Monk joins new RTS studio Frost Giant. New Co-Op possibly confirmed

For those who don’t know Monk (Kevin Dong) was the lead designer for SC2 co-op. (He made a blog post on TeamLiquid announcing his move)

According to twitter Monk is the lead co-op designer at Frost Giant!

Frost Giant has financial backing from companies such as Riot Games. Another notable person to join this company is Tim Morton who was the Production Director of Starcraft 2.

According to Tasteless podcast Frost Giant is aiming to be the spiritual successor to Starcraft 2. He also mentioned that the Blizzard staff wanted another RTS project, but Activision denied it. This new RTS that Frost Giant will be building will be a AAA game.

So pretty much most RTS staff have left Blizzard now, mainly to DreamHaven or Frost Giant

Exciting times! Can’t wait for the new co-op mode

Monk Blog post
https://tl.net/blogs/564532-goodbye-blizzard-hello-frost-giant

Tasteless podcast on Frost Giant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yw5HpBarljk

Monk Twitter (with title of " Lead Co-op Designer at Frost Giant")
https://twitter.com/Solid_monk

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Frost Giant Studios made its formal debut on Monday, and it’s composed of serious names from the original StarCraft II team: its production director, lead artist, lead designer, and lead co-op designer. Those staffers are joined by the lead campaign designer of WarCraft III’s expansion pack The Frozen Throne, along with a former Blizzard senior writer, a former Blizzard engineer, and a former Blizzard program manager.

It’ll be a number of years till something comes to fruition, but it certainly seems promising.

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Welp, this is looking to be the next place to call home. Here’s to their endeavors!

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No surprises there. If a new project isn’t slated to make the executives and shareholders bucket loads of money, it ain’t happening; that’s all they really care about.

I don’t blame anyone looking for greener pastures if their reason for leaving is Activision.

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Between Dreamhaven and Frost Giant, things are looking bright in the future.

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I have so many mixed emotions right now. On the one hand, it’s awesome that so many devs have come together (with both Dreamhaven and Frost Giant) in new environments that will allow them to follow their gaming passions. The fact that Frost Giant will be developing RTS’s is amazing, too. I’m excited for what comes next from these companies.

On the other hand, I’m also dismayed that we’ll likely never see SC3 in any form. That isn’t to say that there won’t be good SC games in the future (in a different genre), but it’s looking so unlikely now.

Still, I’m excited to see what comes of Frost Giant and Dreamhaven.

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Just another reason to hate Activision :sweat_smile:

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Sounds like sc3 will be entirely different than their original vision and whatever this off-patent but original vision may be of hope yet.

Guess time will show us what’s what.

I don’t necessarily think whatever original vision may be exactly better than whatever the now-brand-franchise will be, but it is definitely hard to ignore the “why did everyone leave” part too.

Ha! No SC3 from Blizzard, but a spiritual successor from a smaller studio. Called it. (Though admittedly I was looking at Dreamhaven for the studio.)

Anyway, awesome news. Can’t wait to see what they come up with.

Maybe one of the smaller studios may buy SC1 / SC2 from Blizzard.

I wish Monk and the rest of the team the best of luck. But at the risk of being a Debbie Downer, I’m going to reserve judgement until after something is released, because I feel like I’ve heard the “here’s something better than SC2!” line many times before.

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That is a good news.
I will hope they try to make a more popular RTS game,
rather than another 1v1 RTS game for e-sport.

As Blizzard had put all their effort in balancing the 3 races.
Even they stop to update, I think SC2 will still be the best 1v1 RTS game for the future years.

I hope the new team can focus more on multiplayers vs multiplayers and multiplayers vs AI.

That’s great news.

I don’t think they’ll go for a project as ambitious as a starcraft to start with so possibly it will be a less polished first game but it will be a game made by people passionate about rts and they already planned for a coop part (likely the one easiest to get more new players interested with).

I’ll be waiting to see what they can come up with.

Here is hoping!

Been getting my RTS fix by playing the C&C remaster at the moment.
Been fun, but ideally want something new! Played this game 20 years ago.

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I think jaborino believes one of the designers left and instead of hiring new one and teaching all the necessities they simply shut down the shop. Maybe monk got hired buy frostgiant and blizzard as a result decided for no more co-op. Or maybe they fired the whole staff and only then he joined frost giant?

blizzard is done with rts, the few people who wanted to work on rts have left blizzard.

Rts does not make the billions of $ like fortnite & lootboxes so greedy management will not waste any employees on projects that are below maximum greed.

expect warcraft 3 Refunded to be axed very soon because it made even less money than sc2.

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Blizzard is dead and can go to hel1 at this point, I’m glad to hear all the good talent is coming together to create a new IP in a different company.

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Sooo… Diablo? Seriously, if they made a new evil entity called the “Corporate Evils”, had even the Prime Evils answer to them, I’d totally want to play a game where you get to bash in a bunch of Activision executives!!

I’m not so sure.
I once heard we didn’t get Cerebrates in SC2 because they looked too much like something else from another company or something.
Who know how much Activision could cause interferences with those new companies?

with SC2’s main storyline wrapped up anyway it would be nice if “SC3” can be done under a different IP anyway. I just hope they can follow its predecessor closely without getting sued by Blizzard.