[hitekker]

This seems all in good fun but I wonder if it's come too late.

Starcraft 2 is at its twilight.

The biggest leagues of South Korea have disbanded. [1] The prolific progamers who transitioned to Starcraft 2 have gone back to Broodwar. [2]

Blizzard itself has scrubbed all references to Starcraft 2 on the very home page of Starcraft. [3] Except for the twitter embed, it has only only one "2" character... in the copyright statement.

My take is that the future for the Starcraft franchise will be through remastered and potential expansion packs following it.

Starcraft 2 had a good run but, with the entire RTS genre stagnating [4], I don't think Blizzard wants to bet on anything less than the top horse.

[1] https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/10/the-end-of-an-era-for-star...

[2] http://www.espn.com/esports/story/_/id/18935988/starcraft-br...

[3] http://starcraft.com

[4]http://www.pcgamer.com/the-decline-evolution-and-future-of-t... (Aside from MOBAs)

[cjbprime]

I don't quite agree, FWIW.

SC2 does seem to be at its twilight in Korea, and I agree progamers and fans there are super interested in Remastered.

But I don't think Remastered will be very popular outside KR. The SC2 "war chest" promo appears to have made more money than expected, as measured by hitting its funding ceiling within a few days.

So I don't think it's "Remastered replaces SC2", I think it's a divergence into KR playing Remastered and non-KR playing SC2, and the number of progamers and players doesn't have to be zero-sum: it could enlarge the population playing either game, too.

[hitekker]

I agree that Starcraft 2 won't suddenly drop dead. People do play it and FWIW, I liked it! I played all the expansions, online, and even the arcade mode. It was a good game.

But I disagree that Blizzard has faith in Starcraft 2 for America or any other country.

The removal of Starcraft 2 from Starcraft's English-Speaking homepage is one sign of finality. In-universe, Blizzard has also ended the main dramatic arc of Starcraft 2's story, leaving room only for half-hearted spin-offs.

Numbers-wise, we're seeing 50% drop-offs in user activity the last 2 years alone. Even with the release of "Legacy of the Void", the number of daily games played for 1v1 since 2015 have gone from 321,000 to 138,000. The new, much-advertised, much-worked-upon, Archon Mode has gone from 11,000 games a day to a measly 1,000 [1]. Not just because of Korean disinterest, we're seeing players leave across the board in all countries.

In 6 years, Starcraft 2 went from millions of players concurrently to an average of 20k a day.

Compare with the lifespans of League-of-Legends, Dota, Counterstrike, even the original Broodwar, and the reason for remastered becomes more obvious.

Blizzard knows Starcraft 2 won't lead to the resurgence of the RTS genre, so they're trying another route.

[1] http://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=c...

[doppel]

As an esport / spectator sport, SC2 has been waning for a long time, and similarly the War Chest was capped at 200.000 for prize pool money and an unknown amount after that (which, compared to Dota 2 or League of Legends prize pools, is not a lot).

I think, given the matchmaking update for remastered, that SC1 will see a resurgence both inside and outside of KR, but I am not sure either SC1 or SC2 will stay competitive in the long run.

[solicode]

Personally, I think focusing on BW would have been more interesting (as long as the APM limit still stands), but I guess SC2 is alright too. The fact that they're even doing this though makes me happy.

The reason I say BW would be especially interesting is simply because the game has remained basically unchanged balance-wise since v1.08 which came out in 2001. Despite that, the pro scene never left, and we're still seeing some shifts in the meta even today. It would be cool to see a strong AI flip the script completely for such an established and "well understood" game. Opportunities like that are kind of rare, at least when it comes to video games.

[gcp]

I wonder if it's come too late.

Couldn't it be the opposite? Blizzard was willing to do this release exactly because SC2 is dead?

[popcorncolonel]

Why would popularity be a detriment to this API?

[habitue]

They released a headless Linux port you can download for free. This wouldn't be something they'd contemplate for a game in its prime.

[Synaesthesia]

I disagree I got into Starcraft recently and find it very much vibrant, both in the pro scene and casual. But that’s irrelevant. The point is it’s still a great ai challenge

[colmvp]

It's a great AI challenge but the pro/casual scene is very diminished from what it once was. Practically every single streamer who introduced me to the concept of streaming by playing/casting SC2 have either moved onto other games or quit streaming altogether. I can't believe it was only a few years ago, but I used to watch Husky/HD/Day9 everyday.

Unless I'm mistaken, even the top SC2 streamers today receive a fraction of what other streamers who stream games like Hearthstone or Dota2 get. I'm not suggesting it's a 'ded gaem' but to me it's become a little like AoE2 in that it's a niche e-sport, which is certainly nothing to be ashamed about. But I think it's a far from what Blizzard had hoped for, which I think is reflected with their next batch of games in Hearthstone, Overwatch, and HotS, which all have some level of competitive play while still being way more very friendly to casual users than SC2.

[cjbprime]

It's an objective question: Twitch viewership of SC2 is simply smaller than it used to be.

[make3]

People were still very excited about Go even if people in the US likely didn't really play a lot of Go before AlphaGo. It will be super good PR for DeepMind and Facebook AI Research (who are doing Broodwar). It will probably not reanimate the pro scenes in any lasting manner, however.

[aerovistae]

I mean, the techniques developed through such a research project would map onto many other domains, obviously including any other RTS.

Using SC2 as a starting point isn't really of much consequence. "Too late"? It's not as if the algorithms developed will die alongside the game.

[lardo]

http://i.imgur.com/IYXYEbu.png