When designer Dustin Browder signed on at Blizzard to work onStarCraft II, he was shocked. Even back in 2005, years before StarCraft II shipped, other games like Relic's Dawn of War were the big names in the RTS space, all featuring plenty of units and armies. Yet within Blizzard, the idea wasn't to compete with those games in terms of numbers. Blizzard wanted to target the e-sports community, which meant doing things a little differently. It meant not only paying attention to the game rules, but also professional sports.
So how did Blizzard and Browder move forward? The team behind StarCraft II had to be mindful of a few guiding principles. The game had to be comprehensible to viewers. Browder compared the enjoyment derived from watching a professional match of StarCraft II to watching a game of NFL football. Football, like StarCraft, is a complicated game, but as Browder points out, you don't need to know all the rules to enjoy the spectacle. "I can sit with my wife and I can explain a couple of basic rules and she's watching," said Browder. "And she'll learn the rest as it goes on."
It wasn't just about rules, but also about presentation. As much as Blizzard would have wanted to make a Zerg Ultralisk the most fearsome creature in the universe and have it take up a large amount of screen real-estate to reinforce its formidable stature, that didn't fit into the e-sport design. Such a colossal unit would occupy too much of the visible area and introduce unnecessary elements of imprecision, such as overshadowing some of the smaller units that are necessary to see to play effectively.
The visual effects also had to be just right. Browder used the example of the Protoss High Templar's Psionic Storm attack, which deals damage to a small area onscreen. "This is a lightning storm. It could go all over the screen. And in any game I worked on before it would go all over the screen, because that would be cool. But in this case, it needs to be exactly the size and shape of the area effects it's going to do. It needs to be really tight and really clean so you, as the user, and even more importantly, you as the observer, can immediately see what's been hit, who has taken damage, and what's going on."
To keep the action exciting for viewers of StarCraft II games, Browder stressed the importance of observable degrees of success. This mirrors something like first-downs in the NFL, where a running back might just barely get the ball over the target goal line, come up just short, or fly way beyond. This applied to the Psionic Storm, where it was easy to see if a Storm missed or hit due to the precision of the visual effects. If a Storm erupts right in the middle of an enemy army, the crowd would know it was well placesd, whereas if the target army moved out of the way, it was clearly a failed attack.
Micromanagement has a lot to do with this aspect as well, where units are moved around during combat for superior positioning. Browder showed video of numerous examples, including a large group of Zerglings attacking a huddled circle of Marines. When the Zerglings attacked as a single mass from one side of the screen the Marines sustained heavy losses but were able to survive. When the Zergling mass split up and attacked from three different sides simultaneously, a small group managed to survive the attack. As a spectator, watching these clashes and understanding that the victor is determined not only by army composition but also the manipulation of those units makes it all the more exciting.
Like football, "StarCraft is a game about scouting. It's about trying to figure out what your opponent is doing and the ability to hide some of your cards so they can't see what you're doing if you're very clever." This leads into why StarCraft II has a relatively low unit count. Instead of creating a multitude of unit types, Blizzard wanted to concentrate on smaller numbers of unique, multifunctional units. Again, like football, "Part of the fun of StarCraft is not only building the right counter to what your opponent is doing, but guessing what he's going to do next and building the appropriate counter."
So what do you think, does the comparison make sense? If you've never watched competitive StarCraft matches before, Day9's YouTube channel is a favorite around the IGN office.
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