be involved. Indie games are low risk thus can take a chance, which in turn is giving us some truly awesome games.
you're absolutely right. I don't see how our generation of radio music is crappy. I think it's more of an issue of nostalgia coulding your views. Bieber is a great artist hands down. Minaj is a great artist hands down. Gaga is a great artist hands down.
The one thing that has changed is the amount of money required to market nobody into an AAA fame level artist. You can bet your ass business people are involved with a shitload of cash involved. Indie bands are low risk thus can experiment with different sounds, which in turn is giving us some truly awesome shit.
Equating them is an unfair exaggeration but I couldn't stand it because that's who you sound like.
On September 29 2012 05:21 Osmoses wrote: I love this blog. And what I take away most from it is the power of small yet talented groups as opposed to large and beurocratic businesses when it comes to making games. Blizzard, like many other game companies, made gold. Now they, like many other game companies, make shit. But lo and behold, the small-scale indie-scene is on fire.
I don't see how Blizzard makes crap games nowadays. I think it's more an issue of nostalgia clouding your views. SC2 is a great game hands down. D3 is a great game hands down. WOW is a great game hands down.
The one thing that has changed is the amount of money required to make a AAA game--i.e when 100mil is on the line, you can bet your ass business people (sadly) will be involved. Indie games are low risk thus can take a chance, which in turn is giving us some truly awesome games.
you're absolutely right. I don't see how our generation of radio music is crappy. I think it's more of an issue of nostalgia coulding your views. Bieber is a great artist hands down. Minaj is a great artist hands down. Gaga is a great artist hands down.
The one thing that has changed is the amount of money required to market nobody into an AAA fame level artist. You can bet your ass business people are involved with a shitload of cash involved. Indie bands are low risk thus can experiment with different sounds, which in turn is giving us some truly awesome shit.
Equating them is an unfair exaggeration but I couldn't stand it because that's who you sound like.
It dosen't change the fact that Sc2, D3 and WoW are all great games.
On September 28 2012 08:08 HawaiianPig wrote: The more I read these blogs the more it's clear that game development in this era was dominated by extremely skilled individuals facing the growing pains of a burgeoning industry. It seems it's resulted in a lot of accidental hit games.
I mean... I especially love that Starcraft was rebooted on account of fear induced from a fake demo. Fantastic.
But more specifically, every time I read a story like this, about the development of older games, I always notice one key theme: that developers were in the business of making games and not in the business of making games.
Although guys like Allen Adham would push development cycles into strict timeframes or push for the development of more casual games, it seems that the sterile "maximize sales at all costs" approach would not bleed into the actual content of a game. There was no "What if soccer moms played this game?" focus group in order to make the game more accessible.
There was simply: "Make an RTS game set in space"
And that's what we got.
Yep.
People were trying to make a good game. So it was a great success and they made a lot of money. Now people try to make a lot of money and therefore to make a good game. Can't blame them. They have shareholders, huge financial investments on their shoulders, enormous competition... Of course the former option produces something potentially extraordinary, the other one produces... well, you know.
The best game I have seen in the last years is Dwarf Fortress. It's a completely non-lucrative project. No marketing, no shareholders pressure, no commercial strategy. Just guys trying to make something as good as possible. And if less people plays it because it is not user friendly, well, fuck it, it doesn't even matter.
More money =/= better perspectives of awesomness. Often, it's exactly the opposite. People should remember that, including when thinking about esports. And that's also something I witness every day in my field, which is music. Britney Spears, or Lady Gaga are supposed to make money and be succesfull, so they do their best to make good music. Ray Charles, Wagner or Bob Dylan wanted desperately to make good music, and they eventually became succesfull. I think we will remember Dylan for being a great artist, and ady Gaga for being very popular. It doesn't even matter that Wagner made money, and it doesn't really matter what kind of music Britney Spear does.
Great analogy. I feel the same way.
Sc2, D3 and WoW are/have become "awful" games. Sc2 ditched all the aspects that made BW the greatest RTS ever. D3 was competitive for all the wrong reasons, instead of requiring skilfull play, the game required expensive items, the game didn't even have PvP at release. WoW's competitive side is awful and the game itself is pretty boring as well, the quests lack originality,...
Now WoW was a pretty great game at release. But Sc2 is just a half assed product, even when we don't compare it to BW. Sc2's battlenet experience is horrible (aside from having practically zero delay). Compare the online experience to DOTA2. I don't know what's going on in blizzard's head, but them relying on the epic reputation they build upon games as brood war and warcraft 3 is becoming doubtful and I'm sure a lot of people are in the same boat as me, doubting to continue buying blizzard's products if this trend continues....
Reading comments, that's what we can expect in the future:
1) reaction of the development team about the formation of a professional starcraft scene in Korea and how various glitches in the game contributed to balance it;
2) When did you decide that races should be totally unique? Another interesting point is that there are screenshots from an alpha version where the dropship seems to land and the goliaths shoot lasers. This version looks better (at least on screenshots) than the version you shipped. What made you change this engine?
The article is really good (as usual), but even more interesting to me was the link to the Daikatana article from 1999 that was contained therein. Read that, if you haven't already! It's like every greek hubris/tragedy storyline rolled into one.
On October 01 2012 20:43 kar1181 wrote: Patrick's recent blogs on StarCraft's development are amazing (and you must go read his linked article regarding the turmoil that went on over at Ion Storm). His most recent one reminded me of something Michael Abrash (of Quake and more recently Valve software fame - one of the smartest software guys in the world imo) wrote back in the 90s and it's still up on Bluesnews. http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/chap64.shtml
Basically he talks about a friend of his, Tom Wilson, who had heard that a rival video card manufacturer had used a technique (FIFO buffers specifically) to boost their chipset's performance. Wilson, wracked his brain and pushed himself and his thinking to the extreme to try and figure out what his competitor was doing. In the end he came up with an idea that while not perfect, seemed good enough.
Turns out his competitor hadn't really done anything particularly brilliant and his solution was actually far more effective and dramatically increased the performance of the chipset he was working on.
It's amazing how during this era of computing, individuals could still make a massive difference. It's also remarkable how we see time and time again, when faced with competition how brilliant people can be.
It's funny that despite it's sheer level of dysfunction, we have Ion Storm to thank for our favourite game being as good as it ended up being.
Reminds me of that movie that had two spies being hired by two chemical companies to steal each others ideas, only to realize that the 'huge announcement' that one was making, was all just a ploy to push their opponents to try to catch up, only to get it stolen in the end. or something... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicity_(film)
And why smh towards blizzard, sure some of the original people aren't there anymore, but the games they put out are still great games, people just have unrealistic expectations.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Dominion-Storm.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Starcraft-orcs-in-space.png)
like all of his soundtracks.
