Not just Orcs in Space: StarCraft developers talk about the game’s legacy

The first part of StarCraft became a phenomenon, a game that drastically changed the landscape of the genre of real-time strategy, the influence of which spread to a huge number of other genres and formats.

In March of this year, it turned exactly 20 years to release a science fiction follower of Warcraft - a hit that made Blizzard the king of real-time strategies. However, StarCraft has become much more than just a successful transfer of the format to another entourage.

Instead, it became the most important game of the generation, which largely determined the formula of modern e-sports. But in the development process, the fate of the game remained unclear; the pace of creation was erratic , and due to the use of the Warcraft II engine in the early stages, the press gave the project the dubious nickname "Orcs in Space."

Of course, the game was much more than just a clone. To celebrate the last 20th birthday of StarCraft and fully understand the scale of the project’s enduring legacy, we contacted people who had done this fateful job, as well as those who were affected by the release of the game.

90's dream

As StarCraft lead programmer Colin Murray told us, at the end of 1995, a small group of developers under the management of Bob Fitch worked on a new game, which was to be called “Shattered Nations”. “We worked on it for about six months, when Allen Edham came to us with a proposal to participate in the creation of the sci-fi RTS, the description of which simply amazed us. We decided to accept the offer and so the direct work on StarCraft began . ”

It is logical that Blizzard sought to take advantage of the elusive success of Warcraft, but the development team wanted to diversify the work they had been doing for several years.

" StarCraft 's work began in the wake of the success of Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness and its expansion Through the Dark Portal ," said Blizzard executive producer Chris Sigati, who was StarCraft's lead tester.

“Starting from the original Warcraft: Orcs & Humans , the development team has spent several years working on high-fantasy strategy games. I was delighted with the idea of StarCraft , because I was a big fan of Star Wars, and the characters and entourage of StarCraft became our sandbox in the world of science fiction. Although we all love Warcraft's entourage, at the time, the transition from fantasy to science fiction was a tremendous change for many of the company's employees. ”

While the original design closely followed the template set by the Warcraft franchise, public demonstrations showed the team that in order for StarCraft to shine in full force, Blizzard needed to choose a new direction.


An early version of the game, which became StarCraft , around the time of E3 '96, where it earned its nickname "Orcs in Space"

“The most notable difference from the style of Warcraft II was the more sci-fi appearance with 3D rendering, which emerged after E3 1996,” says Murray.

“Our original design imitated the artistic style of Warcraft II , so the press quickly called the game Orcs in Space, which was a completely unflattering characteristic. After watching other new games, the demo of which was shown at E3, we realized that our sci-fi game needs a style more like rendered 3D. After the exhibition, we changed our priorities and completely redid the entire graphics in 3D, after which our artists rendered it into sprites and completed it manually. ”


The prototype of what became StarCraft , after rewriting the engine and reworking graphics

For Sigati, this was a turning point in the development of StarCraft . “Instead of being offended or upset, the team took the reviews and they actually made us stronger. I was very impressed with the courage and determination of the developers. The engine was completely rewritten and the ambitions associated with the project made us strive for something much bigger. From my point of view, a large proportion of the company's integral “commitment to quality” arose from this experience. ”

Search for success

After several years of hard work and serious redesign, StarCraft has become available to the eager public. The turning point in the development of fully justified itself - the game was a huge success with critics and players, became a bestseller in 1998 on the PC and for all the time of his life has sold over 9.5 million copies.

It is noteworthy that StarCraft also played an important role in the development of the multiplayer Blizzard service Battle.net, which after the release of the game has grown by more than 800 percent. It was a significant achievement that inspired many young developers, including Jeremy Ables, who worked at Uber Entertainment as Assistant Producer of Supreme Commander and Forged Alliance Producer at Gas Powered Games.

“My friends were big fans of Warcraft 2 , and for the first time I played StarCraft on the LAN party of one of my friends,” says Eibles. “After that, I bought the game and went through a campaign that brought the brain to me thanks to its three races and the big differences in their management style. We played a lot of Total Annihilation at that time, so StarCraft allowed us to change the pace of the game a lot and choose between huge packs of TA units and more tactical StarCraft solutions. Another great thing was that people who liked TA could choose zerg and play approximately in the style they were used to. That made it easy to play with friends. ”

According to Eibles, the most important aspect of StarCraft’s success was the delicate balance between the three asymmetrical sides: cold steel and the terrible terran firepower, high technology and elegant protoss energy weapons that overwhelm Zerg hive units.

Such an opinion can often be heard in StarCraft discussions and the games that followed. Jesús Arribas from Numantian Games, director and lead designer of They Are Billions , says that factions have become the key difference between StarCraft and Blizzard’s previous work.

“I managed to play StarCraft quite late. My first RTS was Warcraft 2 , I really liked it and I wanted more. It turned out that StarCraft gameplay gives much more fun. In Warcraft, both sides were very similar, the differences were so small that I used the same strategies when playing for each side. At StarCraft , Blizzard managed to create three truly unique races with their own aesthetics, style of play, storyline and personality. ”

Chris Hopper, head of North American e-sports at Riot Games, echoes his thoughts. Hopper has long been a fan of RTS. StarCraft attracted him with its sci-fi entourage and the possibilities offered by the third playable race, which, he said, Blizzard realized masterfully.

According to Hopper, “this made the RTS not binary; before StarCraft in most games it seemed that there was no significant difference between the races (for example, in Age of Empires ) or that there were only two choices ( Warcraft ). By adding a third race, choosing the optimal race / army / formation in the current situation has become a much more complicated process. ”

Of course, the third playable version of the race was a big step for the development team, which required a tremendous amount of time to carefully balance.

"It seems to me that one of those things that distinguished StarCraft from all the other games of the time was in completely different strategies of all three races, although all of them had something like countermeasures such as" rock-paper-scissors "against the possibilities of each friend, ”says Murray. “This is a serious issue for balance. We spent a lot of time on the gameplay, trying to set it up correctly. ”


" StarCraft was one of the first strategic games in which three asymmetrical races were present, yet they turned out to be balanced," adds Sigati.

“At that time, the popularity of the RTS genre in the PC games market was growing, but then most of the games were attended by factions that mostly had mirror symmetry with respect to each other. We were very proud that there were three races in StarCraft that built and fought in a completely different way. Creating the design of three asymmetrical races has greatly enhanced our balance skills. We were not sure that asymmetrical races could be balanced, but through experimentation, feedback and research we achieved this. I believe that this was critically important for our self-confidence as developers, and gave us the ability to cope with larger and more complex games in the future. ”

Although StarCraft was deservedly praised for the epic sci-fi storyline and for its important contribution to proving the viability of the online RTS concept, it is generally recognized that its most important contribution was the gameplay with three skillfully balanced factions. In addition, he strongly influenced the state of competitive games and in many aspects formed the future of eSports (in particular, this is confirmed by the fact that 4.5 million out of 9.5 million copies of StarCraft sold belonged to South Korea).

Hopper, who helped lay the foundations of one of the largest modern cyber disciplines, League of Legends , said that it would be difficult to imagine this area without her “grandfather” - StarCraft. “It's hard to overestimate the importance of StarCraft for eSports; It is quite possible that without Brood War and StarCraft 2 such games as LoL , CSGO and many others would never have achieved the share of their success. StarCraft fascinated the whole of South Korea and showed the world how a huge army of fans can not only be united by a new sport (created from a video game!), But also quickly become a source of income for hundreds of companies, investors, players and organizers. ”

StarCraft has not only created the basic tools necessary for the emergence of the eSports phenomenon - Blizzard’s support and responsibility have created a template for success that is still copied in almost every major eSports tournament and league.

“Without a StarCraft precedent, no modern e-sports discipline would even become so ambitious; they all stand on the shoulders of Jim Raynor and players such as Flash and BoxeR, who have made it possible to create their own studios, hold high-quality leagues and hold competitions in places such as the Staples Center and the World Cup Stadium in Seoul. StarCraft and StarCraft 2 were the first games that made me practice to play better, which is a clear demonstration of how these games allow you to show your competitive skills. ”


StarCraft Lim "BoxeR" Yo Hwan and Bertrand "ElkY" Grospellier professional players at the 2001 World Cyber ​​Games

The growth of the scale and the immense popularity of eSports, especially overseas, had a huge impact on Blizzard, which, according to Murray, taught the company how to conduct international business.

“The success of StarCraft in Korea has had a profound impact on our assessment of ourselves and our way of doing business. He helped Blizzard pave the way to becoming an international gaming company. ”

Sigati agrees with this and notices that the power of StarCraft has become the engine of mass popularity.

“Obviously, the huge fan base created in the South Korea of ​​the 2000s thanks to professional players in Brood War will be remembered as the first manifestation of eSports in the world. Professional players won national fame, teams received sponsorship from companies, and matches were broadcast on many cable networks. ”

Lasting heritage

“Whatever style of RTS you prefer, StarCraft has already become an integral part of the genre's DNA. Whichever RTS subgenre you play, there are probably elements borrowed from StarCraft . ”

Eibles words are repeated in almost any conversation about the legacy of StarCraft . Few games, especially those that have become spin-offs of already existing franchises, have made such an indelible contribution to games, from design and online gaming to creating events around them in the real world. For Arribas, now deeply immersed in his efforts to create his own real-time strategy, StarCraft remains a beacon lighting the way forward.

" StarCraft has become the gold standard of the RTS. Its implementation, pace and style of the gameplay, management and interface are perfect. For our RTS They Are Billions StarCraft has become the reference material in creating a control scheme. We are not trying to reinvent the bikes. Most of the players in the RTS have already played in StarCraft and they will feel right at home playing They Are Billions . StarCraft was a link between hardcore strategies and action games, and was able to attract a huge mass of action games to the strategy genre. "

For those who worked on the game, the legacy remains even more personal and vivid. Murray's intensity of the StarCraft development cycle allowed a lot of lessons to be learned in a short amount of time.

“ StarCraft development taught me a few things, mostly that usually long-lasting crunches are very bad. In the end, it turns out that long crunches do not really allow much faster release of the game. I also learned another important lesson: avoid showing the demo of the product to the public while it is not yet ready. Even if you say “the game is 50% ready,” the public will always judge the demo as a finished product, ”says Murray.

“In addition, there is a temptation to do a temporary job to prepare a demo, but this needs to be discouraged by all means. Any discarded work is the time that could be spent on the final product. We made the mistake of showing StarCraft too soon. This forced us to create a long series of demo for the press and marketing, which, in my opinion, slowed down the development process. ”

For his colleague Sigati, one of the most important lessons of StarCraft was that he learned to state the plot in such a way that it did not seem to be flat or scattered around fragments outside the gameplay. StarCraft demonstrated the capabilities of the storyline, which is set out in parallel with the gameplay and showed how this type of storytelling allows you to constantly keep the player's interest.


“The seemingly simple addition of portraits in mission briefings in which the characters explain the situation, give orders, threaten, etc., has created a much more fascinating gameplay attached to the characters,” Sigati says.

“I especially like the way we started telling the story during the missions themselves. Instead of explaining everything as text at the beginning of the missions, we combined the phrases of the characters before and during the missions. Characters like Raynor or Kerrigan have become much more important and significant than in all our previous games, and this has allowed players to love them more. This way of presenting the story continued to evolve after we moved on to the next games. ”

The overall result of all these lessons, some of which were painful or costly for the studios, is that this outstanding game has stood the test of time.

" StarCraft was created with love," says Murray. “We all believed in what we were doing and put our heart and soul into our work in order to create the best RTS in the world. Twenty years later, we still discuss it, and people continue to play it. Its diverse, albeit balanced strategies, ease of development, combined with the difficulty of achieving skill, as well as the rapid gameplay set the standard for all subsequent similar games. ”

Interesting fact: In preparing this story, we decided to find out why Blizzard decided to make the letter “C” in the word StarCraft uppercase, while in Warcraft it remained lowercase. The answer, as you can guess, was simple: the company wanted the name of the game to not be confused with the name of the Starcraft Bus company that still exists.