The future of RTS games - Page 62

On July 15 2014 02:55 sc2isnotdying wrote:


A lot wrong here. SC2 and D3 were both enormously successful, selling millions of copies worldwide. Last I remember hearing about it SC2:WOL had sold over 6 million copies and D3 over 12 million. So I'm not sure from a business point of view how either of those could be considered fuck ups. I'm also not sure why you think Blizzard has withdrawn all support. Last I checked, Blizzard still releases patches for SC2, funds the WCS tournament system, and is currently developing an expansion pack which is essentially guaranteed to sell 2-3 million copies. SC2 has lost a large percentage of the playerbase it had at launch, but this is to be expected. Most people don't play one game, forever. There is no reason to believe a theoretical SC3 wouldn't have an enormously successful launch.

Coming late to the party does not mean Blizzard missed the boat on the MOBA front. They were late to the party with MMO's as well (remember Everquest? Me neither).

On the subject of branding, which is directly related to revenue: Brands have value. They help consumers create positive associations with a company which in turn drives sales. There's a reason GM maintains the Cadillac brand despite it being responsible for far less revenue than Chevy or Buick. You can think of Starcraft as the Cadillac of Blizzard-Activision, if that makes it easier for you.

On being broken or not, which I won't get into detail here, except to point out that these balance issues are really only evident at the Korean GM level. For 99%+ of the player base the game works as intended. If your, for instance, quit the game because you kept losing to Protoss that wouldn't be evidence of the game being broken. A player on the micro scale shouldn't expect 50-50 in all their matchups. On a macro scale things work fine.

On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:


Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you.

First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous.

Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company).

And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority.

Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release.

And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something.

On July 15 2014 04:43 sc2isnotdying wrote:


Ah yes, we certainly have different ideas of what constitutes a success. I would argue that given SC2 and D3 (which I found lacking, tbh) were sold as full priced games, I think Blizzard must've been ecstatic with how these games were received(eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched). For the majority of the market these are essentially single player games (D3 is obviously a co-op game, but I don't think Blizzard expected the majority of the audience to keep playing after finishing the campaign once or twice). Remember outside of Korea, competitive Brood War was an even smaller niche than competitive SC2. These F2P MOBA's are a completely different business model and one that could never work for a game like SC. With Hearthstone, Blizzard has thrown it's hat into the F2P marketplace with phenomenal success and I wouldn't count them out of the MOBA game yet.

RTS doesn't have to be a top priority for the company and it isn't. That just means we have to wait longer than WoW players to get expansions/sequels. Blizzard-Activision can budget every project accordingly; it's not a zero sum game. They don't need to take resources off of Hearthstone, for instance, to keep developing RTS games.

On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:


SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries.

If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming".

WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China

DotA was already HUGE in China.

Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG

Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG.

Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition.

And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players.

When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means.

All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation.

SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release.

On July 15 2014 06:12 sc2isnotdying wrote:


Calm down. I wasn't talking broadly about competitive games with healthy tournament scenes and certainly didn't claim SC2 "invented" esports; that would be taking my post out of context. When I say at the time of SC2's release, esports wasn't really a thing(outside of Korea), I was making a reference to the business side. I think Blizzard thought the only money to be made from esports was in Korea. For a company like Blizzard, esports wasn't something they cared about. The money wasn't there. But then that all changed and it wasn't because of SC2. It was because of Twitch and it was because of LoL. Then all of sudden, Blizzard created the WCS and seemed to care about esports outside of Korea.

And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport".

On July 15 2014 06:32 Xiphos wrote:


Even talking about the business side, there were ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming so your entire point is moot.

Now you are digressing to Blizzard caring about esport. No the point was that you said that "eSports outside of Korea wasn't really a thing when SC2 launched".

And regarding "esport" with Blizzard, they specifically said that SC2 was launching to cater toward "esports" and the reason why they added MBS, automine, unlimited unit selects WAS to cater toward the non-Koreans (aka the "casuals) from the get-go to shorten the gap b/w foreigners and Koreans. So they (Blizzard) absolutely knew that there were a non-Korean market for "esport".

On July 15 2014 04:10 SupLilSon wrote:


Good post with a lot of merit, but I still disagree with you.

First off, I think we have different definitions of success. I cannot argue against the fact that all of these games have had great opening sales numbers. I'll hand it to Blizzard, they are great at marketing with fantastic cinematics and playing off the success of their past titles. Even given how much I bash them online, I'm always hyped about their upcoming games. However, people often like to point only to the opening sales numbers for D3 and SC2 and claim them as successes, and in my eyes that is disingenuous.

Despite their massive opening sales and success, neither of these games retained that popularity and dwindled (D3 much quicker than SC2 lol). When talking about E-Sports titles, such as SC2 (not so much D3) I consider that a failure. SC2 is like the Transformers movie franchise, tons of hype, tons of ticket sales but not much substance or longevity. You say losing your player base is to be expected, but that simply isn't what we see from other premier E-Sports titles. DotA2 and LoL have both been growing and surpassing SC2 since their releases, despite their modest grassroots beginnings (considering DotA1, I know Valve is a large company).

And as for brands, I'm not saying Blizzard will completely scrap the Starcraft Universe. RTS titles are NOT the brand, the Starcraft Universe and name is. They can reuse the lore and framework from the Starcraft franchise but package it into a different genre. Think how they transitioned WC3 from an RTS into an MMO. Or how they are taking elements of Diablo, WC and SC and funneling them into a MOBA instead of their traditional platforms. Or WC into the CCG Hearthstone. Activision/Blizzard will sure as shit keep milking the Starcraft and Warcraft franchises for all they are worth but they don't care whether its as an RTS or not. I'm not saying Blizzard will 100% never make another RTS, that would be silly, but I am willing to bet that developing another RTS is not their priority.

Considering World of Warcraft... while EQ was out for a while beforehand, WoW presented the first real alternative to my knowledge. The MOBA scene is much more established and has numerous titles besides just LoL and DotA2. I'd argue that the conditions surrounding the release of Heroes of the Storm is a much different environment than WoW's release.

And as for the SC2 being broke stuff, it's not just about balance... posters like LaLush have pointed out flaws in SC2 that go beyond balance and the top pros. Like the fact that from an economic standpoint there's no real reason to hold more than 3 mining bases. This promotes 3 base turtleing till 200/200 playstyles instead of forcing players to vie for map control. If the game is working as intended, then so be it, but obviously for many players the game was lacking something.

This is in response to the the first post in this thread. I hope you guys realize that the devs have came out and said the reason why they continue to publish RTS games is because it was their mark. The reason they continue to push RTS titles is not for the money because in all honesty they can be making more money in other genres but for the love of RTS games. That's why they continued Warcraft and that's the basis for Starcraft at all. They understand the market share. Eventually there will be another RTS.

On July 15 2014 08:34 Hider wrote:


So naive.

On July 15 2014 05:09 Xiphos wrote:


SC2 didn't invent "esport" in non-Korean countries.

If we were talking about "sport" along, Tetris can even be called one. The proper term we should be using is "professional gaming".

WC3 was HUGE in European countries + China

DotA was already HUGE in China.

Halo competition was HUGE in North America through MLG

Counter-Strike was being played pretty much as "the" team-based competition in all nations and was "the" game to watch during WCG.

Hell, in Japan, there are many rhythm game competition.

And all over the world, there are still fighting game competitions all around with Street Fighters, Tekken, and King of Fighters players.

When SC2 came out, it wasn't evolutionary by any means.

All it did manage to capture was introducing the ability to make cash while streaming online but that has been done even during the SC1 era with Afreeca balloon donation.

SC2 might have coinced the term "esport", but while coining the term, we have to realize that "esport" was around even a decade before SC2's release.

On July 15 2014 09:47 Cheren wrote:


It wasn't on TV and there wasn't really HD streaming before 2010, so yeah esports existed outside Korea but TV-like broadcasts in HD certainly weren't around to a large extent before SC2.

On July 15 2014 07:18 sc2isnotdying wrote:


Until very recently whatever money there was in esports was small potatoes. I don't think that is such a controversial statement. Obviously Blizzard knew there was going to be a market for SC2 tournament play from the beginning of the design process; WC3 had such a scene. My point, which is clear through context, is that Blizzard wouldn't have considered the esports market to be an important part of their business strategy. SC2 was about selling as many copies as possible at full retail price. That was the model. They weren't investing in esports, because why would they? The upside wasn't there. That changed. WCS inserted a lot of money into the international scene, the exact same time Twitch exploded. Now that there was a viable platform for esports outside of Korea, Blizzard got in the game. Before Twitch esports wasn't really a thing. I stand by that. It's really not such a controversial notion. WCG is dead. MLG was a money loser. Still is. It's just now approaching profitability as a kind of premium version of Twitch. So no, there wasn't ALWAYS money to be made from competitive gaming.