Ecael wrote...
20 hours of single-player gameplay for a game primarily focused on multiplayer is more than good enough. Also, Blizzard games have been priced at $60 (or with a subscription fee) for a long time now. That's just as much as a console game these days.
My point isn't that it's not worth the money, it's that their business model is simply profit based. The multiplayer aspect is almost unchanged from the first, the single player maybe has 1/20th of the dialogue/animated scenes of either Mass Effect or DA:O for example and it's 10 bucks more than either of those games. Replayability I'll say is what warrents that extra cash but really, the amount of polished and complex work in SC2 isn't near that of an RPG, and I never expected it to be as it's an RTS, but splitting it into 3 parts is a blatent money grab. Like I said, I really enjoyed the single player campaign and I will buy the next two parts, but it's pretty obvious why they did this.
I still don't understand why people believe that it's only about money for game developers, as if they're put at a disadvantage from buying a sequel (clearly, sequels are only made for the money...). They're not going to give away these games for free. A lot of people put a lot of hard work into making games like StarCraft (or Mass Effect, or Dragon Age, and so on).
I guarentee a lot more work went into ME or DA:O than all 3 parts of SC2 combined from a development standpoint. They just revamped the original game and Bnet, slapped a polished SP campaign on it and called it good. DA:O and ME were created from the ground up, not SC, the lore was there, the gameplay was there, the artistic look was there, all they needed to do was recreate the graphics engine and rebalance it for the new/taken out units. Even the original and Brood War borrowed heavily from DOW 40k. Again, this isn't to say that SC2 is bad, it's not, it's damn enjoyable, but new ground this is not...
It reminds me of the people who complain to theme park employees about other people paying for express passes, as if being able to enjoy a theme park wasn't already an expensive luxury.
I wasn't complaining, I was pointing out the obvious. And yes, it is a luxery but it doesn't mean I can't see just how profit prioritized Blizzard is.
Wishpig wrote...
Gotta disagree with you. Of course money
is always a factor, but I honestly beleave that another factor is they
wanted to make single player THAT damn good. Think about how damn
long it took to make Starcraft 2. No imagine they put in two other
campeigns just as good and as long as the Terran campeign. That would
add major major major production time. A year or two at least. I mean
think about it, we're talking at least 50 hours of single player just as
good as the terran story. Thats asking allot considering the quality.
But 50 hours of single player doesn't equal 50 hours of cinematic scenes, which is obviously where the production is. The gameplay itself for each mission, which makes up the bulk of the SP campaign, are just custom maps that can be made in no time really. I played many many mods and custom maps in the original that put the Blizzard made story maps to shame. The cinematics and dialogue, although extremely well done, make up only a very small portion of that campaign.
All I'm trying to say is that I don't think that 60 hours (roughly) of single player with a 120-130 dollar price tag is anything but a $$$ grab.
Yes, money is most certainly a major factor. They will make more
$$$$, we all know that (although when the game was announced, before we
know about the split campeign, we knew there would be an expansion.
Thats what blizzard does).
But making a great game is also a
major factor. Just a week ago they didn't even really START on the next
game, besides working on the story. So it's not like their cutting any
content to work us.
I know many people see blizzard as being
corrupt and greedy, but honestly, I think the devs want to make the best
game they can... and thats why their games are so successfull because
they do.
10 million WoW subscribers X 15 bucks a month = 1.8 billion dollars a year, that's billion with a B. They figure that SC2 WOL cost about 100 million to make, so 1/18th of their yearly WoW subscription money on a game that took a decade to complete.
I like Blizzard games, I think they're pretty polished and for the most part fun (though WoW went sour when WOTLK came out), but Blizzard
is damn greedy, take a look at their headquarters, it's a freaking palace with fountains, giant statues, parks and massive "leisure" rooms full of widescreen TV's and every game/console/movie you can imagine. Working for Blizzard is the most cherry game dev job in the history of this industry and for the amount of product they produce compared to the amount of money they make, it's obvious just how "greedy" they are.
Blizzard, since 2004, has only made 2 games and 3 expansion packs. Compare this to Bioware which has made 5 full games, an expansion pack and a phone game since 2005 and only charges 50 bucks a game and has maybe 1/5th of the employees. Next year Bioware will have two more games, one being an MMO. Blizzard is by far the most over rated game company ever and it's fans seem blind to just how easy Blizz has it.
Modifié par Revan312, 30 juillet 2010 - 06:41 .
. I've tried that one over and over and can't seem to figure it out. Probably have to come back to it later.
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