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StarCraft Ghost Developer Dropped From Project?
Thanks to HomeLAN Fed for its news story revealing StarCraft: Ghost developer Nihilistic is no longer attached to the still-in-development tactical action game. According to an official Blizzard statement: "Nihilistic has completed its contribution on StarCraft: Ghost. They are contracted to begin work on another project in the months ahead. Due to the requirements of that obligation and the delay of StarCraft, it was mutually determined that now would be the best time for them to complete their work." The PS2/Xbox/GameCube title was announced as delayed late last week, at which point Blizzard simply stated: "We plan to build additional time into the schedule to polish the game."
from the faq:
Q: On what platforms will StarCraft: Ghost be available?
A: A: StarCraft: Ghost will be available on the Xbox(TM), GameCube(TM) and Playstation® 2.
unless of course that has changed as well without notice...
The PS2/Xbox title
Regarding to their FAQ it is being relased for all 3 major platforms....
Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
Getting more people in on the content side will likely flesh out the storyline and make for some more interesting gameplay.
Sides talented engineers should be kept working on new engines, SC:G was planned back in the days of DX 8.1 so it'll be good to get these guys working on something new, which will hopefully be a contender with the big three.
Blizzard and Id have always had the same "It's done when it's done, and not a second earlier" attitude. Obviously not many companies can afford to do this, but it HAS allowed the aforementioned two companies to produce some of the best games of all time.
No wonder he was fired, ghost developers tend to be outdated. They kinda stop in time. And they scare co-workers...
*ducks*
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
Put 'em to work on StarCraft II!
Maybe they wanted to focus all their RTS grey matter on the Warcraft games, but dang, SC was a great game.
Pretty Please?
You have proven your point that you are not all about the dollars. Rather than take one of the best-selling, most awarded games (Starcraft) of all time and simply churn out a crappy sequel a year later to make money, you have waited patiently. It's been 6 years, you've been so patient.
We believe you. It is not about the money!
Now, having said that, when can we expect a highly updated, super-fun, Starcraft II?
Sincerely,
A Believer
But maybe I'm too cynical. :)
3d Realms and Ion Storm (Romero) also have/had such a policy.
It isn't necessarily a mark of quality. Sometimes the attitude just leads to bad games in bad situations lingering in near-perpetuity. IIRC (and I admit it's a foggy memory) Blizzard's ill-fated Adventure game was also in dev limbo shortly before it was cancelled.
I wouldn't necessarily assume that this is a positive development. Particularly not if they're concerned about the game not being fun enough (as was their primary concern with Thrall's quest or whatever it was).
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Two years ago at E3 Starcraft Ghost, looked great and played great. This year at E3 it still looked great, but the game play had been significantly dumbed down, and made more "accessible". All of the multiple path ways to defeat enemies, stealth, psi, run and gun, had been removed in favor of one solution..., use psi here, use gun here, etc... I don't know what conclusion to draw from that in regards to this news, but thought it worth mentioning.
Offering 8 different ways to solve a given game problem is great from the player point of view, but it creates huge problems on the QA end of the game.
How so? Glad you asked.
If your game is meant to have some sort of storyline, its nice to know that "If player has reached this point, he has done X, Y, and Z". If you can stealth your way past an enemy rather then kill him, then the revenge subplot no longer works, since you did not kill some guys brother.
Also, providing 8 different solutions to a problem where 2 of them are too difficult to pull off and one is too far outside the box menas you only really have 5 solutions to the problem. If one of the solutions is very easy, you may as well only have the one solution.
Finally, if you do have very open solutions to all of the game problems / challenges in a given level, you can conceivably have the player defeat every challenge in the level and still not complete the goals needed to advance the level. Game programmers tend to only test for the intended solution to a problem (I know this from experience, as I am a game developer). Finding and killing crash bugs is easy. Finding fundamental design flaws is not.
Anyway, I am still looking forward to this game.
END COMMUNICATION
Blizzard give them a chance to prove their worth, and in someway they have. Now its time to hand it over for AAA polishing, they planned it all. Good news for blizzard fans.
Both Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell provided multiple options gameplay fairly easily. For this type of game I don't think people would care if the major plot points were tacked down, as long as you weren't required to run into a level guns blazing when you're supposed to be playing a silent assassin.