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...

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

[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.

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."