Originally Posted by http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=107013

TL: Obviously we are a StarCraft Progaming community, how much of an influence has progaming been in the development cycle and can you give us any examples?



DB: It's been pretty enormous. You know, when we announced the changes to rallying and multiple unit selection stuff we knew that was going to be kind of a big deal. I don't think we appreciated how big of a deal it was going to be. And then the discussions that resulted from that on your site and other sites around the community were very educational for us in what we were trying to accomplish.

I don't have specific examples, which I know you want and would love to give them to you because you've certainly earned it. I don't have specific examples of units you guys have come up with or a specific post that I've read that I thought “Oh we need to put that in the game!” and went ahead and did that. Really almost nothing in the work we do here survives the development process – I don't ever come up with an idea (well maybe rarely) – almost never, that goes right into the game and that's it. I'll get an idea and I'll take it to a designer and we'll talk about it and say “that's kind of cool, we'll see how we feel about it tomorrow”. We go back the next day and say “you know what, I like it but maybe we should change this from protoss to zerg and maybe it should be plus armor instead of % damage lost”. It will slowly get tuned and it goes through me talking with the designers, talking with Rob Pardo, talking with the lore guys, the artists, the balance guys. At that point it's changed so much that was it really my idea (laughs)? I dunno... I guess, technically I said the words that started the whole thing but it's not really my idea anymore – it has no relationship to what I originally said at the beginning. At that point, it's evolved into something that is really tight and good and hopefully we would like in the game.

So there is definitely stuff you guys have said that has spurred conversation – that have created things that have gone into the game but there's no sort of one idea that we took right off a post and put in the game. But the influences are real and are really serious and have been extremely helpful. I've often said and will continue to say that StarCraft II specifically has been extremely fortunate to have you guys watching over it. The benefit you guys bring to the game, the passion and knowledge this community brings has been a huge benefit working on the game. It's had a huge influence and I think it has made the game a lot better.

TL: I think you'll make a lot of nerds really happy with that.

DB: It's the way it is man!

TL: To follow that up, what types of challenges do you face when trying to balance the needs of the casual player versus the rage of hardcore players like in the progaming community. You had mentioned the macro mechanics being a big one.

DB: Sure that's definitely a big one – it's a place where we feel we can definitely do better but it then does break other systems. You know a great example I love reading on Teamliquid and elsewhere were not so much that you guys were missing clicks – some people said that and I didn't agree with that – but that we were missing the difference between a macro player and a micro player. That we were destroying the sense of style of the player. I could be playing a micro game and you could be playing a macro game with both the same race, and we are still playing a very different game from one another. And when I saw that I was like “Ohh!” I was opening my eyes like “Thanks! THERE IT IS! That's great! That's genius! That's exactly what we need to try to accomplish”.



So yeah, it's always a challenge. It's very easy to make units and abilities and missions and UI that appeals to the hardcore gamer. It's also very easy to make those kind of decisions that appeal to the very casual gamer. The real challenge is making it easy to learn and difficult to master, which makes everybody happy. The casual gamer has learned it easily, the hardcore guy is finding it very difficult to master. And like I've said before, and you see this in World of Warcraft all the time – there's not a hardcore gamer and a casual gamer, there's a continuum. Casual gamers can and will become hardcore gamers if you let them. If you create a game that's easy to learn, the casual guy will come and sit down and play. And if you make it really difficult to master, what you are allowing him to do is play week after week, month after month and still learn something new. Then there's always some reason for him to come back and so he'll become a hardcore gamer over time. I can't tell you how many soccer moms I've raided with – it's ridiculous. These people according to conventional gaming wisdom would never be hardcore gamers, but they have better gear than I do! And I'm the archetype of a hardcore gamer, buying 3 or 4 games a month and staying up into the wee hours of the morning to play. Yet here are the soccer moms out there with their purple gear and epic mounts.

So what is that? I don't know but it's not the usual breakdown between casual and hardcore. You've made a game where they are allowed to get into it and enjoy it easily but they have a lot of trouble mastering it and become us. So that is the goal, and that is always challenging. That's when it's easy to come up with something for the casuals but doesn't have any depth – so what's the point? It's very easy to come up with something that has a lot of depth and nobody will understand. So we definitely go back and forth, and that's one of the reasons it takes us so damned long to make our games. Cause this stuff is hard – we're smart guys but we're not geniuses, so we have to work at it and put a lot of effort into it. So we just grind on it until we've got it to a place we are happy with.

TL: OK, Blizzard has recently been making moves into the world of E-Sports - you have a dedicated E-Sports team now. With Starcraft 2, will you actually be organizing and sponsoring SC2 events or will you be leaving that to 3rd parties, either professional or in the community?

DB: I think Bob [Editor's Note: Bob Colayco, Blizzard PR Manager for SC2] is going to answer this one.

Bob: You know, we have an E-Sports team for a reason and I think you're going to see some 3rd party stuff as well, but we definitely like to get hands on with our own things. If you look at what we've done with WoW Arena, we do have the tournament realms and we do regional finals that we run and we sponsor. And then there's the grand finals which we have at Blizzcon, so I think you're going to see a mix of things. I can't say anything specific

DB: I think the important message for the community with this one would be, that we love the 3rd party tournaments as well. We love watching those, going to them and seeing them live etc. So we want to do stuff as well, and we want to promote E-Sports overall.
“We are trying to make this game as complete – like if nobody buys any other product, this game needs to be awesome. Like if Blizzard gets hit by a meteor tomorrow and we all die, at least Starcraft 2 was awesome – that's what it needs to be.”
We want E-Sports to grow and grow and grow – ideally with our game of course, but even in the wider world of everybody's games. We think E-Sports is an important component of what video games could become, and we want to take this opportunity with Starcraft 2 to push E-Sports forward. But, we really hope that lots of people out there see how fun it is and jump on board to make their own tournaments for our games or whoever's games. As long as we have a lot of E-Sports out there, we'll have more E-Sports players, more sites and bigger sites. It's just good for the business overall and because we put so much energy into it, it's good for us.

So we are really hoping that E-Sports, in the States specifically and in Europe as well takes off like it has in Korea where it's huge. We see that opportunity like “wow this is so fun, there's no reason this couldn't be a world-wide phenomenon” instead of one limited to a few places in the world.