alt Hacker NewsBlizzard Revives 'StarCraft' Franchise with Open-World Sci-Fi Shooter
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4chan's /v/ has been slamming Blizzard pretty hard. It is interesting to see but not at all surprising. The current roster of Blizzard leadership is chasing something that alienates their core fanbase (as opposed to core audience), whatever is left of them.
For me, two things:
1) Going to Diablo 5 without even having Diablo in Diablo 4 is strange. I don't know the reasoning behind this. I'm assuming the recent acquisition by Microsoft made them have to put out a set of new trailers and this was one of them. Anything to please the shareholders to prevent themselves from getting canned. I don't know for sure, just a hypothesis.
2) Starcraft's trailer, to me, was WH40K in almost every way. It was uncannily not Starcraft. This is partly because, while Blizzard basically killed Starcraft from inside, Warhammer grew massively and now has a presence across many game genres (and table top of course). In a lot of cases, franchises such as Dawn of War, Space Marine, and so on and so forth. WH40K took the gamers "back" from SC, in a sense, since Starcraft and Warcraft cribbed too much from WH early on anyway. Nowadays a new genre could be invented and Warhammer would have some random developer able to license their IP and build a game around it, and it would have a fan base from day one. As an IP, Warhammer fucks.
It is very strange to see Starcraft lean into a competitor like this rather than stand on their own with the character and narrative development they have established. The trailer was very off-putting in its tone and somewhat uninteresting. At the very least WH40K has a grimdark vibe with its whole "there is only war" attitude. Starcraft never had that as part of its cachet.
Compared to SC2's "Hell it's about time" which ties nicely into the campaign that actually makes sense, this trailer leaves a lot to be desired.
> a target release date of 2030
Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for a StarCraft shooter despite it not being StarCraft at all (I enjoy the universe). I wanted StarCraft: Ghost back in the day, and this feels like a taste of that dream.
That said, targeting a release of 2030 is wild to me. Look at the Astra game dev hype that's hitting twitter right now. Yes it's all filtered to the best possible examples / yes people are not one shotting these things, but still it's very clear that LLMs are beginning to be very capable at game dev in a way that doesn't look/feel like ass.
LLMs are going to become more capable over time. I think most of us can agree that eventually they'll be competitive with AAA developers given enough GPU cycles. I would argue that given rate of improvement, we're looking at that point coming in the next year or two.
To emphasize this point, a year ago GPT-5 got released. This was the type of game it would make: https://youtu.be/yTHo7tMborY?t=324
This is the type of game Astra is making: https://youtu.be/GuO_Eo34C8E?t=348
It's just starting to be capable of making assets in blender / unreal. Given this rate of advancement, what is the state going to be like 4 years from now? It really feels a bit like the "travelling to distant stars" problem, where at some point it's faster to wait for better engines than to leave now. I worry that by the time this gets released, the market is going to be flooded with fully custom AAA games that are hyperniche. 4 years out is a long, long time to wait, and it's a longer time to bet on success / market dynamics.
"Set to launch 2030"
Why even bother to announce this now? I only see downsides in mentioning something that far out.
Starcraft 2 is the only game I still play from time to time. Yes, you can probably make more money making a shooter, but there is a reason Starcraft is such a cultural phenomenon.
It just makes me sad that every decision nowadays is driven by profit and there is just very little courage left to do something else.
Impressive. They managed to turn the hype video in a more depressing parody of Starship Troopers.
I like how they killed him instantly, its an old SC meme where the space marine pops out and is insta killed.
But really, aren't there enough first person shooters? But a huge lack of RTS's. Lets have a new Star Craft Real Time Strategy game.
Maybe if the First Person Shooter works out, they will spend the money on an RTS.
All I could think about watching the trailer was that this must be a game based on Starship Troopers.
I watched the live reveal and thought it looked cool. I played a lot of the RTS growing up and remember being hyped for Ghost, so seeing an FPS in the Starcraft universe is interesting. More interesting to me than another RTS, which I personally would not play (just not an interesting genre to me anymore).
WARHAMMER 40.000: SPACE MARINE 5 (i guess real studios will crank out two more of those before this one is released...)
4 years out, and only a cinematic trailer. It's a lot to take on faith at this point, though I do hope its good
What is everyone’s favorite RTS right now? Hobby / non-competitive. Anything worthwhile on mobile?
So, it's a Helldivers reskin that's going to be 10 years late to the party?
I'm okay with them generating some popularity with the franchise. That would benefit any potential RTS later.
2030 though... isn't that like 8 years away?
trying to reconcile AGI timelines with this video games timeline
I was wondering how Blizzard's best creative minds would ruin an RTS and make it live service...
Blizzard has always had some of the best cinematics in the industry. They're usually 100x better than the actual game. I wish they had a movie studio.
OMG!
No gameplay footage and a release date in the next decade. Blizzard is just testing the waters to see if there’s any interest in yet another shooter. Or rather if the StarCraft franchise still has clout.
20-25 years ago I’d be certain Blizzard has some aces up their sleeves. Today not so much. They probably do this to respond to pressure from corporate overlords.
2030 lol
Incredible to see how disconnected Blizzard is from its customers. One more shooter, when we wanted the next RTS.