Dustin Browder's Interview at PC Gamer - Page 3

On January 25 2013 22:03 Epamynondas wrote:

One would think that Blizzard has access to the number of people who bought the game and the number of people who ladder.

On January 25 2013 22:08 MavivaM wrote:

That's an intelligent post and I never thought about that.
So there are 2.5 million of people who bought the game only to go online and play the single campaign?

...I still hope he is bullshitting us >_>

From your perspective, what is killing eSports?

Browder: [Laughs] I thought I was killing eSports. I thought that was my title. I have the crown! That’s what Twitter keeps saying.

That’s the silliest question, because nothing is killing eSports. It’s growing at logarithmic rates. Did you ever think we would be here, in this, place, two and a half years later? We’re just swimming in pros, and so many events you can’t even keep track of them all. Like, we used to talk about timing patches relative to major eSports events. Now there’s no way.


There is no way for us to patch Wings of Liberty without it hitting an eSport event. We went live with our beta in the US, because we thought that was going to be enough to give us testing. And we have had nothing but feedback from all over the world that’s, “So, when can I run my tournament? I want to run a [Heart of the Swarm] tournament. I’m in Korea, or I’m in Europe. When can I run a HotS tournament?”

It’s just constant. The amount of constant input coming into this studio, “More! More! This! That!” It’s just insane. So, the idea that anything is killing eSports is nuts. eSports is growing out of control. It’s alive and breathing and flying away. I have no idea when it’s going to stop.

And I think the StarCraft community should take some pride and joy in that. They should take some ownership of that, and say, “We did that. We helped build this. We are ground-floor, core contributors to what makes any eSport going forward.” They should, in their minds and hearts, claim some of that. Because they’ve absolutely earned it. They were on the ground floor. They were here when it really started to happen.

On January 25 2013 22:30 Veldril wrote:


He is not. You will be surprised how many people outside of SC community hates Multiplayer and never touch it.

The problem with Teamliquid community is that we are sometimes too tightly focus on one game and not notice the trend or opinion of general public.

On January 25 2013 22:03 Epamynondas wrote:

One would think that Blizzard has access to the number of people who bought the game and the number of people who ladder.

On January 25 2013 21:44 MavivaM wrote:
Dustin Browder never fails to make me tilt my head.
He seems like a pretty nice and funny guy, and also he's willing to keep having interviews (although PcGamer isn't exactly the SC2 community) and exposing himself.

But I really can't get if he's clueless or he plays stupid.

This gem:

Now, unless I'm stupid Browder wants us to believe that Sc2 fans, some of the MOST VOCAL videogames fans around, apparently love the single player campaign... but they shut up, they don't speak about the great plot twists, the romantic love story and the deep character evolution from the previous game.
Simply to avoid wasting space on the internet, even in Blizzard forums: they just wait for him to pass by and then praise him for the great innovations.
At least half of the fans?
Iirc Sc2 sold about 1.5 million copies in the very first days: let's say that the number hasn't changed.
That means that Browder met around 750.000 people in real life just because they wanted to congratulate for the single player campaign's glorious experience.
Or at least they PM'ed him, since I don't recall all this enthusiasm both on TL or Blizzard forums.
I hope he is bullshitting us since he wants to sell HoTS and actually doesn't really think like that, multiplayer it's what keep his game to be played.

I can see him talking about meta possibilities and giving us the example of a gold league player since Sc2 is not only for pros but even for baboons like myself, but then he talks about maps, innovations and the community feedback and I get mad.
All Blizzard maps are quite bad, there are a lot of solid - and especially willing to contribute - mapmakers, but afaik no one even contacted then.
The only time Blizzard decided to implement new maps, was because someone else - Team Liquid - made a contest.
The unranked system seems to be a concern, but other games such as League of legends show that it works. They could have even simply made another, identical same rank system and not show the ladder points to players (and I suspect that's exactly what they are doing) without making such a fuss.

With all the talking about esports dying and so on, I still don't see it that bleak.
The community is simply great, the game may have some flaws but it's far from being bad, unwatchable or unplayable.
yet the one who seems the least helping is Blizzard, insanely enough.
Tell what you want about Riot, their 'true' streaming numbers and the objective quality of their game at pro level, but here's the thing: they check the game and update him at least once a month.
They are always there.
New skins, art contests, even something as simple as the lobby image change.
From time to time they add new game features and so on.

Blizzard should be a way more accomplished company and yet we have to wait them to sell a whole new game JUST TO HAVE THE NEW REPLAY PATCH.
And to think that unlike League of legends, Sc2 could have an immense map pool and possibilities everywhere.
There are people who create mods for free, even if only to improve the game experience like the Stronger Team Colour one, for hell's sake!

I mean, up until some time ago you must even pay to change a stupid username.
Browder jokes about being the one who kills esports, and I think it's a pretty funny joke.
It's not a serious thing and surely I don't believe that there's a single individual responsible of everything wrong.
But his company position is something I can't understand.
They have the resources, the fan base, the opinions of people who play and know their game more than their own employees, and yet they always want people to beg.
It's not a matter of race X being OP, it's a matter of attitude.

Am I an ungrate asshole or simply wrong?
Sometimes we assume that whenever someone has a negtive opinion he must be trolling, but I don't see where I'm wrong...

On January 26 2013 01:39 Wivyx wrote:


I'm not one of the players Dustin describes, that never play multiplayer or doesn't follow the scene, but I actually enjoy the single player experience a lot more than the multiplayer one (though I love watching pro games). I'm looking forward to HotS first and foremost for the continued campaign and secondly for improved multiplayer at the pro level. My own multiplayer experience is not really a concern and doesn't really influence my decision to buy the game.

And I don't find it hard to believe at all that there are tons of players who loves single player, thinks multiplayer is stupid and hasn't even heard of teamliquid.net.

On January 25 2013 11:05 FrostedMiniWheats wrote:




not quick enough =/

On January 26 2013 02:13 Treehead wrote:


Ok, so this is definitely not what he meant (because I'm guessing DB isn't terribly into maths) - but technically, he COULD have meant that the rates themselves follow the logarithmic function (for instance, when you say "growing at a constant rate" you don't mean growing like the constant function - which is to say not at all). That would mean that the picture of the interest itself would be the integral of a logarithimic function would look like some version of x*ln(x) - x + C (use integration by parts), which is a graph that starts at C, dips down a bit initially, but then grows at slightly better than linear rates.

He probably meant exponential, but then, probably almost no one around him would know the difference between exponential and logarithmic anyway. But then in business, if you're using words which have more abstract meanings, it doesn't matter if you actually know what they mean. The message they mean to convey is "hey, I'm smart" and most people just assume that the subtext of the conversation (the "hey, I'm smart") is correct anyway. Of course, if more people in the US actually knew or were interested in math...

On January 26 2013 02:13 Treehead wrote:


Ok, so this is definitely not what he meant (because I'm guessing DB isn't terribly into maths) - but technically, he COULD have meant that the rates themselves follow the logarithmic function (for instance, when you say "growing at a constant rate" you don't mean growing like the constant function - which is to say not at all). That would mean that the picture of the interest itself would be the integral of a logarithimic function would look like some version of x*ln(x) - x + C (use integration by parts), which is a graph that starts at C, dips down a bit initially, but then grows at slightly better than linear rates.

He probably meant exponential, but then, probably almost no one around him would know the difference between exponential and logarithmic anyway. But then in business, if you're using words which have more abstract meanings, it doesn't matter if you actually know what they mean. The message they mean to convey is "hey, I'm smart" and most people just assume that the subtext of the conversation (the "hey, I'm smart") is correct anyway. Of course, if more people in the US actually knew or were interested in math...

On January 25 2013 22:08 MavivaM wrote:

That's an intelligent post and I never thought about that.
So there are 2.5 million of people who bought the game only to go online and play the single campaign?

...I still hope he is bullshitting us >_>