Starcraft 2 Part Eins, Zwei and Drei

Nobody is perfect. When it comes to creating an epic story arc, awesome pre-rendered movies and a fully fleshed campaign Blizzard has done well. Now, Blizzard speaks of Starcraft 2 and the world shuts their mouth and listens to each and every word. What’s the word?

A Trilogy.

We’re not talking about the Lord of The Rings style trilogy, but three games with full stories which all end with the gamer being satisfied at the closure, not cliffhangers.

The three standalone games will be (says GameStooge):

  • Terrans – Wings of Liberty
  • Zerg – Heart of the Swarm
  • Protoss – Legacy of the Void

Gamers are probably thinking, “so, I can play multiplayer with only one race?” No! The campaign is split into three separete games, not the races and multiplayer features. Although, each title is sure to introduce something new to the game engine, Blizzard has said:

“Nothing changes for multiplayer or skirmish mode. All three races are fully implemented from the get go. Each campaign will feel like an epic story – not a cliffhanger into the next one. They will each have separate arcs that have a clear start, middle, end – and you will feel like you’ve really finished *something* at the end of each game. More content than we’d previously planned – many more Movies, Missions, etc.” (games.on.net)

From our perspective, it seems Blizzard is itching to release the multiplayer system to the world sooner than later, considering some countries use Starcraft as a professional league, but they don’t want to rush out fast to market campaigns just to satisfy this multiplayer desire.

Instead, they’re going to take their time, in usual Blizzard style, by releasing the game as they finish it… per races story. This should give us a less watered down storyline or having one or two races with a piss poor storyline while another has a kick ass storyline because it was done first.

End result? Multiplayer gamers will be happy in the end while those that play Starcraft for the story will need to wait for each game to be completed. We know Blizzards release schedule is “when it’s ready” so we can only imagine how long it will take to reach that third game in the trilogy.

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Ensemble Studios To Close, Halo Wars Future Not In QuestionEnsemble Studios To Close, Halo Wars Future Not In Question

Ensemble Studios, owned and operated by Microsoft or, Microsoft Games Studios, has been targed to be dissolved. All employees will find new homes, a large quantity will start a new studio and continue maintaining the later released Halo Wars franchise.

Microsoft has chosen to close the studio as part of their growth plan of Microsoft Games Studios much like FASA was closed in the past. The difference, there is a new landing point for Halo Wars unlike the uncertain future of Shadowrun.

Commenting on the reason for the closure, Microsoft said, “This was a fiscally rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible.” (gamespot)

Ensemble Studio’s folks will continue to work with Microsoft and will continue to support Halo Wars after its launch. It is important to stress their statement of continuing to support Halo Wars, there is no need to think the project will be done half-assed or without pride as the project will live on with a different studio name.

The only question is… what is causing Microsoft to close down studios with actively working real franchise projects? FASA went down, Bungie was let go on their own and now Ensemble Studios? There has to be something going on here… idea?

Activision: Cleaning House, Losing StudiosActivision: Cleaning House, Losing Studios

Now that Activision has merged up with Blizzard all under Vivendi it’s time to consider what to do with all the additional overhead, management, internal studios and sheer amount of people working on projects within their organization. In other words, it’s time to trim the fat and get leaned out for the long haul.

This isn’t unexpected news, the only way to grow more effective as a large company is to remove some of the access baggage that can slow you down and let your competitors take control. This is a sad job which nobody takes pride in (most normal people anyway) but it could mean the difference between rising to the top and sinking like a brick.

“We are focused on improving efficiency across the combined organization and are concentrating on businesses where we have leadership positions that are aligned with Activision Publishing’s long-term corporate objectives,” Activision Publishing CEO Mike Griffith said in a statement. (gamespot)

It’s important to be aggressive as a large company, just like you would be as a startup company. There is a reason startup companies grow into powerful competitors that win, grow and eventually become (or be purcahsed by) larger companies.

As part of this move some staff will be migrated to new projects, persumably reporposed into other divisions or allowed to find new jobs somewhere else. This is called “realignment” by those in the management organization, and currently those up for realignment are:

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  • High Moon Studios (The Bourne Conspiracy, Darkwatch).
  • Massive Entertainment (World in Conflict, Ground Control)
  • Swordfish Studios (50 Cent: Blood on the Sand, Cold Winter)

These realignments along with other organizational changes will effect a few working game titles:

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  • Wet
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  • World at Conflict: Soviet Assault
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At this point we’re not sure which, if any, will continue to be developed under Activision and which will be sold off to other companies or retired. Surely, those money making titles will be sold off if Activision has no plans to finish them.

Again, it’s hard to consider this a bad decision. This is a decision of growth over having too many “Cooks in the kitchen” making soup. It’s better to have rock solid titles of epic proportions than a large pool of mediocre titles with minimal sales and bad reputations, and that’s why they spend a lot of time in the office working on this and having a type of  office chair for long hours on a computer is really helpful in this area.

It’s not that the titles they’re questioning are necessarily bad, but are not the leading titles in their space and are should be either given a stronger team to work on them or retire them entirely. To build a stronger team with passion and direction it might be best to sell the franchise(s) to other organizations so they can do it right with time and attention to detail.

(Thanks, gamespot)

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