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I was able to interview Blizzard Production Director Chris Sigaty on the new Spawning feature that was announced today. I asked him why they're creating this feature, what took them so long, and if they find this to be a good alternative to releasing a free to play multiplayer version of SC2.
You can read the whole thing here: http://www.gamespot.com/news/blizzard-talks-new-spawning-option-for-starcraft-ii-6409256
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
I don't know if it's a better way or not. But I think some of the pitches--and this is my personal view on it--free-to-play is a great concept for some games, but the way StarCraft II is built, it's just not designed for stuff like skin and that sort of stuff that players have suggested so far. For what we have today, this does feel like the right answer. Whether free-to-play as a consumer product vs. a boxed product on which one is better, it's hard for me to judge that. For that we've built, and how we built it, the Starter Edition/Spawned way seems like the best way we can make it accessible to players, and the widest group of players.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
As you have to be in a party, there's no current plans to have the 1v1 Ladder active at this time. We'll continue to look and see how this is successful, and who knows what the future holds, but right now we don't have any plans in that direction.
The full interview has more questions!
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At this point, looking on games like LoL, I think that they should make it F2P.
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I don't think users who bought HoTS for $60 would like all of multiplayer to become F2P, especially since 1v1 is such a huge part of it. Where would the other $30 go? People would bound to be unhappy. Spawning is a good door for new users into SC so I think what Blizzard is doing is pretty smart.
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On June 05 2013 08:22 kayZer wrote:
At this point, looking on games like LoL, I think that they should make it F2P.
It's like you didn't read what the guy said. He said F2P as a business model won't work for SC2 simply because it's not built for skins and stuff, like LoL or DOTA is. They found the happiest medium they could without creating a game and essentially handing it out for free WHILE paying for constant things like game development and server maintenance and a world championship series.
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Title reads "Blizzard: Spawning/Starter Edition better than F2P". The actual interview says, "I don't know if it's a better way or not." Slasher what is up with such sensationalist title man?
Edit: GJ Slasher for changing the title to much more accurate and professional one 
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Interesting to hear the thoughts on Blizzard side of the whole development process. Were the responses written by him or transcribed? Either way, does Gamespot have an editor? Some parts of that interview were barely readable.
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-deleted because it's no longer relevant-
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Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved.
+ Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
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east europeans will still keep on playing LoL WoT and dota2 on pc bangs if there will not be a f2p option . even having 1 guy that has account so you can play is hard . but blizzard will never understand . f2p multiplayer do it ! and go microtransaction with unit skins . would be much easier .
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On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
his name is Chris Sigaty
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On June 05 2013 08:35 Gaizokubanou wrote:
Title reads "Blizzard: Spawning/Starter Edition better than F2P". The actual interview says, "I don't know if it's a better way or not." Slasher what is up with such sensationalist title man?
Well, it's Slasher !
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On June 05 2013 08:22 kayZer wrote:
At this point, looking on games like LoL, I think that they should make it F2P.
LoL and dota doesnt have any story or campaign, blizz is basically giving sc2 multiplayer for free (arcade, costume, teamgames, no 1v1 thou, but hey everything 100%free) without charging money for new skins or other stuff like LoL Dota2
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On June 05 2013 08:49 xuanzue wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes. his name is Chris Sigaty
Cool, I know who he is. It's very exciting that you do, too! He's representing Blizzard, and every representative of Blizzard in these interviews is just as long-winded.
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I really doubt this method will increase the amount of people playing sc2 by a noticeable amount, can not hurt to try though
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with people stating that sc2 should go f2p, it wont work. first of all the business model won't work but second of all they wont get all to many players. the reason is tha sc2 is a game where you need a moderate pc for. while games like LOL and DOTA can be run by any machine that isnt older then 2008. really my shitty laptop with 2ghz dual core and a crappy intel chipset was capable of running LOL at 30 fps. while in sc2 as soon as units came on the field my fps would drop from 25 to 5.
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On June 05 2013 08:27 SideStepKing wrote:
I don't think users who bought HoTS for $60 would like all of multiplayer to become F2P, especially since 1v1 is such a huge part of it. Where would the other $30 go? People would bound to be unhappy. Spawning is a good door for new users into SC so I think what Blizzard is doing is pretty smart.
its just a few bills out of the wallet lol no one is going to starve from this so it won't be such a big deal if they made it free to play
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I've changed the title to be less sensationalist. Sorry about that.
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On June 05 2013 08:22 kayZer wrote:
At this point, looking on games like LoL, I think that they should make it F2P.
F2P models only work when they are build up from the ground like it, just making a game F2P and littering it with microtransations (cause that is the trade) is a bad idea unless your game is actually going down (like mmo's that can't uphold their server costs anymore)
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On June 05 2013 09:08 Slasher wrote:
I've changed the title to be less sensationalist. Sorry about that.
Lots of respect for this. Responding to feedback in a very reasonable way. GJ.
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On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
Great TLDR. Should be in the OP
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Regarding 1v1 play via "spawning", this is clearly a design (and possibly a technical) limitation. Just from a UI perspective, given how they've currently implemented this feature via the party system, it would be very unnatural to introduce a way for the "spawned" player to ladder 1v1.
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hey guys. i watched the video of "spawning" and i have a question.
they say around between 4-5 mins that when a "wol" player matches with a "hots" player: "the content and balance will reference to the starcraft 2 "wol" version...
any ideas? thanks!
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On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
Thanks for this. :p
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If they want to compete with other games for popularity, they'll have to male at least SC2 multiplayer free
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On June 05 2013 09:40 c0ldfusion wrote:
Regarding 1v1 play via "spawning", this is clearly a design (and possibly a technical) limitation. Just from a UI perspective, given how they've currently implemented this feature via the party system, it would be very unnatural to introduce a way for the "spawned" player to ladder 1v1.
That, and anyone actually interested in 1v1 would have likely gotten the game already.
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On June 05 2013 08:46 xsnac wrote:
east europeans will still keep on playing LoL WoT and dota2 on pc bangs if there will not be a f2p option . even having 1 guy that has account so you can play is hard . but blizzard will never understand . f2p multiplayer do it ! and go microtransaction with unit skins . would be much easier .
Or they sell licenses to these PC bangs...
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Thanks for the interview
And thanks to Blizzard for this feature!!!
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On June 05 2013 08:27 SideStepKing wrote:
I don't think users who bought HoTS for $60 would like all of multiplayer to become F2P, especially since 1v1 is such a huge part of it. Where would the other $30 go? People would bound to be unhappy. Spawning is a good door for new users into SC so I think what Blizzard is doing is pretty smart.
I paid full price for both campaigns and would happily continue to do so, and I would love it if they made multiplayer f2p.
Who the fuck cares if the player base expands? It's not like the SCII community is some pulsing beacon of mannered players... The majority of opponents I play are the same jerks I'd face in LoL. So the only thing that could happen is that SCII gets better, more popular, and might actually have a fighting chance as an esport in korea.
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On June 06 2013 00:57 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
Or they sell licenses to these PC bangs...
Which is a shit idea.
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China6330 Posts
On June 06 2013 00:29 antuandelageto wrote:
hey guys. i watched the video of "spawning" and i have a question.
they say around between 4-5 mins that when a "wol" player matches with a "hots" player: "the content and balance will reference to the starcraft 2 "wol" version...
any ideas? thanks!
That was referring to WoL player spawning a Starter Edition player.
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Bisutopia19297 Posts
On June 06 2013 02:34 Honeybadger wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 00:57 KrazyTrumpet wrote:
Or they sell licenses to these PC bangs... Which is a shit idea.
Please take the time to explain why that is a bad idea rather then using crude words to bash that statement.
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It's a little strange that they think that changes they make to a game years after people have formed their notions and reason for not buying the game will cause an influx of new players.
Nobody but the Starcraft 2 community even knows about the changes, so it's up to us to spread the word on their behalf? And what do we get? Some carbot cartoons portrait? Hooray!
Spawning should have been common sense ~3 years ago; by this point I fear it's too late. There are people who don't even realize they can get Wings of Liberty for a drastically reduced cost and catch up to HotS expansion fairly cheaply (which wasn't the case for WoW until pretty much Cataclysm).
Blizzard doesn't advertise enough and doesn't put enough money into the non-Korean scene for the money-making potential it has. They're going all-in on trying to become the equal to League of Legends in player base when it will never happen, and if that fails they at least want to grow as an eSport in Korea while losing all the global interest in the game as a consequence of turning every WCS region into a Korean proxy and marginalizing the foreign pro-scenes. I'm curious as to who their marketing genius is... Time to get on google.
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hm they could make the unranked 1v1 f2p. Though i guess not a lot of people would want to pay to have a league on their account?
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Sc2 will never be as big as LoL no matter if it's F2P of whatever. One is a team game one is a solo game, it's as simple as that.
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On June 06 2013 00:57 KrazyTrumpet wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 08:46 xsnac wrote:
east europeans will still keep on playing LoL WoT and dota2 on pc bangs if there will not be a f2p option . even having 1 guy that has account so you can play is hard . but blizzard will never understand . f2p multiplayer do it ! and go microtransaction with unit skins . would be much easier . Or they sell licenses to these PC bangs...
It would actually be better for them to just do what Valve does and sell the games in areas with high piracy rates at SUPER low prices so that they actually buy it instead of not buy it at all.
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They could implement an incentive-based subsciption model for new trial accounts for people who want to "try it before they buy it" so to speak. After paying for 6 months to 1 year (depending on sub. cost) they upgrade you to an expansion level account and you no longer have to pay sub.
This would be one way to seduce people with longer term interest into actually getting the full version of the game.
EDIT: Even if people lose interest after 2 or 3 months of subscription, they still got some money out of them, which is better than nothing.
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China6330 Posts
On June 06 2013 02:58 dUTtrOACh wrote:
They could implement an incentive-based subsciption model for new trial accounts for people who want to "try it before they buy it" so to speak. After paying for 6 months to 1 year (depending on sub. cost) they upgrade you to an expansion level account and you no longer have to pay sub.
This would be one way to seduce people with longer term interest into actually getting the full version of the game.
EDIT: Even if people lose interest after 2 or 3 months of subscription, they still got some money out of them, which is better than nothing.
Subscription based model essentially killed SC2 in China, that's a bad idea. Spawning is good as it is.
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SC2 won't be appealing even if it's F2P. That's due to it's difficulty/terrible social infrastructure and really bad UMS system.
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On June 06 2013 03:01 digmouse wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 02:58 dUTtrOACh wrote:
They could implement an incentive-based subsciption model for new trial accounts for people who want to "try it before they buy it" so to speak. After paying for 6 months to 1 year (depending on sub. cost) they upgrade you to an expansion level account and you no longer have to pay sub.
This would be one way to seduce people with longer term interest into actually getting the full version of the game.
EDIT: Even if people lose interest after 2 or 3 months of subscription, they still got some money out of them, which is better than nothing. Subscription based model essentially killed SC2 in China, that's a bad idea. Spawning is good as it is.
This would be in addition to spawning, and the non-subscription model would already be in place. I'm not really talking about just China, nor am I convinced that SC2 is dead over there.
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On June 06 2013 02:46 dUTtrOACh wrote:
It's a little strange that they think that changes they make to a game years after people have formed their notions and reason for not buying the game will cause an influx of new players.
Nobody but the Starcraft 2 community even knows about the changes, so it's up to us to spread the word on their behalf? And what do we get? Some carbot cartoons portrait? Hooray!
Spawning should have been common sense ~3 years ago; by this point I fear it's too late. There are people who don't even realize they can get Wings of Liberty for a drastically reduced cost and catch up to HotS expansion fairly cheaply (which wasn't the case for WoW until pretty much Cataclysm).
Blizzard doesn't advertise enough and doesn't put enough money into the non-Korean scene for the money-making potential it has. They're going all-in on trying to become the equal to League of Legends in player base when it will never happen, and if that fails they at least want to grow as an eSport in Korea while losing all the global interest in the game as a consequence of turning every WCS region into a Korean proxy and marginalizing the foreign pro-scenes. I'm curious as to who their marketing genius is... Time to get on google.
Any website related to gaming has this as news. Gamespot, IGN, incgamers, all of them. I wouldnt be surprised if other websites just related to technology picked it up too.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina72 Posts
Amazing feature, really surprised that Blizzard is going through with this.
If only HOTS wasn't a letdown..
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On June 06 2013 03:04 TheRabidDeer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 06 2013 02:46 dUTtrOACh wrote:
It's a little strange that they think that changes they make to a game years after people have formed their notions and reason for not buying the game will cause an influx of new players.
Nobody but the Starcraft 2 community even knows about the changes, so it's up to us to spread the word on their behalf? And what do we get? Some carbot cartoons portrait? Hooray!
Spawning should have been common sense ~3 years ago; by this point I fear it's too late. There are people who don't even realize they can get Wings of Liberty for a drastically reduced cost and catch up to HotS expansion fairly cheaply (which wasn't the case for WoW until pretty much Cataclysm).
Blizzard doesn't advertise enough and doesn't put enough money into the non-Korean scene for the money-making potential it has. They're going all-in on trying to become the equal to League of Legends in player base when it will never happen, and if that fails they at least want to grow as an eSport in Korea while losing all the global interest in the game as a consequence of turning every WCS region into a Korean proxy and marginalizing the foreign pro-scenes. I'm curious as to who their marketing genius is... Time to get on google. Any website related to gaming has this as news. Gamespot, IGN, incgamers, all of them. I wouldnt be surprised if other websites just related to technology picked it up too.
Perhaps they're just not being aggressive enough.
How long until that news is buried beneath the constant deals and promotions? You have to market the game all the time, not only when it's presumed to be good timing. Also, it doesn't address the possibility of grabbing some console gamers and bringing them back to PC during the X1 PS4 transition that's coming up. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
I wish them the best of luck. I'm not entirely pessimistic about the whole thing, but everybody I've told about spawning had no idea about it, and I know quite a lot of gamers who never had any interest in SC2 but played War3 / BW / both.
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On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
Haha, nice. Though using many words to say only a few things is not exclusive to Blizzard.
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On June 05 2013 08:22 kayZer wrote:
At this point, looking on games like LoL, I think that they should make it F2P.
They spend a ton of money developing Starcraft with full campaigne and top quality pre-rendered cinematics and you want them to give it for free? Selling skin is not really an option in Starcraft too.
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This is not enough for me to come back to the game and buy HoTS. I dont enjoy playing team games anymore, and I'm not buying a $30-40 expansion for the mothership core, the only new unit that protoss uses in 95% of their games.
I guess you can say it's "my fault" for not playing all 3 races AND the single player missions to get full use of the content, but it would be ridiculous to use that claim.
I dont care if it's free to play or not, but I'm not playing unless I can play protoss on the ladder for free. You can keep terran and zerg, I will NEVER play them, and you can keep the single player and all of your $60,000 cimamatics because I dont care about those either.
Try again blizzard.
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On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes.
Well they couldn't very well respond to the questions like that now could they?
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I'm going to try to convince some friends at school to download the starter edition tomorrow. Can't decide if it's because I want the achievement or because I want a friend that plays Starcraft  .
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I'm a supporter of two models of business for SC2;
Competitive pack: Acess to 1v1 multiplayer only (10$ for both games or something) (No portraits or anything)
Full pack: Same price with all included
Campaign pack: Acess to campaign and arcade (price to be defined)
Something like this would be cool.
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SC2 can't be F2P, where would blizzard get their money from? They are already stealing from tournaments, why would you want to make it worse? Also LoL is just kind of f2p, some of my friends invested around 30€ or more for some stuff... Sure you can play without paying, but i have come to understand that you have a big disadvantage...
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On June 06 2013 04:44 Saumure wrote:
SC2 can't be F2P, where would blizzard get their money from? They are already stealing from tournaments, why would you want to make it worse? Also LoL is just kind of f2p, some of my friends invested around 30€ or more for some stuff... Sure you can play without paying, but i have come to understand that you have a big disadvantage...
It is safe to say that Blizzard are giving out more money to tournaments than they can possible get from them. For an example all GSL:s price money from the get go is from Blizzard.
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It would be good to have the following:
1. Massive ad campaign on every gaming, tech, news, youth, web, etc -oriented site: "Play Starcraft 2 for FREE NOW!"
2. Organize official incentives (more than just a one-time icon) for people to offer spawn to others - and in official Blizzard channels. Include those channels in the ads, so the noobs can go there and quickly find someone to spawn for them.
As it is, this feature only spreads from sc2-fans to their friends who would try sc2 if it was free. It doesn't spread as easily to the unknown average player whose friends don't play sc2, but he would try it if it was free. It has to be easy, not just possible.
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On June 06 2013 04:24 AnomalySC2 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 05 2013 08:41 -Kaiser- wrote:Wow, classic blizzard. Take 1000 words to say virtually nothing. I translated the interview below for the time-starved. + Show Spoiler +Why are you doing this?
To get more people to buy Starcraft 2.
Spawning has been a feature in Blizzard games since WarCraft 2 and StarCraft: Brood War. As such a Blizzard-specific feature, why has it taken so long for this to come to StarCraft II?
It wasn't a priority.
A few months ago you stated there were no plans for a multiplayer free-to-play StarCraft II. Do you believe the Starter Edition and Spawning is the better way of going about putting the game out to the masses?
Yes.
Is there a possibility of having 1v1 Ladder play unlocked in the future?
No
Based on previous Spawnings in older games, do you have any guess on how many will use this, or how much the player base will increase?
No.
Do you think Spawning is the best way to get these people into StarCraft II-- those who have a notion of the game as a 1v1 hardcore eSport?
Yes. Well they couldn't very well respond to the questions like that now could they?
Gotta keep asking the questions anyway, no matter what!
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EPT
