StarCraft: The past, present and future

Blizzard's primary success since their early games (pre-WoW) is understanding and abusing the psychology of addiction and creating videogames around that concept. They make ultra-streamlined (sometimes to the point of being nearly featureless) and ultra-polished games which are usually super easy to approach but tough to master. The writing is generally cartoony/poor, but the moneymaking potential of each game is very large. They still produce some winners, if you can get over the above.

I can certainly agree with you that writing can have a meaningful impact on a game, but it's not the reason a game becomes art, as this Polygon piece would have us believe about StarCraft. StarCraft is absolutely an example of how interaction is the core of the experience, and writing only helps construct a narrative to draw you into the experience, providing a cohesive metaphor to describe the experience - both during and afterward.

Like Mario saving the Princess or Donkey Kong collecting his bananas or Terran defeating the Zerg, whatever goal the game designer creates to propel you into the narrative is orthogonal to what ultimately makes the experience meaningful. The first Goomba in Super Mario Brothers is far more important to the experience than the Princess at the end of the game. Hell, the first question mark block is even more meaningful than that.

But you're right, that without the eyes on the Goomba or the question mark on the block or Mario raising a flag at the end of the level, there's no narrative to be drawn into, there's no way to describe what you're experiencing.

And you put it so perfectly: But that isn't what we are thinking about as we get immersed in a game experience - we soon forget that the controls are there.

In a great novel, the words fade away and the book disappears and all that remains is the dream world the author has written for you.

A game does almost exactly the same thing, but through action and feedback. The feedback can be text, voice over, artwork, animation, or any of the thousands of possibilities digital multimedia has opened up for us, but it should never try to be meaningful unto itself. This is where game designers get bogged down in trying to be like other mediums. Feedback is about rewarding the gamer's action and pushing into the next action, looking for greater reward. A mushroom comes out the question block, the old man gives you a sword, your wave of zerglings wash over a gas refinery.

You might argue that writing is key to creating this experience, and I won't disagree, but the Polygon piece absolutely fails to illustrate this, and so another wave of English majors says to themselves, "Well, if I can't get my novel published, there's always video games"

the second problem is that there are only a few good writers of the correct style out there and they're all in television. (total hyperbole but the point should be evident)

the third problem is that video game makers refuse to accept their actual demographics and they keep aiming the story at 14 year old boys, who have awful taste, frankly.

edit: accidental word

In contrast, Starcraft 2 has you play as established characters. From the promotional material[0]:

> You are Jim Raynor, a marshal-turned-rebel on a vigilante crusade to bring down the Dominion and its nefarious leader, Arcturus Mengsk. Haunted by betrayal and remorse, some believe you may have given up the fight.

This writing task is much harder --- they need you to have a matching experience with the character they are portraying and yet still force you into what their predetermined plot points are.

Consider the case of Raynor rescuing Kerrigan at the end of Starcraft 2, after swearing eternal vengeance against her in Brood War. If the player were another participant in the world it might be reasonable to watch Raynor evolve to that position. However, because I as the player explicitly am Raynor and his choices are mine, Blizzard needed to convince me that saving Kerrigan made sense --- which they did not even come close to doing.

A similar thing happened in the shift from Warcraft II to Warcraft III --- you went from being a character/commander on your own to explicitly controlling another hero.

[0]: http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/games/sc2/

It is an unbelievably stressful game and you have to not only master all 3 races abilities but understand numerous and ever changing strategies around them, have excellent macro skills and understand timings, etc. If you don't keep up aggressively with practice and all these other things you'll simply get slaughtered over and over. And although their rating system tries to pair you up it has become harder and harder to find casual players.

I think it's one of the best games ever made and I love watching the top players to this day even though I do not play any longer. But I wish they could come out with a scaled down version with fewer units, easier macro and certain rules in place to limit cheese play, etc. Have smart units or something where different strategies can be used throughout a game and various units will intelligently play a certain role of scouting, attacking, defending, etc.

The truth is the game is amazing because of its difficulty and also unplayable for most people for the same reason. I am not "gosu". I have a life and can't play for hours every day - or every day for that matter.