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from the duke-nukem-forever-never-looked-so-good dept.
On Wednesday, a vague tweet from a Blizzard game developer hinted at a canceled game project that fans would "never see," then announced his departure from the company. As questions started flying over what that game was, Kotaku super-reporter Jason Schreier showed up one day later with the scoop: the canceled game, which had been in development for two years, was a first-person shooter set in the StarCraft universe.
In addition to citing "three people familiar with goings-on," Schreier received a lengthy official response from Blizzard on Thursday that did not deny the game's existence and cancellation. It reads, in part: "As has been the case at Blizzard numerous times in the past, there is always the possibility that we'll make the decision to not move forward on a given project."
They canceled a StarCraft FPS, before it saw the light of day. Yet, they touted a Diablo mobile game out in front of everyone. This isn't the Blizzard it used to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08 2019, @08:48AM (1 child)
The blizzard that used to be would heavily invest in a StarCraft themed game (Ghost) and wait just before release to cancel it because they wanted to poach a handful of devs familiar with 3D tech for their WoW team, after all, can't use a recycled WC3 engine initially designed in 1997 for everything.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday June 08 2019, @09:36AM
At least they didn't get hopes up this time like with Ghost [wikipedia.org], or announce Starcraft Immortal.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by RamiK on Saturday June 08 2019, @09:19AM
Why settle on knockoffs?
compiling...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08 2019, @09:20AM
First person shooter Zerg really makes no sense. Kind of like being a Trump voter, and expecting you will survive. Without the numbers, the entire strategy is kind of an Ended Game. Mormons for Trump! Yeah!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by aristarchus on Saturday June 08 2019, @09:48AM (2 children)
I thought janrinok said we wanted STEM articles, not ones about playing games on your phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08 2019, @09:56AM
I thought there might now be an app for your phone that could count the cards at Blackjack [imdb.com], without you getting your kneecaps shot off and all. Just numbers and probabilities, after all.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08 2019, @12:02PM
So you are the workaholic squareman? He normally posts as AC and calls gaming childish. Unless you were quoting him.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday June 08 2019, @02:07PM (1 child)
I personally never really got the draw of Starcraft, it was clearly just Warcraft with a space theme. I might have liked the ingame cinematics more, certainly so at least for Starcraft II. The Diablo franchise probably brings in more bucks then Starcraft (unless possibly counting all them wacky Koreans and all those tournaments), it's an easier game to play compared to Starcraft. They probably didn't want another shooter -- they already have Overwatch so no point in competing with themselves on that one; not quite sure about how well OW is doing now with all the Apex and Fortnite and whatnot but still. So there could easily be multiple reasons.
Perhaps more of an issue is that the World of Warcraft engine (not the game engine by itself) is starting to really run out of steam, from what I heard from people still playing it there are just less and less people and the last expansion has not been a big hit with the playerbase. All expansions usually start of on a high but they are dying quicker and quicker and there is really a limit to how often they can push a new expansion out the door.
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Saturday June 08 2019, @04:11PM
The pre-MMORPG WOW warcraft games and starcraft had some gameplay differences although the UI were similar. Its kinda like Texas Holdem and Pai Gow Poker are technically gambling poker card games but they appeal to different groups due to minor changes in rules.
The stereotype is games with area control power projection and either identical units or highly balanced yet wildly different units having the same mission and extensive central coordination sell really well in eastern markets.
Western markets really like combined arms having separate subgoals but sharing the overall mission, and relying highly on timing and extensive individual cooperation, also westerners really like minmax optimization and being given a pretend sandbox while limiting themselves down to very small range of acceptable behaviors in that sandbox set.
Like most stereotypes its only about 90% correct. Eastern style you got starcraft and Go, Western style is very EVE:Online or Elite Dangerous or stereotypical FPS. Not really sure how they planned to theme a western style FPS with a thin veneer of eastern style starcraft.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Saturday June 08 2019, @03:32PM
A few years back Activision bought out the original Blizzard.
In addition to the referenced mobile game and canceled FPS game, Activision also decided to not include peer to peer network play without a battle.net subscription in Starcraft II. It also created the DIablo III item store. This is just from memory, and I am sure a little digging could find more revenue growth orientated, consumer unfriendly policies enacted by Activision since acquiring Blizzard. (Note: I don't have these titles due to going linux only even with gaming)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P