Swingin' Ape Takes Over StarCraft Ghost Development

Thanks to IGN PS2 for its news story discussing Blizzard's appointment of developer Swingin' Ape Studios, creators of Metal Arms: Glitch In The System, who will "henceforth develop StarCraft: Ghost, the oft delayed third-person action / adventure adaptation of Blizzard's acclaimed RTS franchise." The story notes: "Just two weeks earlier it was announced that Nihilistic, Ghost's former developer, would no longer be at the helm of the project. Nihilistic's departure was said to be the result of timing issues", and furthermore reveals: "Swingin' Ape will in the future collaboratively develop multi-platform titles with Blizzard based off Blizzard licenses."

Comments

Decreased name recognition

[News for nerds]

I've heard in Korea Starcraft is huge and still doing well, but these days we have very little to hear about Starcraft excpet for the news of delay. When was the last title from Starcraft franchise released? Moreover, Ghost is not RTS and further delay will decay its prospect badly to the degree it has no sense to have "Starcraft" in its title.

Re:Decreased name recognition

[Anonymous Coward]

The extent of Starcraft's success in Korea, while to some extent undeniable, often ends up being wildly exaggerated here in the West (and in Japan). While it's true that Starcraft tournaments have had TV coverage in Korea, you shouldn't confuse this with "mainstream" TV coverage. Certainly, it's not something that your average family is going to sit down and watch with their dinner. Rather, from what I've seen, the coverage has been on dedicated gaming channels (which already exist in the West, for those "lucky" enough to have access to services such as Sky Digital) and occasionally on some of the dedicated sports channels, tucked away in the anti-social end of the schedules (ie. mid-day and late-night slots). If you want to use comparisons with the West, think of... say... chess or lawn-bowling. Stories of the top Starcraft players being mobbed in the street by attractive young ladies are, so far as I can tell, outright fabrication.

Similarly, the extent of Lineage's success in the Korean market tends to be wildly exaggerated. It's certainly done very well for itself, but the oft-quoted number of "4 million subscriptions" seems to refer to the number of player-characters, not to actual players (as in most MMORPGs, a lot of players create more than one character). The last firm statistics I saw (linked here on slashdot, no less) put Lineage's actual subscriber base on a rough par with Everquest, at the 500,000 level. Impressive, given that Lineage seems to draw its players almost exclusively from a single country, while Everquest is global, but the 500,000 mark has now been beaten quite comfortably by FFXI, which is mostly confined to the US and Japan (European release not due until September).

Why do we hype the Korean market out of all proportion? I think it's party due to gamers, particularly PC gamers, indulging in a little wish-fulfilment. We know that our hobby hasn't really made the mainstream in the West. The Japanese market is also fairly transparent to us, as it's where most of our console games come from. The Korean market, however, has a certain mystique, being both distant enough to be an unknown quantity and, from what we've seen, primarily PC-oriented. As such, in the minds of many PC gamers, it becomes this magic world, where gaming is everything we wish it was at home.

I suspect Blizzard know this already from their sales figures. Why else would they be making a 3rd person console-oriented stealth-action game, geared much more towards the Japanese market (in a way which will still appeal in the US and EU), rather than building upon their success with this supposedly legendary Korean market?

Re:Decreased name recognition

[fireduck]

Ghost is not RTS and further delay will decay its prospect badly to the degree it has no sense to have "Starcraft" in its title.

by this logic, World of Warcraft shouldn't be called that because it's not an RTS and Half-Life 2 shouldn't be called that because it's been delayed for years. That's just silly logic.

Starcraft 2 will come when Starcraft 2 comes. I know it's a bit frustrating, but Blizzard has undergone some big personnel changes. They lost a bunch of developers several years back (the guys who jumped ship to form Arena.net); then last year they lost the entire upper eschelon at Blizzard North (including "the voice of blizzard" Bill Roper). It's nice to hope that their next title will have the same magic as their previous games, but I just don't know. Blizz, Valve and Sid Meier/Fraxis are the 3 companies who's games I keep playing years after release. would be a shame to lose one of 'em...

Re:Decreased name recognition

[fireduck]

I suspect Blizzard know this already from their sales figures. Why else would they be making a 3rd person console-oriented stealth-action game, geared much more towards the Japanese market (in a way which will still appeal in the US and EU), rather than building upon their success with this supposedly legendary Korean market?

I'm not so sure about this. While it may be true that the Korean market is exaggerated, it still is a major market. Consider the languages/nations the Blizzard homepage is available in: US, Korea, UK, Germany, and France. Japan isn't there.

Also consider this press release from Blizzard: "...Blizzard Entertainment unveiled plans to utilize a local World of Warcraft(TM) team in Korea, which will grow to over 100 Korean employees in the next 12 months....".

And then there's the location of Blizzard's Battle.net servers. You've got providers in the U.S., Europe, and... Korea. So, while it's nice to downplay Korea's impact, Blizzard clearly has invested a lot into the Korean market (including sponsoring Starcraft tournaments). Which suggests that Korea is the powerhouse that people suggest, at least with respect to blizzard RTS games...

Swingin ape titles

[MrLint]

On their site they only list one title, Metal Arms for Xbox, GameCube and PS2.

This is interesting in the context of working with Blizzard for multi platform release. Blizzard has previously made commitments to concurrent Macintosh and Windows releases of their games. With these new guys on board there may be a possibility , to my knowledge, the first simultaneous all console and Mac/Win release ever.

Re:Swingin ape titles

[Anonymous Coward]

..with a game that's so delayed it doesn't really matter.

Re:Swingin ape titles

[fireduck]

Except, from what Blizzard has indicated, SC: Ghost will be console only. So no PC/Mac versions. I don't quite understand the logic behind limiting it to consoles, but that's their perogative.

Re:Swingin ape titles

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that Blizzard had said originally, and are still saying now, that this game is for consoles only. I don't see the fact that this developer has previously done a title for Xbox, Gamecube and PS2 as anything other than an indication that Blizzard still intend this title to be for Xbox, Gamecube and PS2.

Re:Swingin ape titles

[bigman2003]

I think that 3rd person games work a lot better on consoles than PCs.

Also, if it is 'brought down' to the console level, it could be a great game, and sell zillions. Putting the same game on a PC would need to be re-worked (Deus Ex: Invisible War?!?) to work with a different control method.

Swingin' Ape was a little strange about their first/only game- Metal Arms. Awesome game but on the disc they had all types of 'About Swingin' Ape' stuff that made them out to be a hot-shot studio...but it was their first game, so they essentially started their own hype machine before the first game was even released.

Metal Arms was great, but if they had put multi-player on Live it would have been 10 times better.

Re:Swingin ape titles

[Anonymous Coward]

Metal Arms is a damn fine game! Seriously, it is that good. If you have a console pick it up for a really good explosive time. Everything blows up in this game...and that is a GOOD thing!

Re:Swingin ape titles

[Starsmore]

Obligatory Penny Arcade Linkage!

The Reason Why!

Re:Swingin ape titles

[Firefly1]

I think that 3rd person games work a lot better on consoles than PCs.

I must respectfully disagree; there is no technical reason why such a game (or, for that matter, fighting game) cannot work well on a computer. As an example of this point, I offer kill.switch. Also pointed out is the fact that there are USB gamepads available for those so inclined. Conversely, though, real-time strategy and real-time tactical games do poorly in my opinion on consoles: for such, gamepads simply cannot match the mouse/keyboard combination for responsiveness and hotkeys. That particular debate, however, is beyond the purview of this post.

Also, if it is 'brought down' to the console level, it could be a great game, and sell zillions.

Again, I beg to differ. As I have said above, there is no reason for the core gameplay to change between the console and computer versions of a notional title. On the other hand, the latter version can be tuned to appeal to its target audience as well as take advantage of its medium. For instance, the PC version of GTA3 not only allows players to use their own MP3 collection in an extra radio station, but allows them to change the player character skin (my two personal favorites used the default head on, respectively, a greyscale version of the Techno-Viper uniform and the FBI agents' brown slacks and blue windbreakers (with the Bureau logo replacing the acronym)..

Phew, not Atomic Planet

[M3wThr33]

For a second there I though APE was Atomic Planet Entertainment, the fine folks behind Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the PS2/GCN and Puzzle Fighter II port for the GBA.
Puzzle Fighter II was the only GBA game I've ever given away due to the unplayability of it with my red/green colorblindess. It's slight and not as bad as you think, but without enough blue in a green, it's indistinguishable to me. (I gave it to my sister, but still)
Mega Man Anniversary Collection has it's own stories, but I don't need to bitch about them. You can find them easy enough everywhere else.

Colorblind (Sure, mod as offtopic)

[Thedalek]

Straying from the issue somewhat, but:

I too suffer some colorblind issues, which have similarly rendered all incarnations of Puzzle Fighter utterly unplayable to me. The green and orange all blended together too much for my deutanomaly (malformed green cones).

That was until I figured out that I could simply look through a red lens. I took a pair of 3D glasses, cut out the blue lens, and look like an utter dweeb anytime I play that game. It's fun, but not enough to do often. But at least I can see the colors.

SC: Ghost at E3

[hoferbr]

Blizzard should take over the project themselves. I think that no other company will live up to their standards. It seems that the game got screwed before this years's E3.

From the Penny-Arcade post:
"What we saw at this year's E3 seemed almost unrelated to the game that had so drawn me in initially. Both the guy demonstrating it (and indeed, the game itself) actively distanced what it was doing from that earlier, stealth based iteration. The graphics seemed to have taken a turn for the worse."

Re:SC: Ghost at E3

[gid-goo]

I checked out Ghost at E3 and it was shit. Nothing at all like the mad shit they were talking in all the mags or the previous E3. It looked terrible, it played terrible and it's not the game I was looking forward to playing. Who wants another shitty looking run and gun? Hopefully swinging ape can put some of the magic back in to the title because apparently Nihilistic fucked it up six ways from Sunday.

Diablo for GBA

[bujoojoo]

If this would happen, my commute would be much better... :)

Reading this Slashdot article...

[Analog Penguin]

...is a lot more entertaining when you don't know that "Swingin' Ape" is the name of a company.