[danso]

The argument that far less ambitious AAA games have taken a long time has seemed to me to be a double-edged sword. It does give SC some leeway in expected timeline. But there’s also the concern that if a reasonably-experienced studio like Blizzard could be stalled for 10 years to iterate on Diablo 2, then it seems very likely that CIG, an entirely new studio, is going to stumble hard when trying to solve multiple challenges in gaming that have yet never been solved. Chris Roberts is rightly a legend for the WC series, but that doesn’t suggest he can pull off a dynamic game of SC’s scope.

I’ve been paying attention to SC because its ambition is fascinating. I’m especially interested in what innovations they’ll bring to AI when it comes to populating a game world. But I would’ve thought by now — especially based on Roberts’ confident prediction of a 2016 release — that the single-player SQ42 would be in beta form by now. But it seems like they don’t have any kind of game loop, or a stable/fun flight model.

Nevermind the never-before done innovations — I think that SC, whenever it releases, is going to have a hell of a time with more mundane things, such as game balancing. I think of how much work Blizzard has to constantly put into Overwatch, a team FPS with very few innovations, to find the right mix of balance with <30 characters in 3 classes. SC has what looks like dozens of ships that have to be designed well for human and AI alike. Some of these ships cost hundreds of dollars and yet have to be tweaked so that SC doesn’t feel like a pay-to-win game, where whales dominate the galaxy with AI-controlled fleets. It’ll be an interesting project to follow over the decade but the challenges seem daunting.