Mod creation and distribution further simplified – the best of Blizzcon 09

“Cataclysm hits World of Warcraft!” “Diablo III Monk class gets old juices going!” “Battlestar’s Tricia Helfer to play Kerrigan!”  Blizzcon dominated videogame and tech news sites and discussions boards last Friday, Saturday, and Sunday without breaking a sweat.

Held last weekend at the Anaheim Convention Center, Blizzcon is “a celebration of the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises and the communities that surround them,” or so says developer/publisher, and organizer of the con, Blizzard.  The company owns additional properties, but they’re not as critically lauded, recognizable, and/or financially successful. Focusing on the big three’s a smart move for the company. You list your absolute best qualities and work experiences on your resume, right?

After each announcement, cheering, unending adoration, and maybe a few tears followed. Every warm body in attendance, and maybe a few thousand streaming the event online, succumbed to the will of Blizz. It’s not a cult (the integral “religion” component’s missing for that term). But spiked Kool-Aid is probably served somewhere in gaudy steins.

Other news emerged from the event, but were buried by the frenzy caused by the “major” three announcements. Who cares if Tricia Helfer lends her voice to the vindictive Kerrigan? Thousands, possibly millions, apparently. No offense to the beautiful and talented Helfer. She’s neat.

Here’s the biggest news to come out of Blizzcon: Blizzard’s entering the DIY indie game and mod space with Starcraft II, striking directly at the still-beating hearts of Kongregate and, to some degree, Steam. They should be terrified.

Blizzard’s a company with uncompromising quality standards. Warcraft Adventures and Starcraft Ghost were sent unapologetically to the trash can despite spending years in development and devouring, by my wild guesstimation, millions in funds. Nearly any other company (sup Activision?) would’ve cut their losses and dropped the stinky turd in the hands of consumers. Arguably worse, some poor PR person would’ve had to convince consumers to buy the fecal matter. Pity him, or her, or (heaven forbid) both.

Now imagine this determination applied to better assisting the independent community.

Rob Pardo, design head at Blizzard, explained the motivation behind Starcraft II’s powerful mod tools  in a piece on Gamasutra:

“Imagine what could happen if you could hire a small dev team and use Starcraft II almost as an engine.”

As the Gamasutra article alludes, the reason behind this design decision probably has something to do with a Warcraft III mod called Defense of the Ancients. Pardo probably agrees, as he said “The tower defense [genre] came out of the WarCraft III mod community, and now you see tower defense [games] on the PlayStation Store, and in [PopCap's] Plants vs. Zombies.”

And neither Blizzard nor the designer of the mod received cash for an inspiring job well done.

Pardo further explained that not all features in the toolset are used in Starcraft, saying “We don’t need an item system in StarCraft II, but we wanted to make sure that’s in there for people to use.”

So how powerful is the new editor? Well, it has the power to resurrect dead titles and near-dead genres. Don’t believe me. See the video below for yourself.

But why would anyone design content for Starcraft II if they could design and distribute it elsewhere and receive monetary compensation? Pardo’s got the answer: “This is an opportunity for [modders] to share in the rewards of our success.” Sometime after release, an official marketplace will be added to the title and users will be able to purchase premium content for a fee. Details are scant right now, but the system doesn’t seem unlike Xbox Live’s Community Games or Apple’s App Store. But when Pardo namedropped the competition, he mentioned neither. “We want to make sure the best amateur game designers out there are making content for StarCraft II, and not for Kongregate or Steam or anything like that.”

Slip of the tongue or an indication of Blizzard’s vision? You decide.

Kongregate’s a web-based one-stop shop for designing, uploading, and playing flash-based games. Developers can earn up to 50% of the ad revenue generated by their title/s. The site even offers a diverse set of tutorials for the budding designer with no previous design knowledge. It’s the closest thing to an “idiot’s guide to designing flash games” as you can get, and something I plan to soon crack wide open.

Steam’s a little different. It’s a digital distribution platform designed by Valve Software offering everything from small independently-developed titles to triple-A blockbusters for download. At first only Valve’s products were sold via Steam, but the library’s grown rapidly since its release on September 12, 2003, and now hundreds of titles from dozens of publishers are offered. Unlike the Appstore from Apple, which takes 30% of all revenue generated by an app, Valve hasn’t disclosed their cut from each title sold. I’m guessing it’s variable, but never exceeding 30%. In comparison, GameStop only makes $.21 on every dollar from new software.

If these two distinctly different services really are Starcraft II’s biggest competition, Blizzard’s more ambitious than they’re letting on. Don’t be surprised. The company’s notoriously tight-lipped and is now tied directly to Activision CEO Bobby Kotick following the Activision Vivendi merger. We’re traveling in sparsely charted PR waters, kiddies.

Whatever Blizzard decides to ultimately do, it’ll probably succeed. I’m reluctant to behave so overtly positive about a company, especially one with ANY sort of ties to Kotick, but the track record speaks for itself. And besides, did you see that video on Starcraft II’s mod tools? Combine that with the worldwide Starcraft phenomenon and we’re guaranteed to witness a solid eight years of new content. There’s at least one Defense of the Ancients buried within, right?

This entry was posted by Kyle Stallock on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 2:53 pm and is filed under Gaming, Multimedia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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