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StarCraft 10th Anniversary Interview Blizzard developers look back at a decade of real-time strategy dominance. by Jason Ocampo March 31, 2008 - Tuesday marks the 10th anniversary of a landmark event in PC gaming. On April 1, 1998, Blizzard unleashed its sci-fi real-time strategy game StarCraft upon the world. While the developers knew they had made a great game, no one foresaw what would happen next. As of May of last year, Blizzard had sold 9.5 million copies of the game, which makes appearances on Top 10 sales lists even today. In South Korea, where it's sold almost five million copies alone, StarCraft is practically a national obsession with professional leagues and sponsorships. Now Blizzard is busy working on the long-awaited sequel to StarCraft, but we were able to talk with several employees who were veterans of the original game for their thoughts on this historic milestone. We chatted with Chris Sigaty, lead tester; Sam Didier, art director; and Frank Pearce, a Blizzard cofounder and now executive vice president of product development. Bob Colayco of Blizzard PR also sat in. In case you're totally unfamiliar, StarCraft follows the story of three diverse races: the Terrans (humans), ravenous Zerg, and mystical Protoss. Throughout the game's rather sizable single-player campaign, players learn about each race's diverse cultures and motivations and become acquainted with their drastically different play styles. Such a difference between race mechanics is in large part what made StarCraft such a standout game and so enjoyable to play. To say, "I play Zerg" or "I play Terran" carries different, more distinct connotations of general play style and personality than saying something like "I play Nod" or "I play GDI." After you're done with the interview, feel free to hit the comment section below to leave your own impressions of the game. IGN: Can you believe it's been 10 years already? Sam Didier: Yeah, it seems like 20. IGN: How did the idea for StarCraft first come about? Sam Didier: Back in the day, after we did Warcraft, we were kind of thinking, "Well cool, should we do another one?" Everyone was kind of geeked-up about doing a science fiction one. We had entertained ideas--we were still kind of small back then--but we entertained ideas like, "Oh, maybe we could do something with the Star Wars guys?" And at the end of the day we kind of just thought, "You know what? We'd probably have more fun just doing something on our own." We wouldn't have to worry about the licensing guys saying, "No, you can have those guys shoot like that because they don't shoot like that in the movies." So we just kind of decided to screw that. Let's do our own thing, then we could be or our own creative control. IGN: What were the major influences that you drew upon for StarCraft in terms of art, gameplay, and such? Sam Didier: [For] gameplay, we wanted to base it on our style of RTSs that we've done earlier, like Warcraft. StarCraft we just kind of souped up a little bit; made it a little bit faster, a little bit more units. But inspiration-wise, anything from the Star Wars movies from comic books to regular books. There are a lot of classic sci-fi references in this. The Protoss are kind of the big, super smart gray aliens, we just kind of pushed them our direction a little bit more. Zerg are kind of your basic alien-take-over creature, and again, we gave our own influences. Same with the Terrans; as opposed to being super, highly-evolved super soldier type guys, our guys were convicts, and they just suited them up in space marine armor and sent them out there. IGN: What's the thing that you most remember the most when creating the game? What memory do you have? Frank Pearce: I actually wrote a lot of code on StarCraft, I was a code monkey back then. The vision that always stands out in my mind looking back was late nights at the office, reviewing hard copy bug lists, trying to work out all the bugs that we met our standard of quality. Chris Sigaty: I was actually the lead tester of StarCraft, and what I remember was sleeping on the floor a lot. And as Frank pointed out--hard copy bugs--we actually hand wrote up bugs back in the day and I had stacks of paper in my office, hand written, of what people saw wrong in the game and had to manually type them in. Frank Pearce: Talk about being old, we had hard copies of bug lists back then. Chris Sigaty: Yeah, it was a totally different era. Sam Didier: We had kind of a fixed palette of colors. Any unit had to be on one palette, and each palette was 16 colors, and one of them had to be transparent. So basically any unit that you see in StarCraft, or any backgrounds, it doesn't have more than 15 colors at any one time. So we'd have to sit there and go back-and-forth, like, "We don't have enough variations in the grays, let's use of the greens." At certain color spectrums, green and gray look very similar. Same as some blues, you can get away with some light grays in with the light blues, and it kind of helps. IGN: What were your chief concerns when you were making it? Were you guys just wondering, "Oh god, I hope this thing doesn't suck." Sam Didier: I think we were just trying to make a cool game that was at least as good as our Warcraft one, and just make a science fiction version. Frank Pearce: I don't think there was a lot of concern if the game was going to be cool or not. We were playing it internally as part of the QA process and it was a really fun game. We knew it was a fun game. It was just a question of whether it would be well received by the community. IGN: So when the game was finally ready to go, you thought it would sell, but were your expectations? Chris Sigaty: Not anywhere near what ended up happening with the game. Sam Didier: I think back in the day, "Oh, a game sold 50,000 or 100,000, that's huge!" Chris Sigaty: Actually, the Korean phenomenon was totally unexpected too. So the game sold beyond our expectations by far. And Battle.net turned out to be--we had already included it in Diablo--it was the next step for us. At any rate, it was well received and the game sold amazingly well, but the whole Korea phenomenon hit us almost a year later. IGN: That's kind of the story about StarCraft: It's like the national game of Korea. Do you have theories about how that came about? Chris Sigaty: There is a lot of theories about it, and the one that I hear that seems to make sense is: right place, right time. Korea being in a recession, the game being available for the public to play--being a great game and well balanced--and these game rooms popping up all across Seoul. And it sort of building up along with the economy at the time, and StarCraft just being that really well-balanced competitive game, the nature of the Korean community being competitive, all those actors combining into this weird, cool crazy phenomenon. IGN: You guys are basically treated like rock stars when visiting South Korea, aren't you? Frank Pearce: Well, uh [laughter], you should ask Bob about that. Bob and I were just in Seoul a week-and-a-half ago. Bob Colayco: What happened? I didn't hear this story. Frank Pearce: I can't objectively represent the way it happened. Bob was there. Sam Didier: I just don't think he remember what happened… Frank Pearce: No, I remember it. [laughter] Bob Colayco: Hey, what happens in Korea stays in Korea. Frank Pearce: Our Korean team takes really good care of us when we travel over there, and it's hard to tell the difference between what they're doing out of respect and appreciation for our presence there, as compared to what's necessary. So the guys in the black suits, and the blue ties and the headsets are probably a little unnecessary, but you know, that's just my opinion. Bob Colayco: He's referring to the suited guys when executives or whatever make an entrance. For example, at WWI [Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational], they get escorted by these guys who look like Secret Service. They're just security guys, but they walk right next to you or slightly behind you. Chris Sigaty: It's not the American version, which is some out-of-shape, fat, old guy who can barely walk to keep up with you, and would never imagine escorting you to the restroom, for example. In Korea, they take it really seriously. Frank Pearce: They do stop at the door to the restroom. [laughter] They treat us very well when we visit Korea, and we're always very humbled what we get there. Sam Didier: Frank gets the security guard treatment. Chris and I, when we go, they know we can take of ourselves, so they don't bother. [laughter] IGN: StarCraft has sold over 9.5 million copies worldwide. Everyone agrees it's a great game. But there has to be a reason it caught on as it did, worldwide. Because many great games don't sell anywhere as close to what StarCraft has done. Do you attribute to Battle.net? What do you think is the catalyst? Frank Pearce: Definitely Battle.net is a factor. The personality that we inject into the experience through the sounds; the personality that we inject through the portraits. Because the units are only so high. Looking at it from the top-down perspective, the units have a distinct look, but they don't have a lot of visual personality beyond their distinct look. But when you throw the portrait of the unit on the screen and you give it that voice, all of a sudden you've injected personality into this Chris Sigaty: The thing that we've always done--not me personally, but the company--has ended up hitting on are these sort of common themes. Grabbing the right portions of these common themes so that it's more accessible, so it's the coolest aspects of those things. So the coolest parts of the Star Wars thing, and the coolest parts of the characters and the story, and they all end up adding to why those games, and why particularly Blizzard does well, or why StarCraft does well in a situation where another great game didn't necessarily, maybe that accessibility? Not always necessarily due to the actual user interface or that sort of thing, but really the big themes that are there. Sam Didier: I kind of attribute the longevity of it, it all boils down for me to the gameplay. Because I look at the art now, and it's horrible. [laughter]. It's not the art that's keeping the game going. But the gameplay is super fun, everyone loves to play it. It's simple to play, but if you want to be a bad ass, it also has that component of the game. It's sort of like chess. The art is nothing really great to look at; it works, but it's still a fun game to play. You can play it against your friend; it doesn't take four hours to play a game, you can play a couple of games at lunch, and you're done. It has a good, timeless feel to it. IGN: So… Sam Didier: People still are playing chess. [laughter] IGN: They are. Two thousand years or so. Sam Didier: Hopefully we'll be that long! [laughter] Compared to chess, we suck! We've only been around 10 years! IGN: Let's talk about StarCraft Ghost. What was the thought about spinning StarCraft into an action game, and what happened to that project? Frank Pearce: One of the challenges that we face here is that we never have a shortage of great ideas. The challenge we always face is that we only have so many resources available to us to actually implement those ideas. And so we have to be able to pick and choose which great ideas we're able to execute on. And at the time, we just didn't have the bandwidth for everything we were doing. When we were working on Ghost, we were working on StarCraft II, it just wasn't publicly known that we were working on StarCraft II. And we also had World of Warcraft that we were supporting, and we had no idea when we launched World of Warcraft that we end up supporting a subscriber base of 10 million people, right? We anticipated in North America when we first launched WoW, that we were going to be supporting a subscriber base of 400,000 people, and we had 400,000 subscribers in the first month. So, for us, it was just a matter of focus and resources and what made the most sense for us to focus on, and with World of Warcraft growing as quickly as it did, that had to be our primary focus. That's not to say that Ghost wasn't fun, and wasn't shaping up with a lot of potential, but we had to choose. IGN: Is there ever going to be an attempt to bring StarCraft II to consoles? Frank Pearce: That's not something that we're planning for right now. Our focus is on making a great gaming experience on the PC. Real-time strategy games have unique requirements as it relates to user interface and what not, and we're designing the user interface around the fact that the player will have a keyboard and a mouse. And certain minimum system requirements as it relates to what a PC can deliver and stuff, so it's not something that we have plans for. IGN: How did StarCraft's success affect Blizzard as a company? Did it change how you developed games? Did it serve as a lesson how you proceed with all products in the future? What did it teach you? Chris Sigaty: It generated a ton of egos. [laughter] Frank Pearce: One of the things that it taught us is that you shouldn't listen to the media. IGN: [pause] Noted. [laughter] Frank Pearce: When we launched StarCraft and the reviews started coming in, most of the media, their biggest comment was, "Yeah, it seems fun, but it's not 3D." Right? And 10 years later, the game is still popular, it's sold almost 10 million units, and it's still only 2D, and no one cares anymore that it wasn't 3D. So I say that we learned that we shouldn't listen to the media, but what that really taught us is that our focus should be on a quality gameplay experience first. Chris Sigaty: Another thing that definitely happened too is that we pushed really hard with StarCraft and a lot of people did some amazing crunch times as I remember directly. And there was some fallout as a result of that afterward. And there's the famous, "We're in the final stretch" for, as I remember, for months upon months of time. Huge discussions about shipping for Christmas that year and then it ended up going into late March or April. So we did learn a lot about how that can affect the entire morale of the company, and that was certainly something that we took away experiences from. And we try to better ourselves based on it with each future project, and we do a little bit better. We still haven't perfected things, but we're working on it. IGN: So you're making StarCraft II. How are you going to make sure that it lives up to the seemingly insurmountable hurdle of the original? Here's a game that's been played for 10 years by millions and millions of people. That's a bit scary, isn't it? Frank Pearce: That's something that we're strangers to. We had people asking us the same thing when we were making Warcraft III, and we're pretty proud of the experience that we delivered with Warcraft III. And this is the same development team, there've been some changes on the team, but at its core it's the same development team that was responsible for Warcraft III. There's a handful of developers on the StarCraft II that were on the original StarCraft team. We've got really seasoned veterans making StarCraft II, and we have complete faith in their ability to deliver a top-notch experience. It's not something that scares me; I don't think it's something that scares these guys either. Chris Sigaty: No, I totally agree that we're not scared about that, but I do think that StarCraft II has very unique challenges because of those expectations, and it's certainly an interesting tightrope walk that we deal with this particular product than anything else that I've been a part of in the past; because of that rabid love for the original product. IGN: Would you be surprised if people were still playing StarCraft 10 years from now, on the 20th anniversary? Large numbers of people? Chris Sigaty: I'll be surprised if computer systems can go to that lowest-common denominator and actually run the game properly… Frank Pearce: You'll have to play that on an emulator probably. IGN: Or probably on a cell phone at that point. Frank Pearce: Yeah, you might need an emulator on the cell phone to play it. [laughter]
StarCraft 10th Anniversary Interview
其实后来连《星际争霸：母巢之战》的主创罗伯·帕尔多也承认，《星际争霸》中三族的最初灵感和模板都来源于“战锤40k”。
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原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 16:14 发表 那个浪漫庄园又是啥…… 这文相当煋，而且没什么实质内容，果然是blz的东西不愁人翻么。
原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 20:49 发表 我说这群blz青在高潮啥呢，原来他们认为他们用一个似是而非战翻了另外一个似是而非哦…… 在对几位的认真劲感到佩服的同时，心底里泛起了一点莫名的哀伤……
前略... IGN:制作星际争霸的想法是怎么来的呢? Jump: 《星际争霸》中三族的最初灵感和模板都来源于“战锤40k”. IGN:星际争霸在美工,游戏性等等方面中, 你们是如何设定的. Jump: 《星际争霸》中三族的最初灵感和模板都来源于“战锤40k”，具体请看我在《家用电脑与游戏》2008年第八期的相关内容。 后略...
原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 22:16 发表 我说你逻辑不行吧你要说我欺负人 我说你脑子不行吧你要说我人身攻击 我说你情绪问题吧你要说你正常着呢不用吃药 我真是orz
原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 22:34 发表 纱布，红字部分老子来教你什么才tm叫翻译 IGN: How did the idea for StarCraft first come about? SC这游戏的点子最初咋来的？ Sam Didier: Back in the day, after we did Warcraft, we were kind of thi ...
原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 23:01 发表 我对你那含混不清的智商彻底绝望了。 你用哪个位面的浆糊逻辑在你引用的文章的哪一个单词里得出的结论“SC的点子和WH40k”无关？ 脑袋被门夹坏了？
原帖由 jump 于 2008-9-5 23:10 发表 Sam Didier: Back in the day, after we did Warcraft, we were kind of thinking, "Well cool, should we do another one?" Everyone was kind of geeked-up about doing a science fiction one. We had entertaine ...
