StarCraft II Q&A: Lead Designer Dustin Browder

[Darg]

Here's an interesting Q&A made last Monday by Wired as part of their Blizzcon 2008 wrap-up:

http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/qa-starcraft-ii.html

The interviewee, SCII Lead Designer Dustin Browder, gave what was one of the more relaxed and frank interviews that I've read from a Blizzard employee in recent memory. Rather than just civilly spin the company PR phrases this guy just says things in his own style. You'll see what I mean when you read the interview.

He had an interesting opinion to give on the new editor as well:

Wired: What kind of map creation or modding tools...

Browder: We have the same kind of tools, but hopefully better.

Wired: It’s going to be as useful?

Browder: Oh yeah. Yeah yeah. We’ve learned a lot watching what happened with the War III community. We had some decent mods in StarCraft, but War III really took off in the greatest way. We’re looking at that and we’re saying “Alright. We can see where they succeeded and we can see where they failed, where they’re unable to do certain things” and so we’re trying to create an editor that allows them to continue doing what they're doing, but also allows them to overcome the problems they're currently having.

It’s a pretty complicated editor. Pretty powerful. I’m not worried about the power, but I’m a little worried about the casual guys right now.

I thought that last sentence was quite interesting.

 

[AceHart]

Mmm. Delicious.

Well, that guy lost all credibility right there... (see article for details).


> worried about the casual guys

I see no problem there.
If all else fails, I have a really good forum to recommend

 

[Flare]

Ah cool. If I get SC2, it'll probably just be for editting, so I hope the editor it's as good as they claim If it's not as bad as UnrealEd (since that's probably the only editor I've ever used other than WE, and it was extremely confusing), I'm happy

If all else fails, I have a really good forum to recommend

Really? You do?!?

 

[phyrex1an]

Wired: When WarCraft III came out, like you said, the editor really took off. Moreso than the old 2-D editors. There was a mod, whose name I’m forgetting, but some people tried to recreate StarCraft within WarCraft III. I believe this was like 5 or 6 years ago. What happened was that Blizzard stepped in and sent them a Cease & Desist ...

If project revolution really got a C&D then they didn't follow it very well. Maybe they are talking about a similar project?

It’s all one glorious package.

I wonder how long it will take until Grimoire: Starcraft II edition.

 

[MurderMode]

The SC2 editor will be just like the War3 Editor with additions to make life simple. I'm pretty confident custom scripting won't even be necessary anymore, atleast not to do anything that war3 requires it for.... but there will be advanced scripting options for people wanting to amp it to the next level again. Here's a link I post on another thread with a list of all the editor features that blizzard have confirmed to date -

SCII EDITOR INFO!!>!>>!>!