Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites

Back in 1998, texture-mapped vector-based polygons were the new thing. FPS had them, and it was time for RTS to go “3D” too. Yet one company played it safe, released a spritebased original-IP sci-fi game... and changed South Korea forever.

He who hesitates is lost. This is the over-arching philosophy of StarCraft. Thanks to meticulous tweaking of build times, unit costs, unit speeds, firing rates, armour and more, StarCraft has become a game where decisiveness is as key to victory as a player’s actions-per-minute.

This incredible attention to the ultra-fine element of balance means StarCraft can showcase player skill like almost no other strategy game, and that makes it a game that isn’t just entertaining to play, it’s also entertaining to watch. Compared to MOBA especially it’s just... more impressive.

StarCraft wasn’t developed with eSports in mind. How could it have been? Videogameas-sport wasn’t a thing. Yet serendipitously, Bizzard’s obsession with balance positioned StarCraft in the right place, at the right time, to become a cultural phenomenon that would sweep an entire country.

First, the context. Back in 1998, RTS was a major genre for PC, and Westwood’s Command & Conquer series was duking it out with Cavedog’s Total Annihilation (a future Hagionaut trip) for top spot.

Various interlopers would pop up from time to time - notably Australia’s own Auran with Dark Reign - but the genre was becoming more and more focused on two studios: Westwood, and Blizzard.

But before StarCraft, Blizzard was very much the underdog. Warcraft 2 (note the small C, ugh) was popular enough, but it was all weird and fantasy. Age of Empires was pretty big among “serious” gamers, and Total Annihilation required a $5000 PC to run at max settings. Yes, Westwood might have ruled, but it was a fractured kingdom.

When StarCraft came out, many reviewers were surprised that Blizzard had stuck with sprites. Total Annihilation’s 3D renderer allowed for epic battles with dozens of units on screen at once... sure, they were all largely indistinguishable robots, and the game needed 24MB of RAM to run, but come on! 3D is the future! StarCraft - in what became a Blizzard signature move - was built to run on (almost) any PC. Most games in the late

‘90s, you needed to squint at the “minimum requirements” on the bottom of the box before buying. But with StarCraft, unless you were still stuck with a 486, you could probably run it.

Not only that, sprites allowed Blizzard to design units that were visually distinct. The game has a very clear visual language. A glance, and you can tell what kind of battle group is rushing you, and what kind of threat it presents.

Beyond the visual, limiting multi-unit selections to just 12 units creates interesting strategic and tactical situations. It’s probably StarCraft’s most radical departure from standard RTS gameplay - but it’s interesting how, even as some gamers are calling for the limit to be scrapped from StarCraft Remastered, others are calling for a limit to be ADDED to StarCraft 2!

So: sprites, selection limits, a resource system focused on rate of income rather than sending trucks into the wilderness to find ore, and three factions that all play quite differently while remaining incredibly precisely balanced. It was clear, after the shock of the “outdated” graphical system had worn off, that Blizzard had created something of a masterpiece...

But the feature that really made StarCraft’s (and, before World of Warcraft, Blizzard’s) fortune was Battle.net. An integrated multiplayer matchmaking system that used a direct internet connection to help players find and join games.

This aspect of the game, something we totally take for granted today, was radical. In 1998, “multiplayer” meant typing in IP addresses, or having to use weird third-party software that used TCP/IP to simulate an IPX network... or something. It was horrible.

Battle.net took all that and distilled it down to a few mouse-clicks. It was a stroke of genius, and at least a couple of years ahead of its time.

And yet, such is the pace of PC game development, StarCraft would have hung around for no more than the usual three of four years, were it not for the collapse of the South Korean economy...

Okay here’s the equation: Economic downturn + government response to build fast broadband internet backbone + retirees with money but no guaranteed future income wanting to open small businesses + commoditisation of the X86-based PC = the sudden proliferation of “PC Bangs”, or cybercafes. This then set up a second equation: PC Bang availability + young adults with not much else to do + limited selection of games + existing Korean taste for the design purity of Go = StarCraft becomes the RTS of choice.

And finally: Broad popularity of StarCraft + proven commercial viability of professional Go tournaments + multiple cable TV channels = televised, pro-league StarCraft.

The rest, as they say, is history. StarCraft isn’t the greatest RTS of all time, but it is fundamentally entertaining to watch. And everything else aside, that’s why as a spectator sport in Korea, it’s as popular as televised Poker in the US.

By the time Blizzard got around to StarCraft 2, of course, the developer knew what was up. It drove a hard bargain with Korean cable networks - almost TOO hard - and built lots of shoutcast-specific tech into the game.

And indeed, StarCraft 2 did displace Brood War (StarCraft’s fully-updated, expanded version) for several years. But now nostalgia is kicking in, StarCraft is back, and the graphically-crisp but gameplayidentical Remastered edition is here, to make Blizzard another grillion

dollars.

it was clear, after the shock of the “outdated” graphical system had worn off, that Blizzard had created a masterpiece