Monetizing Starcraft

General Discussion
1

Dear Blizz,

Please consider SC3, one day.

Starcraft is and has been the #1 RTS, no other game has ever really come close.

While I am sure that there were/are many reasons Blizzard had to stop supporting SC2 full time, some probably having to do with internal discussions, politics, in the end I am sure it all boils down to money. I have to imagine that the topic of how to best monetize SC2 was at the forefront of many meetings, without alienating a large population of the community or damaging the company’s image. My opinion is, just do it. If you create a truly great game, people will come and they will pay. I know many people that would be okay with paying a monthly subscription to SC2 or Battle.Net, like they do WoW for the opportunity to play. This doesn’t make you an evil corporation and people need to realize this. Businesses have shareholders and businesses are expected to make money, period. It is time for folks to grow up and live in the real world. Stuff costs money and with a company as large and talented as Blizzard, money talks. Stop crying and get over it. That’s just how it is.

No one is asking or wanting a pay to win game. Yes, that would be in bad taste…but wanting a high quality game with high expectations is what the players do want and many would be willing to pay for it.

Monetizing SC2:

Full Game Price for a full SC2 quality story campaign. This is the basic entry fee to the games campaigns.

For online play, an additional fee is required and could be offered in affordable tiers.

Example:

$5 monthly - Tier 1. Online gameplay for Customs (UMS), 1on1 or 2on2, all custom non-ladder games.

$10 Monthly - Tier 2. Online game play includes all of Tier 1 in addition to full Ladder Access. (create a season end tournament that players can qualify for and can choose to enter on on a pre-determined date (so that people can schedule and know in advance) Can be done on a regional basis too (timezones). Then based on the pool of players that opted to participate, battle net could create a mini tournament (separating for each rank Diamond, Masters, etc. and run rounds of swiss for 2-4 hours playing as many games as you can (think Warcraft 3 tournaments of the days of old) followed by a cut to the top 8 or top 16 bracket.).

Ad-Hoc Tournaments cost or Tier 3 - $15 monthly - Individual Tournament Entry fees - $5 - $10 - $20 - depending on the scale, prize pool, rewards.

Another possible option is to simply have a monthly subscription for battle net access or Starcraft.

Tournament Fees for high quality online tournaments based on Tier (Gold, Plat, Masters, etc), with reasoanble prize support, invites to the pro scene or pro quarterly or yearly tournaments, Blizz Merch awards, in game awards, etc.

Entering ad-hoc tournament play could require 50+ or 100+ wins played during a season before becoming eligible. (consider it end game content) or something to work towards to each season. Yes, this means this mode won’t be for everyone. It’s okay, neither are raids in WOW.

Consider creating a fully supported 2vs2 or 3vs3 scene with their own balance and units. Yes, this game mode/unit/maps balancing of Starcraft would possibly look different than a typical 1on1, with all of the additional monetizations.

Cost for additional unit skins, building interface skins, UI, mouse cursors, pets, what obs see, you name. Get creative. Allow people to express themselves (while keeping the units clearly recognizable) without it being pay to win.

Eliminate or reduce smurfing as much as possible. Consider requiring ladder/tournament play needing ID verification and/or requiring a phone# be attached to an account that follows the player regardless of their name change or barcode nonsense. (quit crying, this is where the world is headed).

Punish Hacking by banning their real ID or phone#. In short, you are building a credible tournament scene regardless of the skill level tier, giving everyone of all skill groups something to aim and play for.

Co-Op Commanders were/are great. Keep that going with an ad-hoc cost for each one. Continue to develop more maps and reasons to play and purchase co-op commanders. Create a competitive PvE scene. Make the top tier incredibly difficult and give those players something to play for.

Keeping the game fresh:

In addition to releasing new content like full cost expansions like Heart of the Swarm or Legacy of the Void – you could rotate a unit pool, keeping the game fresh. Meaning, rotate a few units in and out of the game, based on seasons or years. This will require additional testing, balancing, but the money will be there to support this idea. For example, in season 1 each race has the units provided in Wings of Liberty, then in season 2 you can remove 2-3 units from each race and replace them with 2 others. In season 3 you could either go back to the season 1 pool or perhaps go to a new pool of units (again, we are just talking about replacing 1-3 key units for each race which would have a substantial impact to the game and balancing). You are creating a rotation which will help keep the game fresh and make it more difficult to master. This could also be done on a yearly basis to make it easier to balance and could be limited to 2 - 3 pools of units so that it will be easier to balance and maintain in the longer term. Perhaps at the end of Blizzcon after the big tournament to cap off the year before a change in the unit pool could occur.

Yes, creating a rotation would require significant testing and wouldn’t be cheap, but with the proper cash flow and monetizing I could see this working to keep the game going for the long haul.

Just some crazy ideas from an avid fan of Starcraft. Can’t wait to see what is next for the franchise and am excited at the idea of a possible shooter. However, in the end…Starcraft 3 is what many of us would truly cherish. Perhaps one day…

-Rath

2

kindly take your bs money scheme somewhere else. we dont need subscriptions to play a game. or any other fees. if the game cant stand on the initial price to play then it has no business being a game worth playing. ps. microsoft owns blizzard, you know the company who made xbox, windows and a ton of other stuff. money aint the problem.

3

i don’t know. They spent an insane amount of money developing and advertising for SC2. More than any other video game in history, I think. I know they made it all back, but the profit margins couldn’t have been that great compared to other types of investments.

I’d actually like to see blizzard create another Action RPG franchise or else an “Action Adventure” style game more similar to Zelda franchise or Brain Lord (Dragon Quest live action game from early 1990s). I’m sure they could develop both single player and multi player platforms for such a game. I could envision less character leveling up and more equipment versatility than ever before. Think “Diablo 2 without actually needing to level up your character, but yet you’d need to find dozens of unique equipments, abilities, and perhaps hundreds or thousands of total magical equipments from RNG combinations.

I don’t think another RTS is in the workings. It doesn’t make much sense for blizzard to compete with its own games in that niche, which is dying in general, because not enough people are either smart enough, nor interested enough in the niche.

4

Starcraft 2 isn’t exactly state of the art, given that its last expansion was like 11 years ago. 16 if you go by the original launch date. It’s made all the money it’s going to at this point. There isn’t any real risk of cross competition.

5

I understand the desire to be against monetizing but I also think we need to try to be a bit more objective. Paying a 1 time full purchase price for a top tier game like Zelda, Expedition 33, Elden Ring or any other top tier single player game makes sense. They are not being actively supported for years on end to the degree that Starcraft is or would be. It is not the same thing and I think it is important that we are fair in this sort of one size fits all pricing structure. I too would rather just pay $10 max and get a AAA+++ quality game that i’d never have to invest another dime into either, but that isn’t realistic. Not for the type of company or game that Blizzard produces. These are highly trained experts that have high end expensive college degrees that they paid entirely too much money for. Not to mention they are a Western gaming company located in California…one of the most expensive places to live in the world. Thinking a game as elite as Starcraft 3 would have to be could be paid for by 1 single transaction of $60 and then have it be supported for 15-20 years is complete insanity.

6

first of all most of us that do play this game have purchaced it already, its only recently that its been made free to play, and thats been a big problem, and not a money problem. I my self would like it to be just like it was and still be a game you have to pay for in the first place. and again my reason are not to help blizzard earn money, but to keep the player base real, as in people aint making multiple accounts, to do bad things, ie smurfing, cheating, hacking, and all the other problems that have come from the free to play.

but as for paying subscription fees or any other fee, absolutely not. If i game requires a subscription id never play it, ever. sorry thats bs, if im buying i game i expect to be able to play all functions from the start, and not pay a monthly/yearly rate on top of that. thats bad business model and shows a companies greed.

1 Like
7

first of all most of us that do play this game have purchaced it already, its only recently that its been made free to play, and thats been a big problem, and not a money problem. I my self would like it to be just like it was and still be a game you have to pay for in the first place. and again my reason are not to help blizzard earn money, but to keep the player base real, as in people aint making multiple accounts, to do bad things, ie smurfing, cheating, hacking, and all the other problems that have come from the free to play.

but as for paying subscription fees or any other fee, absolutely not. If i game requires a subscription id never play it, ever. sorry thats bs, if im buying i game i expect to be able to play all functions from the start, and not pay a monthly/yearly rate on top of that. thats bad business model and shows a companies greed.

Dang, this is a great point…free play does encourage people to pull crap like you mentioned. This explains some stuff I’ve seen since the last time I played. And I will never pay subscription fees for a game either. I have never played WoW in any form for this reason.

8

yes besides those kind of problems i mentioned, theres also, the plague of noobs on team games, which is probably my biggest complaint. Since free to play hit, the team ladder has been filled with everyone and there mother hopping on trying to play and LEARN the game that way. Now i dont mind new people but when every other games a crapshoot cause you dont know know if your gonna get someone good or a total noob ruins the experience.

9

learn to play. I once defeated two Masters opponents with only me having a Bronze ally in 2vs2. I banshee rushed and killed 19 workers and a pylon with my first banshee. Then by the time the two opponents chased away my banshees, the bronze ally had muta/ling and I had marine/tank and we cleaned house.

unless you’re a GM, you can always play better.

10

buddy, as i said before your opinions on this game dont matter, you dont play it anymore. your a washed up has been and a joke on the forums.

1 Like
11

You’re a never-has-been, so who’s the bigger loser?

12

LOL, what ? Are you stupid ?
SC2 “the best RTS” :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

13

I love how the fun police come in and tell me to take it to another forum or whatever, but this is the crap that we’re ok with.