EPT
The Sequel Dilemma
Videogames have inspired followings of hardcore players since their earliest history. With the gaming industry having overtaken Hollywood years ago in profits, it was inevitable, really, that these serious competitive communities would reach greater and greater proportions. For the players involved, who devote their time and passion to the game, the first ever-looming question is how big can it get? The second big question is how long can it last? Brood War has succeeded beyond everyone’s wildest dreams up to now on both counts. While it has looked for a while as though Brood War is not likely to expand beyond its niche in Korea, the pro-scene that has developed there is already an unprecedented achievement. Its second colossal triumph was to transcend the traditional shelf life of a computer game. Games have advanced rapidly with technology and older games are usually left behind by the mainstream, even if a few nostalgic twenty-somethings who grew up with a NES in the family room still play the oldies. It is safe to say that this cycle is probably not conducive for competitive videogames realizing their full potential as eSports, so Brood War’s seeming immortality has been something of a breakthrough.
However, as many hurdles as Brood War has cleared on its way towards proving that videogames aren’t necessarily doomed to eventual obsolescence, one of the greatest obstacles a game can face seems more and more likely by the day to spell the end for the twelve year old classic. The Brood War community is far from the first competitive gaming community to be faced with the challenges of a sequel. Sequels are not necessarily a bad thing or even harmful to the original community, but they at a minimum mark a profound crossroads. While every community and game is different, I think there is a general pattern that they go through with the introduction of a sequel.
Phase 0: Speculation
Prior to the announcement of the sequel, there is speculation about the possibility in every community once the original game has been out long enough. How likely people judge a sequel to be is case dependent. For the most part everyone likes the idea of a sequel. A few people will suggest that the original is so good a sequel isn’t really necessary and might not be able to live up to the original.
Phase 1: Announcement
The announcement of a sequel seems, again almost universally, to be cause for enormous excitement in the community. Even the people who said they wouldn’t care about a sequel that much get caught up in the fervor. This is probably the community’s most optimistic phase. The community usually experiences modest to significant growth as people start getting into the original in anticipation of the sequel, adding to the sense of optimism and excitement for what the future holds.
Phase 2: Details
As the sequel draws nearer, excitement, optimism, and growth in the original community continue to increase. Along the way, details about the sequel are released to the general public. The community avidly analyzes and discusses these details to death, and inevitably at least some among them object to or fret about some of the newly announced additions to game play. The extent of the concerns again varies case by case, but what tends to be most controversial is not the new characters or units or spells released but what a casual gamer would probably find the least interesting – changes to the more fundamental mechanics, or anything that impacts the way the game works on a fundamental level. I would not call most communities anywhere near divided at this stage, but the first real voices of concern are heard as soon as the community gets a more concrete image of what the sequel will mean. All these trends grow stronger and stronger until they culminate in…
Phase 3: Release/Open Beta
This phase begins when the game becomes widely playable, which for StarCraft 2 really started with beta testing. The community experiences a huge influx of new members flocking to the new game, which in many cases outnumber the fans of the original title. Essentially the original community plays host to a new, fledgling community of new fans from the sequel. A large portion of the original community usually also makes the switch for various reasons. The oldest members of the community have often been into the original game for so long that they are ready to move on to something fresh and new. Most notably the highest profile figures in the original community, particularly the star players, tend to make the switch. The top players often have a lot more at stake than a hobby and accordingly are quick to jump to whichever game seems to offer greater opportunity and a brighter future. Given that by this point the sequel has more following both in the diehard community and in the mainstream gaming community, this usually means switching games.
Not everyone jumps ship, though. Things become especially case dependent at this point, but where the sequel divides the community, this is the stage by which fans of the original have realized that the sequel is a fundamentally different game. Unsurprisingly, they tend to prefer the game that originally got them involved in the community, and the mechanics and unique feel of the original, to a new game with the original game’s name in the title. This in combination with the fact they naturally feel threatened by the sequel starting to eclipse the original leads to some degree of bitterness and hostility towards the sequel.
Fans of the sequel, by contrast, are much less invested in the original game. They quite like their new game for its own merits, and naturally take less than kindly to the original game’s proponents talking down the new game as being inferior. Sadly this unnecessarily turns off these fans to the original game when some might have naturally taken an interest in it after falling in love with the sequel. They are not predisposed to resent the original, but when it seems to hamper the growth of their game, they often see it as having overstayed its welcome.
Phase 4: Twilight or Revival
As time goes on and the sequel ceases to be brand new, there are two possible fates in store for the original game. The first is that the competitive scene for the original loses critical mass and burns out. Because the mainstream is constantly focused on the new and because graphics and controls always age, the flow of fresh blood into communities for older games slows down considerably. Sequels exacerbate this by overshadowing the original and drawing away many potential new players from the original. As the original game loses too many top players, community regulars, and potential new players, the remaining players will be forced to recognize that the scene has no future and will either switch themselves or let go and move on entirely. Significantly, this can happen or not happen regardless of whether the sequel thrives or fails.
The second fate that might await the original title is a revival of sorts. This might not fully kick in for a year or more after the sequel’s release, or it might start almost immediately. For this to happen the better part of the original game’s community must remain intact. New players coming to the game, new tournaments and events being held, and the opinions and decisions of the more influential members of the original community are of particular importance here. This scenario is more directly related to the nature of the sequel than the first scenario. If the competitive community for the sequel is hitting serious stumbling blocks, if the core game play elements are sufficiently different, or if the objections to the sequel and preference for the original are widespread enough, then a revival becomes more likely. Should a game manage a successful and sustainable revival and recovery, the survival of the sequel actually becomes very beneficial to it, as players attracted to the sequel who then take an interest in the original becomes a meaningful avenue for bringing new members into the community.
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All of these phases look different for every game, but 4 and 5 in particular vary a lot. To the best of my knowledge, competitive Halo transitioned very smoothly from Halo 1 to Halo 2 and finally to Halo 3. Unless I am severely misinformed, no one tried to stick with playing Halo 1 or 2 competitively. I would attribute this to the fact that the core game play was very similar from one to the next. By contrast, the divide between Counter Strike 1.6 and Counter Strike: Source is notorious for exemplifying how ugly the rift in the community can look in phase 3. Super Smash Bros Melee and Super Smash Bros Brawl provide a very textbook example in which phase 4 was a revival, though I don’t know that Melee has recovered to its pre-Brawl height.
So what does this all mean for Brood War? As this outline should have made clear, this progression is as much about the communities involved as it is about the games themselves, and in Brood War there are two main communities worth talking about.
The Foreigner Community
The first of these is foreign Brood War, the community that teamliquid.net represents. This community fits into the process I have outlined much more neatly than the Korean community, which has the pro-scene to complicate things. Here we are in phase 3 of the process; will phase 4 be the twilight or the revival of competitive Brood War? In my analysis a successful revival requires 3 things: new members, new events and tournaments, and vocal and influential proponents from within the community. So first off, can Brood War attract any new members outside of Korea? My impression is that most of the new people who start playing Brood War competitively played the game before, back in its prime. The younger generation of gamers will probably never have played the original, and while I personally like the look of the game and am accustomed to its UI, it is doubtful whether people who didn’t grow up with the graphics and UI of Brood War will have the patience for a 2D game with no MBS or automine. In the sequel dilemma, foreign Brood War suffered a huge body blow in that the draw on top players and figures in the community to StarCraft 2 was especially powerful, since non-Koreans had so little hope of penetrating the true upper ranks of Brood War in South Korea. With few exceptions all the most notable foreign players and commentators made the switch. While there are many well known and loved forum members who have stuck staunchly to Brood War, the teamliquid website itself has moved on to StarCraft 2 and is very unlikely to sponsor any new Brood War-based events or tournaments. Overall a rather grim prognosis. It is very possible that as StarCraft 2 loses its novelty, many of the players who originally made the switch find the sequel less able to sustain their interest and switch back, creating renewed momentum for Brood War. Foreign Brood War’s real lifeline, however, what has really kept it alive over the years, is the Korean pro-scene.
The South Korean Community
The impact of StarCraft 2 on the South Korean Brood War scene is still difficult to judge. The pro-scene and the Korean Brood War community are so interdependent that if one dies the other will go with it. So far most accounts suggest that StarCraft 2 has not been particularly successful in South Korea so far. There are at least rumors that it is starting to catch on, though many think that it has too much going against it to make a real impact. The existence of the pro-scene is threatened now too, but the real threat is not old favorites who can’t hack it in Brood War anymore leaving for StarCraft 2, but the legal threat that the Proleague, MSL, and OSL will not be allowed to continue. South Korean Brood War is more stable and healthy than foreign Brood War, and probably has far less to fear from a natural death for the time being than from Gretech’s legal challenge.
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Whether Proleague and with it the pro-scene live on for the time being will come down to the lawyers and judges rather than the fans. The future of South Korean Brood War looks safe in the short term and uncertain in the long term. The future of foreign Brood War looks moribund in the short term and dead in the long term. What factors might make a revival of Brood War outside of Korea more likely? I can think of three things that the remaining Brood War players could do to encourage more people to take it up, though none of these measures would ensure its survival by any stretch of the imagination.
1) Shameless promotion
Word of mouth can be a surprisingly powerful influence, and if you never played Brood War back in the day, this is one of the more likely ways you might start playing it now. This is made more difficult by the fact that, as discussed before, newer players might not initially show much patience for Brood War if they started with StarCraft 2 or some other newer title. This does not necessarily mean that they will never be able to appreciate the game, but it does mean there will be an adjustment period. Brood War graphics look old, but not bad (at least in my opinion), and the action is exciting and easy to discern. My piece of anecdotal evidence is that two of my flat mates, both of whom play StarCraft 2 at a lot at a very casual level (probably about gold league 1v1), have confessed they don’t think they could go back to Brood War anymore after playing with StarCraft 2 graphics. However, these same two guys woke up early with me to watch the OSL finals last Saturday and adjusted to the older graphics within a game or two. The UI will be the bigger adjustment for new players. I would point out that you do not actually have to fight the UI in Brood War as is sometimes claimed. Fighting the UI suggests that it actively obstructs you from doing what you want. No one wants to have to fight the UI; that would be pointless and frustrating. The reality is that the UI simply does much less for you, though the AI admittedly requires more babysitting than it should in a few situations such as dragoons passing through choke points.
2) Make Brood War more welcoming to beginners
This change I personally think is highly unlikely, but it is probably the most important one. I don’t think I will shock anyone here by pointing out that iCCup is nothing short of a gauntlet for would-be new Brood War players. A part of this is that the skill level starts so high (plus all the smurfs), but I think a bigger part of this is how hard it is to even find a game. iCCup makes it hard to host games for some reason, and you can count on a minimum of a 5-10 minute wait before you actually get one. iCCup has been around for a while, and it is probably unlikely that they are going to radically reform in this department. Could community measures to create a more welcoming way for new players to get into the game help? Maybe, but I don't know what exactly these would include.
3) Avoid StarCraft 2 bashing
StarCraft 2 players are probably actually the people most likely to pick up Brood War, given the connections and similarities StarCraft 2 shares with the original. If StarCraft 2 players perceive the Brood War community as antagonistic towards their game, they will lose a lot of their curiosity about the original. I think most Brood War players on teamliquid.net have been fairly well behaved, but there is still room for improvement on this point.
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Postscript/tl;dr: There has been a lot of talk about the death of Brood War, the uncertain future of StarCraft 2, BW vets vs SC2 newcomers, etc etc etc ad nauseum. My intention with this thread was to place the situation in the context of a recognizable pattern that many communities have gone through, and to try to spark some more rigorous and productive discussion on whether Brood War has any future and what can or should be done to revitalize it outside of Korea. The fate of StarCraft 2, while related, is a separate topic, which I have not really touched upon in this post. You might also notice that while I reach a lot of conclusions and generalizations, I don’t list any sources. These are all my own observations and analyses, and I don’t claim any of them to be gospel truth.
