EPT
Robert Huebner was on top of the world.
The Tokyo Game Show. 2002. Less than two years prior, Blizzard gave Huebner and his team at Nihilistic Software the green light to start development on a new game.
The deal was, in many ways, an experiment. In working with Nihilistic, Blizzard gave a good amount of control over one of its major franchises to an external development studio, a rare move for the company.
Blizzard wanted to make a dent in the growing console market, and Nihilistic provided an opportunity to do that. The original Xbox was less than a year old, and the PlayStation 2 was dominating console sales. Nihilistic wanted to grab the players who preferred a couch to a PC. It was bold. It had to be.
In 1998, Blizzard made a mark on the industry with StarCraft, a real-time strategy title that topped PC sales charts and became a cornerstone for the professional game circuit. Nihilistic wanted to take that franchise and give players a fresh look at the game's world through the eyes of a popular character.
All that added up to StarCraft: Ghost.
Two years in, Huebner and his team were enjoying the fruits of their hard work. The entire staff — about a dozen at the time — had flown to the Tokyo Game Show, where playable versions of the game were available on the show floor. With StarCraft hot on the competitive gaming scene, Warcraft 3 just released a few months prior and World of Warcraft still years away, a console game featuring a new take on an existing universe allowed Blizzard to maintain its momentum.
"Tokyo was the high point," says Huebner.
Less than two years later, frustrations that had boiled beneath the surface came to a head. A conversation with Huebner and Blizzard in a conference room at E3 2004, mere feet away from crowds eagerly playing new levels, more or less marked the end of Nihilistic's work on the game.
The story of StarCraft: Ghost is a complicated one that spans two development studios, a buyout by Blizzard and declarations that, even though no work was being done on the game, it was never technically canceled. Polygon recently spoke with nine developers involved to look back at the project.
The Tokyo Game Show. 2002. Less than two years prior, Blizzard gave Huebner and his team at Nihilistic Software the green light to start development on a new game.
The deal was, in many ways, an experiment. In working with Nihilistic, Blizzard gave a good amount of control over one of its major franchises to an external development studio, a rare move for the company.
Blizzard wanted to make a dent in the growing console market, and Nihilistic provided an opportunity to do that. The original Xbox was less than a year old, and the PlayStation 2 was dominating console sales. Nihilistic wanted to grab the players who preferred a couch to a PC. It was bold. It had to be.
In 1998, Blizzard made a mark on the industry with StarCraft, a real-time strategy title that topped PC sales charts and became a cornerstone for the professional game circuit. Nihilistic wanted to take that franchise and give players a fresh look at the game's world through the eyes of a popular character.
All that added up to StarCraft: Ghost.
Two years in, Huebner and his team were enjoying the fruits of their hard work. The entire staff — about a dozen at the time — had flown to the Tokyo Game Show, where playable versions of the game were available on the show floor. With StarCraft hot on the competitive gaming scene, Warcraft 3 just released a few months prior and World of Warcraft still years away, a console game featuring a new take on an existing universe allowed Blizzard to maintain its momentum.
"Tokyo was the high point," says Huebner.
Less than two years later, frustrations that had boiled beneath the surface came to a head. A conversation with Huebner and Blizzard in a conference room at E3 2004, mere feet away from crowds eagerly playing new levels, more or less marked the end of Nihilistic's work on the game.
The story of StarCraft: Ghost is a complicated one that spans two development studios, a buyout by Blizzard and declarations that, even though no work was being done on the game, it was never technically canceled. Polygon recently spoke with nine developers involved to look back at the project.
