14 DAY TRIAL // Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty has been launched during the summer of 2010 and went on to be a hit when it comes to a PC-only strategy game, managing to quickly take the place of the original game in the series in the e-sports world, specifically South Korea.
But the process of creating the game was hard and Dustin Browder, who is a designer at Blizzard, says that initially the team though that, “This is going to be insanely hard. It's going to be like inventing Basketball 2.”
The developer says that, for a strategy video game to become an e-sports phenomenon, it must be simple to understand, it must make skill a central ingredient to any winning strategy, must have uncertainty built-in to generate excitement and must be easy to watch by an outside audience.
Browder says the uncertainty is the part established gamers like least and is the reason “everyone hates me and why people get bitter about e-sports from time to time.”
On the other hand, newcomers to Starcraft II tend to be annoyed by the degree of skill that the game requires, essentially ensuring that those who played the first title will have an advantage for some time over those who approach the multiplayer with fresh eyes.
Browder also said that the team looked at other video games in the strategy genre when development began, with a focus on Dawn of War from Relic and on Supreme Commander from Gas Powered Games.
The Blizzard team quickly saw good games that were too complicated to be quickly adopted in the e-sports circuit.
At the moment, Blizzard is working on the first expansion for Starcraft II, which is set to focus on the Zerg faction and will be called Heart of the Swarm.
The game does not currently have a launch window and the developers are promising new mechanics, new units and improved multiplayer.