I spent most of my Saturday working and discussing Blizzard‘s announcement with some friends. The very same people with whom I met up almost every week for a LAN party between 1998 and 2003, and of course our favorite was… Starcraft.
You can imagine how excited we are now about the release of Starcraft 2, already organizing big matches over the internet (at the time we all lived in Italy, now some of us are in the UK some in Spain and others are still in Italy).
Amongst this Starcraft-junkies collective there was one voice who spoke against the praising choir. This friend of mine was a bit disappointed because as far as he can see there is no innovation in Starcraft 2. Just a few new units but the formula is basically the same of the original game.
I am not disappointed, but I’d be lying if I said that I’m not a bit… bemused. Arguably we don’t know all the facts yet and most of the details of the game haven’t been revealed yet. I’m eagerly refreshing the movies page on the website to sneak a peak at the gameplay video. Blizzard may very well have some more surprises in store for us.
Blizzard’s probably decided to take the safe way, why would you go and alter a winning formula which you’ve seen work for almost ten years now. Furthermore as I said in my previous post Blizzard has not missed one shot so far, all their games have been incredible splashes, and I don’t expect Starcraft 2 to fail.
I haven’t been playing allot lately and haven’t really followed the videogames scene, but it seems to me that this industry is totally lacking pioneers. Don’t give me the “there’s nothing more to invent” speech because I don’t buy that, there’s always a brilliant game designer waiting for a developer to pick up its smashing new idea.
Hopefully with the new wave of indie game developers we’ll be able to see something capable of putting to shame the painfully cloying and endless series of sequels from companies like EA. And I’m glad that a system like Steam exists, which I believe to be one of the main propellers for indie games distribution.
This is the end of my ramble.
Stefano… the bored player.
Oh… just found this on Youtube.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sog2k6s7xVQ]
