I understand that RTS games are niche so a StarCraft 3 is probably not in line with Activision’s ‘blockbuster or nothing at all’ mentality - but StarCraft can lend itself to a wide range of genres while hitting a checklist of revenue streams.
For example; let’s look at StarCraft and pretend it could be a looter shooter akin to Destiny.
We know that business model works well - and can be monetized through non-egregious microtransactions such as skins (I don’t care if some people find that egregious, cosmetics have no gameplay value. If you need to have a skin, that is a personal choice with no impact on the game state). Additionally; you can EASILY adapt the genre for PvP by basically creating a FPS-Moba hybrid mode. Titanfall (1 and 2) sort of explored this concept and was wildly successful until a hacker ruined their servers.
We also know the tech to do the theme justice now exists, we’ve seen swarming units path over themselves to create unit bridges across unpathable terrain in World War Z (important for Zerg). We know Unreal Engine has tools for Ray Tracing and destructible environments and new consoles, which should be the lowest common denominator when designing a new game essentially have an RTX 2080 in them.
In addition; since Activision seemingly has plans for a streaming service as they don’t want GeForce Now streaming their games, the availability of the product could also come to weaker PCs which aren’t as good as current gen consoles.
I feel like a StarCraft MMOFPS with a PvP esports FPS MOBA mode (instead of unique characters, you just bring loadouts, potentially including vehicles with each item equipped giving your marine, zealot, hydralisk, etc player character a gear score - and each league consisting of gear score brackets to prevent a new player with no good gear from vsing someone who, say, has a Siege Tank/Ultralisk/Archon equip) would be incredibly popular for both casuals who don’t want to really fight other players but also in the esports world.
Anyhow, that’s my take. I think the concept is a money printing machine and it blows my mind that the IP has been so mis-handled by Blizzard that they’re essentially leaving money on the table.
On a more serious note, they are clueless. Just look at how they lost Dota. So many wonderful and unique games come from the arcade aspect of SC2/WC3 and they miss out on all opportunities. And now they are cracking down on people’s creativity, which makes people not want to be creative on their platform. So unfortunate.
Yeah; after they let Dota slip through their fingers by being greedy, they became draconian and it absolutely hurt the longevity of their games with custom maps.
They really should have just hired IceFrog, bought the Dota IP and did the fair thing but instead they relied on a bad EULA clause that was ‘le gasp’ unenforceable - thus they lost in court.
Like, how about ya’ll just play fair? IceFrog had the qualifications to run a Dota team and I’m sure an agreement could have been reached regarding ownership of the Dota IP? It’s just another example of Blizzard hubris.
In the StarCraft hall of fame abduction statement the egyptian guy, cant remember his name but is one of the few blizz OG left, said they were exploring the StarCraft world in different ways outside of RTS.
They do need to move away from developing their own engine specially because they do like to take their time with their games, at least the ones that actiblizz care about, cough w3r cough. The question is if they are too blinded by their ego that they just want to create everything by themselves. In the past that was necessary, not anymore with things like Unreal Engine 5 and Maya, you can shave years of development. This also makes them look very silly, they really expect another dota to appear by they owning 100% of whatever you do with their engine, I think UE5 just asks for 5%, this just shows they are in the past.
I do fear it will be full of lootboxes and silly microtransactions so maybe is for the best until a hero saves us from actiblizz, maybe Elon Musk cares to buy blizz lol, one can only hope. I also dont think they would sell one IP, u would have to buy the whole blizz, so thats tough.
I want StarCraft Total War (galaxy) campaign, not the b.s “omg you can choose which path to take, that has no relevants in the end”.
Imagine trying to take Char(grill) one region at a time on a grand map. Focused too much of your force on kne front line and feeling regret as you can already see the outcome of your mistake as four Zerg Hives border your other line and your units don’t have the logistics to make it back on time.
I have said it several times,Starcraft as a grand strategy x4 game like total war series,would work perfectly and its a market with a fair amount of players,RTS may be dead,but many of the strategy gamers went to that genre,plenty of games such as civilization,europa universalis,crusader kings,endkess space,stellaris…its a genre that allows many things and ways.
Blizzard problem was wow,with it,they got into huge sucess and huge amounts of money, so any other kind of money that was not in the same level,would be dismissed,so they split starcraft into three (polemic) making the multiplayer game obsolete for people who didnt had the latest expansion.Created Diablo 3 with a real money action (not exactly bad by itself,but that showed their greed). With OW,they came into wow money territory and they started leaving other projects and evenncancelling games under developement.
Clearly its a company that lost its way in favour to money,and no,stop blaming Activision, they are greedy of course,but Blizzard also fell into that greed long long ago and for sone reason people never blames them and focus only in activision.
But I don’t want Starcraft to just turn into another FPS genre. They already learned their lesson with Starcraft Ghost. Blizzard started to falter the moment they started appealing to the trendies/SJWs. So them doing this would just be more backpeddling from a company that is already losing money.
Amen to this. They were greedy even before considering the decision to sell Blizzard was a greed move in itself. All the success got into their head, and while they were celebrating their popularity, other companies creeped up and took the lead over them.
blizz was never independent, it was always owned by someone else that ultimately sold it and then sold again becoming actiblizz, the thing is the original owners allowed them to “do their thing”, not now, and probably not after the first sell.
People need to stop talking about blizz and activis like they are apart from each other, they are the same, with the same CEO and the same decision board.
They were independent,they got purchased,then years ago they spent thousands of millions to purchase themselves,aquiring the rights of publishing and leaving an apparently only strong relationship Activision-Blizzard as a brand name, it was said that after the purchase Blizzard got the rights of their own management, but we don’t know if that was true or not if we see only the results.
No, the only time they were independent is when they were Silicon and Synapse. Then they sold and renamed Blizzard, then bought by Vivendi, then Activision bought Vivendi and the Actiblizz hell spawn was born, then Tencent Holdings, chinese company bought the mayority again, this was probably the original plan and I suspect the chinese gave out the $ for the Vivendi bought out.
So yes, blizz is owned by the chinese and then they got in the market with S&P 500 because China loves to be in US market.
The question is what will happen if US and world goes to war with China or at least economic restrictions.
I pay few hundreds for a stupid Chinese mobile no skill game strategy of some kind with too much automation. That’s so bad cash grab wasted over 500$ for stupid mobile game.
But when there’s no decency in all blizztard stuff - reforged,sc2 abandon, resource, time & effort are put elsewhere
Economy and society would collapse,many things depends on China,a war against the first economic power would be a suicide move.You must be sure if thst time comes,nobody would care about blizz or games.
Unlikely, what would actually happen is 2-3 years of a mild economic depression while production is shifted to different countries. After that, things would basically go back to normal.