StarCraft II Cost $100 Million To Develop

UgLyPuNk writes with news of a report that Blizzard has spent over $100 million developing StarCraft II. Initial development on the game began in 2003, and it's due to be released on July 27th. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick "described StarCraft as one of the company’s seven 'pillars of opportunity' (where each pillar has the potential to deliver operating profit between $500 million and $1 billion over its life span)." The finalized system requirements for the game have been released, and players planning to buy the digitally distributed version can download it now, though it won't be playable until the 27th.

Comments

and still

[phantomfive]

Wow, $100million dollars and STILL couldn't afford to include LAN play. No worries, someone will do it for them free ;)

Re:and still

[Korin43]

Some of the most entertaining LAN parties are in places with little or no internet access. My favorite was a cabin LAN party. The only internet access was via cell phone, and I can't image the charge if I had left it on the entire time.

Re:and still

[Midnight Thunder]

I can think of plenty of situations:
  - LAN party in a plane
  - LAN party while camping
  - LAN party in a moving vehicle, other than a plane
  - LAN party while on military deployment
  - others

Why should you limit you gaming to the presence of an internet connection?

Re:and still

[fast turtle]

Our Military is deployed to many different locations. Sea for those in the Navy. Then there are all of those deployed Overseas to various NATO bases. Internet connectivity in the barracks is pretty slim there. Don't forget about all the other stations such as the EWRS (early warning radar stations) in Alaska.

Others include Cruise Ships - Yes there are some cruises geared towards Lan Parties. 3-5 day cruises and people do pay for them.

Re:and still

[nmb3000]

Playing in network environments not hooked up to the Internet much?

Wow, fanboy much?

The simple fact is that there are MANY times and places where LAN support is very helpful, if not outright required. Several other posters have enumerated the latter, but for the former, you need to consider scale.

Sure, if you have 4-6 people playing then maybe going over the Internet to Battle.net is an okay (if lame) solution. What about a group of 20? 50? 200? Blizzard has repeatedly said they want Starcraft II to be a serious e-sport contender, both in Asia and in the US/Europe. During the beta, people trying to organize big LAN-style game sessions have noted that their plans completely fell apart when they discovered that Battle.net limited the number of players per IP address to 12. This might have changed, but the fact that they instituted any limit should be telling.

To pull this off, they will be required to implement some form of LAN play, something they've already said they will do:

"We will be addressing StarCraft II tournament functionality in a post launch patch to the game, soon after ship. This patch will include features to address the needs of location-based pro tournaments, but we have not discussed any specifics about tournament support beyond that."

Blizzard denies the rumors of a LAN-enabled "Professional Edition", but it sure sounds like that's the direction they're heading. On one hand Blizzard claims that "No LAN because Battle.net 2 is just so amazing we can't let anyone miss out!" and then on the other "Okay, LAN play is required but only high rollers get it, not the rest of you, you dirty pirates". Anyone who's played the beta knows how bad and lacking Battle.net 2 is. Yes, it's beta, but the final release is in less than 10 days. It's not like they're going to uncheck the "Battle.net sucks enabled" checkbox the day before.

I want to love Starcraft 2, but Blizzard-Activision is making it so hard :(

Re:and still

[icebraining]

What? You don't? So... you're expecting a commercial plane to allow you to pull out wifi or drape a bunch of CAT-5 everywhere to play games on the flight? What?!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_LAN#Peer-to-peer

I somehow feel our military has more important things to do than play Starcraft II on deployment.

http://gamepolitics.com/2007/11/12/military-wives-form-non-profit-to-equip-troops-with-video-games

The thing is, adding LAN play obviously is a drop in the ocean compared to the $100 million; they have all the network code done, it would simply be a matter of writing some code that instead of send requests for games to Battle.net, sending them locally.
The real reason is obviously to reduce "piracy" by tying the game to their online service, and screwing their costumers in the process, as it has become usual nowadays.

Re:and still

[timholman]

I somehow feel our military has more important things to do than play Starcraft II on deployment.

Troop boredom and depression during deployment in remote locations is one of the biggest problems that military commanders must deal with. They generally encourage any form of entertainment as long as it doesn't interfere with military duties.

In fact, if you have any old games you want to get rid of, go to www.anysoldier.com and I guarantee you can find thousands of enlisted men and women more than happy to take them off your hands.

Re:Will not be surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

"If the crackers find a way to play before the start date."

Indeed, white people can be very impatient.

Re:Will not be surprising

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It would be a surprise. DRM is hard because it means giving the user the locked box, and the key, and then trying to order their computer to pretend that the key only exists on every second tuesday.

Conventional cryptography is very much up to the task of just giving the user the locked box, presumably with a dinky little stub program that will grab the decryption key when it is released.

There have been attacks, or inside jobs, before, so the decryption key(or a few vital binaries, if they went with that approach, or used it to augment this one), could theoretically get leaked; but the task of giving somebody something on day X and only releasing it on day X+Y is theoretically unproblematic. You have to actively fuck it up.

Re:Will not be surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

People don't buy Blizzard games to play single player.

I do. In fact I've never played any Blizzard games any other way.
I'm not a fan of the 'tank rush' strategy playing these games online requires
so I doubt i'll ever play one of them online.

Re:Pillars

[alexhs]

Well, if you RTFA...

1. Starcraft
2. WoW
3. Diablo
4. Blizzard's "secret new MMO"
5. Bungie‘s unnannounced new IP <- You missed that one
6. Guitar Hero
7. Call of Duty

Re:$10 mil per year

[waambulance]

i really dont understand why they used c++, when faster development platforms are available. python is perfectly adequate. so is AS3. look at farmville. kotick should listen up considering zynga just got bought by the google. mandating c++ is just a charity-case for old, bearded programmers who couldnt program their way out of an eclipse IDE. ah well. we cant all be smart. some have to drive on by with their gcc and gdb lunchpails in the special bus...

Re:Will not be surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like my post didn't get submitted.

The install files are encrypted with a 21 byte key. I couldn't figure out which encryption scheme, but even if it was developed inhouse. Reversing it and finding a weakness would take a long time.

Like I said earlier. It fetches the decryption key from blizzard on the 27th. On said site is nothing.

Re:Will not be surprising

[binkzz]

So what?

People don't buy Blizzard games to play single player. Sure it's still enjoyable and a good game but you will spend the majority of the time gaming online. And you won't be able to do that on battle.net without a valid key.

Actually, Blizzard said that over half of the Starcraft players don't intend to ever play multiplayer. I tried my best to find you a link to show it, but I failed. I hope someone else has it.

I do have a link on Blizzard's stance on DRM though: http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/05/28/0614256/Blizzard-Boss-Says-Restrictive-DRM-Is-a-Waste-of-Time

Re:Will not be surprising

[N0Man74]

Does it? I have zero interest in online play for StarCraft. It's also worth noting that Blizzard is planning two standalone expansions, neither of which will be necessary for a complete online experience. That is, they're single player-only expansions. Blizzard apparently thinks, probably correctly, that most of their money is coming from people who are primarily interested in the campaigns.

Incorrect sir.

From the Official StarCraft II FAQ:

Q: Will we still be able to play multiplayer matches of StarCraft II with all three races?

        A: Yes! From the beginning, StarCraft II will be a fully featured multiplayer game, and all three races will be available for competitive play.

Q: How will the expansion sets impact multiplayer gameplay?

        A: The expansion sets will add new content to each race for use in multiplayer matches. This could include additions such as new units, abilities, and structures, along with new maps and Battle.net updates.

Q: If I buy StarCraft II but don't buy any of the expansion sets, will I still be able to play online?

        A: Yes. This will work similarly to Warcraft III and the original StarCraft, which maintained separate online gaming lobbies and ladders for expansion set players and players with the base Warcraft III or StarCraft.