Hardcore or Mainstream or Both: Blizzard Strategy for StarCraft 2?
July 11, 2009 by Rajiv
That’s interesting… The idea of core competence, which traditionally defines the sustainable competitive advantage of any organization, has now started showing signs of determining future strategies of gaming companies. Thus Blizzard is in the process of deciding on its strategy for Starcraft II – should it be a game for the hardcore pros, the mainstream community, or both?
The original Starcraft has, undoubtedly, been one of the most popular multiplayer videogame of all time, and has certainly sustained its edge over competition. However, for Starcraft II, despite all the expectation from the hardcore pros for a balanced, deep game, Blizzard strategists are said to be weighing the option of designing it as a ‘blockbuster hit’: a game that will go beyond the hardcore and enter the mainstream.
Dustin Browder, Starcraft II’s lead game designer has told IGN,
This is sort of a Blizzard core design philosophy. We always cater to the hardcore community. Always. From minute one we focus on them, and then we try to make it more accessible after that… A lot of other companies say ‘casual first because they’re the biggest numbers… and then someday we’ll deal with those hardcore guys if we get time to get to them…,’ but we say ‘look, at the end of the day, everybody has the chance to become a hardcore person if only you’ll let them’
Basically it is an ‘easy to learn; hard to master’ philosophy which has given Blizzard the sustainable competitive advantage. Thus the goal for Starcraft II, again, is to have stages for players to progress through. Another dimension Blizzard is looking at is, whether it can be made to compete as an e-Sport, with spectators involved, as in South Korea. The strategy will be to spread the appetite for e-Sports in other parts of the world.
For the full interview with Dustin Browder, check out IGN
Fantastic!! Kudos to Blizzard management and designers. We will all be looking forward to Starcraft II as an event in the next Olympics!!
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I think they’re jumping the gun a little. We have no guarantee that SC2 will even feel like SC did. I suppose if a beta is released and they do find that people just don’t like the feel then they’ll delay it some more.
HAHAHAHA! I’m sorry but as time progresses I’m starting to almost start with chants like “burn…burn…burn blizzard burn!”
Be interesting to see how South Korea takes to the whole ‘no lan’ business. All it will take is one outage and Blizzard will have to pull a finger out and bring out the LAN patch.
Does anyone want to take bets on Blizzards LAN patch?
No bet, LBK.
With 48k on the petition (or about $2.9 mil in possible losses) and S Korea saying no, I doubt it will take very long before Blizzard (or soon to be “Blistered”) will drop the patch for the LAN.
They say they want to make it more accessible to new players. Some of us used the LAN to introduce new players to SC. This would make it very hard for us to bring in others. Besides, not all of the places that we LAN have net access. (8 player LAN generator party at a cabin in the mountains…. FUN weekends!!!)
Sounds like an awesome weekend, many a Friday night has been played through well into the Saturday (thank god for home delivery
now about 75,000 on the petition…(and hardly any dud posts).
I wish Blizzard would reward good behaviour (throw a little something extra in the box that can’t downloaded; Poster, Playing Card, Figurine, Keyring whatever…) Give the blokes who might be tempted to download a reason not to. Otherwise run the risk of Boycott (i.e the whole No LAN = No Sale business).
wow. 75k on the petition? If everyone on there decided not to buy, it would be about $4.5 mil out of their pockets.
Blizzard used to be good about perking their players. I think now that Activision holds the purse strings, Blizzard is pretty much stuck. If this (SC2) doesn’t go over well, it’ll be a perfect example of why independents should stay independent. Bliz could have leveraged WOW and Diablo to get funding, without losing anything.
The only reason Activision grabbed Blizzard was that they knew they were circling the drain. When was that last time that Activision had a great game? (Something on the Atari 2600, perhaps? Or was that the Colecovision? Certainly wasn’t the Jaguar!! What a piece of junk!)
The petition helps to get an idea about how many people are upset by their decision but in all honesty a lot of people that signed will probably still purchase the game. I guess the true indicator would be to see how many people would actually not log onto battle.net. I signed the petition but it doesn’t mean that I won’t buy the game (well I’m not buying without the ability to play offline multiplayer games – so that may be via an officially supported LAN mode (in pure OFFLINE mode) that they’ve said they’re not going to include…or using a patch/crack created by the clever people out there). It just means that those of us that will only accept the full package (with offline LAN) will have to wait – and will have to resort to unsupported methods of achieving the same thing we were used to in the original Blizz games. Unfortunate…but we’re not left with much choice (plus at least I won’t be pirating the game itself!).
Pirating is not the way to go… mind you treating your customers like thieves sucks too. Would you go to a store which threatened to strip-search you on the off chance you might shoplift? or do you walk into the store around the corner (or in this case, some faceless bloke on the corner giving you a what you want for free?)
17,000 in one petition and 87,000 in the other – that’s a lot of people (families etc…) who are a little put out!
I still think a boycott is the way to go, if money is all Blizzard understands – then don’t buy the game, give it six months and wait for it to hit the basement bins and pick it up for spare change.