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| wo1fwood United States. April 25 2012 10:51. Posts 2258 | Profile Blog # |
| Not sure I entirely agree with your assertions about SC2, but regardless this is an interesting read. I'm glad that TL is opening these editorials so to speak, they are sparking some interesting discussions. |
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 Sinensis United States. April 25 2012 12:00. Posts 2503 | Profile Blog # |
I don't agree with your numbers or that independant startups have as good a chance as they would imply. I do agree that Sc2 is an incompetent product and I do agree that Blizzard doesn't care.
I also agree that Blizzard trying to get involved in esports while their product is in the state it's in, is disrespectful to the community. So yeah we've been led around and manipulated for a couple years now. Maybe that's why everyone in Sc2 is so pissed off and anxious. Last edit: 2012-04-25 12:03:53 |
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| Serpico April 25 2012 12:03. Posts 3925 | Profile # |
On April 25 2012 12:00 Sinensis wrote:
I don't agree with your numbers or that independant startups have as good a chance as they would imply. I do agree that Sc2 is an incompetent product and I do agree that Blizzard doesn't care.
I also agree that Blizzard trying to get involved in esports while their product is in the state it's in, is disrespectful to the community. So yeah we've been led around and manipulated for a couple years now.
They're getting involved obviously for the money, while only wanting to put in the minimal amount of effort to keep it relevant as a competitive game. The sad part is how obvious their intentions are. |
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| Sinensis United States. April 25 2012 12:10. Posts 2503 | Profile Blog # |
On April 25 2012 12:03 Serpico wrote:
Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 12:00 Sinensis wrote:
I don't agree with your numbers or that independant startups have as good a chance as they would imply. I do agree that Sc2 is an incompetent product and I do agree that Blizzard doesn't care.
I also agree that Blizzard trying to get involved in esports while their product is in the state it's in, is disrespectful to the community. So yeah we've been led around and manipulated for a couple years now.
They're getting involved obviously for the money, while only wanting to put in the minimal amount of effort to keep it relevant as a competitive game. The sad part is how obvious their intentions are.
I don't know how anyone is actually excited about the upcoming "bnet world championships." We have been having world championships for years. Better ones than Blizzard is capable of putting on. Does anyone remember the last tournament Blizzard attempted? It was Blizzcon. Not last year because they cancelled it. The year before that where instead of streaming important matches, we got to watch jazzbass vs toodming and tired trivia. I have never seen so much internet rage as the esports community after that tournament. It was the tournament that made nestea never want to come back to NA, because he was forced to play on Shattered Temple CLOSE SPAWN POSITIONS. Last edit: 2012-04-25 12:14:09 |
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| Meteora.GB Canada. April 25 2012 12:16. Posts 2161 | Profile Blog # |
I don't claim to know everything about the gaming industry, but this is how I view things from my point of view:
Its highly unrealistic for a company to have 20 programmers to make a video game and sustain themselves. You're forgetting about other personnel/assets like voice actors, animators, testers (quality control), artists, modellers, sound engineering, game designers, etc. I know programmers do the number crunching and actually make the game, but without the other assets a company cannot be competitive. It can have kick ass gameplay, but it'll never attract the market into actually buying the game. It needs to be a overall solid package with good marketing to make a game sell. I should really emphasis on the word marketing.
The gameplay could suck or remain unchanged for all I care. Franchises like Call of Duty sells millions but there's actually not much change between each instalment. One of the reasons why its such a big title is because of marketing and brand loyalty. If its popular, a good proportion of people will buy it. Good marketing can do wonders to a game, even if its gameplay is questionably not the best or mediocre.
If you are curious, the average cost to develop a modern video game is roughly $18-28 million. Big blockbuster titles such as Killzone 2 and Modern Warfare 2 cost $40-50 million dollars. Gran Turismo 5 is at $80 million. Most expensive game ever to make? Grand Theft Auto IV at $100 million. Well actually scratch that, that was some years ago. Star Wars: The Old Republic is speculated to be as high as $200 million to make. We don't know the actual figures for Starcraft 2's cost, other than the $100 million budget is false and it has had a 7 year development cycle.
Its obvious they made a profit off of it; but that's what companies are supposed to do. Of course this doesn't excuse them from being greedy and lazy on implementing critical and lacking features. But hey you know what? That's normal. Starcraft 2 is no different. It's how the corporations like EA, Ubisoft and Activision are doing things. There's a lot of games out there that are buggy on release, needs patching, and or is missing critical features. This is especially prevalent on the PC. They're half ass games that are shipped out to the market when there are huge problems associated with it. Remember Modern Warfare 2 and its dual 1881 shotguns? That shit was fucking broken for months until they patched it.
You actually think its easy to make a good game to compete with those big blockbuster games? Its very difficult to achieve, even with talent in making a highly polished game. It lacks marketing. Only a very few indie developers are making lots of money (i.e. Minecraft) and that was through innovative (or rather appealing) gameplay, as well as word of mouth. Also, games published on the appstore cannot be compared to the actual video game industry, they are vastly different.
Average video game cost
Top 10 Most Expensive Video Games
Star Wars: The Old Republic Budget |
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| GoShox United States. April 25 2012 12:34. Posts 1059 | Profile Blog # |
| But would this new startup game have Facebook integration? |
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| Sinensis United States. April 25 2012 12:34. Posts 2503 | Profile Blog # |
It's like this:
I'm at a resturant and I order my food. I wait two hours for my food to finally be ready, then the waiter just dumps my food off the plate, onto the table and says "enjoy your meal."
I am sitting there without a fork, knife, plate, drink, etc. with my 2 hour late meal spilled all over the table, and the waiter doesn't think there has been any problems with service.
That's Blizzard to me. Doesn't matter how good the food is, your service sucks.
Oh... and when I ask if I'm allowed to have a plate, fork, knife, glass of water, etc. the answer I get is "it's on the wish list" or occasionally "why do you want a fork and a knife with your food?"Last edit: 2012-04-25 12:47:43 |
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| askTeivospy April 25 2012 12:35. Posts 1495 | Profile Blog # |
| while I agree with your sentiment, that game is much much simpler than SC2 in every single aspect and the two should not be compared as they are completely different O_O |
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| Cite Australia. April 25 2012 12:54. Posts 237 | Profile # |
Besides whats already been said - you based your assumptions that amateurs could make a game relatively quick and have it be a hit. But looking at the example you gave regarding cecil's game - they say it has over 1 million hours of work towards the game (Which I assume is wrong as with 5 programmers that'd be averaged at 200,000 hours per progammer or roughly 8333 days..
Of course this is all based on the fact those numbers are to be believed - and if they are the game isn't really up to the standards of the masses (sorry cecil). As mentioned by rotting soon as you try to bring everything else up to standards - voice acting, graphics, etc your other costs go up exponentially. Also ontop of that you will need extra positions, salaries, running costs.
Also 300,000k for advertising probably wouldn't be even close to enough to yield the numbers you are expecting to sell. Especially in a day and age where its either virality that makes your product a hit, an amazing fanbase, or a legit actual product (this option being the natural highest costs but once again this wouldn't result in the massive fanbase you'd need so you'd have to add a huge advertising budget ontop of a huge developmental costs).
Everything you've said is pretty much an ideal model for what you'd "want" a game to look like that would beat blizzard. As for people talking about Blizzard not doing enough - we need to realize there are multiple games in dev behind the scenes not to mention their new flagship Titan that no one has any idea about and with that being pushed up the dev chain due to other products being released/closer to release people are pulled off older project to work on unannounced projects (This has been stated in many interviews with their devs). So I guess in the end you could say Blizzard might not be doing enough for the SC2 scene but thats solely from the view of a person thats passionate for the RTS esports scene to not fall down, but from a realist its hard to actually solely blame them. Last edit: 2012-04-25 12:55:48 |
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| Snorkle United States. April 25 2012 13:09. Posts 733 | Profile Blog # |
These numbers are so outrageous. Where is the startup capital coming from? You are going to need a loan that is gonna have interest expense attached to it or you are going to have to convince some investor that a genre that is considered to be relatively dead unless it has Blizzards name behind it is a good investment for them.
Kespa is not going to pay you for the game. You have 0 negotiating power. Blizzard was in a unique situation with a ton of leverage. More likely you will need to pay to have your game in leagues like Hi Rez and Riot have done with their games.
You need to look at industry norms for Indie RTS games, if you can find some, if you can't just find other indie games like here http://www.gameproducer.net/category/sales-statistics/ and get something closer to those figures.
Minecraft or other viral phenomena are not a good example of what sales will be, usually these are the first thing of their kind with nothing else like it. You are making a knock off SC2 that people will be saying, "why not just play broodwar?" about.
Beating blizzard could probably be done, but it won't be by a little indie team. The genre is not easy to develop for. You can't just buy the Unreal 3 engine and start working off that. You will likely be building the engine from the ground up.
More likely someone like Valve jumping into the RTS genre and dethroning blizzard.
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| bokeevboke Singapore. April 25 2012 13:13. Posts 1552 | Profile Blog # |
I wonder how many programmers are in TL. Maybe we could do our own open source project. We will make the game as it should be, and who knows maybe it will work  |
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| StarStruck April 25 2012 13:18. Posts 18343 | Profile # |
Endy,
The only thing that will carry Blizzard so-to-speak is the expansions unless something clicks. x-x |
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| docvoc United States. April 25 2012 13:28. Posts 3465 | Profile Blog # |
I love SC2, but I see a lot of flaws in it. Believe me, they are there, but the reason that SC2 will not die is not that its interface is great or anything, but because the game is fun. People always seem to overlook this aspect; though it can get lonely sometimes and if Blizz doesn't work on the game, yes the game will slowly die. Yes BW will last longer, but that is because their is a niche BW support group of players that love the game because they have played it for 10 years, but SC2 is just in its youth, it will have expansions and it will get better, and the game is still fun to play and watch. SC2 could use a better system, but saying that its pure shit isn't right either in my opinion, if that was true, the scene wouldn't have grown as much as it has (plus the scene is still growing in numbers). Though this was impressive math dude, very well done .
EDIT: I realize there are some issues in the numbers, but the fact that the OP took the time to carry it all out has some merit to it, even if the economic viabilities of it are debatable.Last edit: 2012-04-25 13:32:29 |
| | User was warned for too many mimes. |
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| schimmetje Netherlands. April 25 2012 13:33. Posts 1045 | Profile # |
TLDR: blizz should hire me, i could make them millions more than they are because i'm not an arrogant activision executive
Perhaps, but some experience in a large project like this may help. Your numbers are crazy made up things. Honestly, 20 programmers + equipment? That's what you need to develop something of the scale of SC2? Wow. |
| | Change to MY nostalgia? UNACCEPTABLE! Monkey paaaw! |
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| StarStruck April 25 2012 13:37. Posts 18343 | Profile # |
On April 25 2012 13:33 schimmetje wrote:
Show nested quote +TLDR: blizz should hire me, i could make them millions more than they are because i'm not an arrogant activision executive
Perhaps, but some experience in a large project like this may help. Your numbers are crazy made up things. Honestly, 20 programmers + equipment? That's what you need to develop something of the scale of SC2? Wow.
It's actually not so far fetched if you have a really good team. |
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| Jehct New Zealand. April 25 2012 13:43. Posts 3522 | Profile Blog # |
On April 25 2012 09:52 blade55555 wrote:
Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 09:49 Bobo_XIII wrote:
On April 25 2012 09:02 architecture wrote:
There might be something wrong with how Blizzard is being run internally, because they have been ridiculously incompetent.
Consider that the D3 producer left just a month or two ago, before launch! And of course how long D3 has been delayed.
And of course how poor SC2 has been so far.
I think part of the issue is Blizzard is no longer king. They used to be able to put out a game, get great sales, and keep mindshare. But there is easily 10times if not more competition these days for attention. There's a lot of free to play games, games on different non-pc devices etc etc. So Blizzard can still rake in sales, but their same old tricks won't keep people's attention anymore. No one needs UMS maps. There's Steam games, DOTA, LOL, and tons of other stuff to play. It's not 1998 where outside of BNET and CS there were no other multiplayer games. War3 was the last of that period.
2012 is different from 1998 and different from 2004. I don't think they understand that.
Let's not fucking kid ourselves... rose-tinted glasses for BW aside, SC2 itself is a fantastic game and will only get better. Sure, the UI of Bnet 2.0 has a ways to go, but the gameplay is great. However, I wonder too if there's some stifling of voices/ideas going on inside Blizz HQ. They are s l o w to make any moves (even announcements or communication with the community) in the public domain, and my cynicism makes me suspect that there's an inflated bureaucracy at work. Things just don't happen, or they happen months (years in the case of Bnet 2.0) after the best impact could have been made. I still have all my sentiments attached to Blizzard right now and I'm relatively optimistic about them (eventually) making the right decisions for the game, but they aren't exactly making all the right moves in all the right places at the moment. We'll see what happens in the next few years.
This. Starcraft 2 as a game is good, the battle.net UI is obviously bad and needs to be redone. Blizzard hired a new battle.net leader unless I am mistaken and hopefully we can get clan support and what not.
If you compare the SC2-BW difference with D2-D3 or DOTA-DOTA2 it's pretty clear that SC2 has failed. It's just not better.
The entire protoss race in SC2 is (relatively) bad/uninteresting to watch due to poor design choices - warpgates/forcefields mean gateway units have to suck, forcing the race to revolve around a few SUPER INTERESTING 'power' units (lol colossus) and some spellcasters rather than real army movements. These choices basically ruin the good design - instead of highly mobile blink stalker/warp prism chargelot harass against an immobile mech army, you get blink stalker all-ins against a bunkered-up marine/marauder force or mobile but somewhat blind/vulnerable blink stalker into colossus turtles against a highly mobile marine/marauder/medivac force. Even the things that worked really well in BW (corsairs) that have decent replacements (phoenixes) rarely work because the fundamentals of the race/game have been altered (for what fucking reason?).
Dustin Browder and the SC2 team basically committed to terrible design philosophy - removing/reworking functional systems for the sake of change rather than improvement - and it shows. SC2 just doesn't feel as good as BW, and SC2's gameplay will never live up to it's predecessor unless the expansions fix it.
Then there's the fact that the game shipped without a functional 'hub' and custom games interface, two things that made BW and WC3 online so attractive to even the casual userbase. And they're not fucking there two years later. There's a reason the LoL playerbase continues to grow at a shocking rate while the SC2 ladder stagnates - and it's not because LoL is a much better game. Better social systems, an addictive rewards/character progression system (which MMO's/COD have proven works) and better eSports support separate the two, not gameplay quality.
It's sad. SC2 is the only real hope for a big/popular RTS right now, and Blizzard is dropping the ball. Regardless of what's better to watch, the most popular genre will be the leading eSport, and at this rate SC2 won't even be a competitor in a few years.
The fact is, RTS is a hard genre to design. Dustin Browder has shipped some of the most popular RTS, but in SC2 there have been enough big design slips (gold bases, better mining rates from each base, Protoss) to show that he and his team don't understand what made BW great. You can crunch numbers all you like, if Browder and Blizzard's bagloads of money/talent can't do it, no start-up is going to get the people who can figure it out - especially since the start-up doesn't have the basic platform of Starcraft to work with. Look at Company of Heroes for a best-case scenario - it's a fantastic game, innovative and well-reviewed, but still not even real competition to SC2.
Our best hope is that Valve decides to compete against Blizzard, and the competition forces something better than what we have. Until then we're stuck with what Blizzard gives us.Last edit: 2012-04-25 13:52:32 |
| | "You seem to think about this game a lot" |
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| thatsundowner Canada. April 25 2012 13:45. Posts 286 | Profile # |
On April 25 2012 13:28 docvoc wrote:
EDIT: I realize there are some issues in the numbers, but the fact that the OP took the time to carry it all out has some merit to it, even if the economic viabilities of it are debatable.
The entire premise behind his argument is flawed, though? Give him the "E for Effort" award, sure, but the numbers themselves are so far out of the realm of reality I'm not sure why you think it has any merit whatsoever. |
| | "you're gonna fail" in latin |
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| schimmetje Netherlands. April 25 2012 13:45. Posts 1045 | Profile # |
On April 25 2012 13:37 StarStruck wrote:
Show nested quote +On April 25 2012 13:33 schimmetje wrote:
TLDR: blizz should hire me, i could make them millions more than they are because i'm not an arrogant activision executive
Perhaps, but some experience in a large project like this may help. Your numbers are crazy made up things. Honestly, 20 programmers + equipment? That's what you need to develop something of the scale of SC2? Wow.
It's actually not so far fetched if you have a really good team.
No. No it really is. It's not at all the same as making some little sprite game. Just throwing some "really good programmers" at something does not magically decrease the realities of the resources required, nor does it account for management, design, art, distribution, support, whatever. This may have worked in the 80's and it may work on the App Store. It does not work on the scale of SC2.
Blizzard employs over 4k people and that's after recent layoffs. They're not just doing that to keep them off the street.
For comparison, here's a look at how many people were involved in the original StarCraft.Last edit: 2012-04-25 14:20:59 |
| | Change to MY nostalgia? UNACCEPTABLE! Monkey paaaw! |
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| dogabutila United States. April 25 2012 14:08. Posts 1436 | Profile Blog # | |
| | Baller Fanclub || CheAse Fanclub |
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| Yurie April 25 2012 14:36. Posts 2093 | Profile Blog # |
| So what it comes down to is that you shouldn't be making the game in the US. High salary requirement, high healthcare requirement. About same company taxes? |
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