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GameSpy chats with Blizzard’s vice president Bill Roper about Japanese sensibilities, abandonment issues, and a little thing called StarCraft: Ghost.
By: Raymond "Psylancer" Padilla; September 22, 2002
GameSpy - Why did you choose to announce StarCraft: Ghost in Japan rather than the U.S.?
Bill Roper - We really think that Tokyo Game Show is pretty much the spot for console gaming. Also, we’re really looking forward, with our association with Capcom, to hopefully really break into a market that’s been difficult for American companies to get into -- to show our dedication to that, to show our commitment to not only getting into the market, but for really working hard with a well known, well respected Japanese company to make the game accessible to the sensibilities in this market.
It seemed like TGS was a really natural place to announce it. TGS has every gaming magazine and web site covering every console here. Everyone we want to make aware of the game is here. We try to find different places to make our announcements. E3 is very crowded. Everyone announced something at E3. So for us to announce a console game, there seemed to be no better place than Tokyo Game Show.
GameSpy - You mentioned Japanese sensibilities. In this style of game, Metal Gear is the king in Japan. A few of the Japanese reporters I talked to say there’s not much room for a game other than Metal Gear in the genre. What are you thoughts on that?
Bill Roper - I think that it’s great that people equate us with Metal Gear because it’s a great game. At the same time I think we’re doing a lot of different things than Metal Gear Solid. Certainly I’m not going to sit here and boast that we’re going to make everyone forget about Metal Gear once they play our game. I do think that there’s so many different things that we offer and hopefully it sparks some interest with gamers here.
It’s like with Warcraft III and StarCraft in Korea, where people were saying, "Even your own products will never replace StarCraft." We really didn’t want to replace StarCraft. We wanted to give players something different. They liked StarCraft, but hey, here’s Warcraft III. It’s a real-time strategy game. It has a lot of the same sensibilities as StarCraft, but a lot of stuff is different about it. And that worked out really well. I think that it’s the same kind of philosophy in regards to Ghost and Metal Gear Solid in Japan.
I don’t expect for us to replace Metal Gear Solid in Japan, but I think at the same time anyone who’s played that will want to give us a try. I’m not saying everyone that has played Metal Gear will play Ghost, but I think there’s enough room for both. This is one of the reasons we’re working so closely with Capcom. We want to know what this market wants to see. After this press tour we’re even discussing things as radical as potentially changing the character model in different markets -- making that part of a localization kit. So it’s not just changing sound files and voiceovers, but changing some of the visuals in the game to make it appealing to different markets.
GameSpy - Considering Blizzard’s extremely loyal following in the PC space, do you think Ghost will drive PC gamers to buy consoles? Is this game a potential system mover?
Bill Roper - We do have some hopes that it will encourage PC gamers to play on consoles that haven’t before. I think that there are some markets where that is possible. I think in the U.S. there’s a lot of PC gamers that have consoles. They have their PS2, their GameCube, and their Xbox. They buy a lot of different games for different play experiences. We realize that some of the markets, particularly in Asia, that consoles are huge and PCs are tiny. In other markets PC is huge and console is tiny. We really do hope that if gamers have played our games on the PC and are familiar with the quality of product we’ve put out, that when we do a console game that may drive them to want to check it out.
That is something that we do know is a possibility and I think there games that do that. The Game Boy was built on Tetris. I know that the reason I bought an N64 was Mario 64. Those were games that made me want to own that console. I haven’t bought a GameCube yet, but I’m going to because of Sunshine. So it’s certainly a possibility for Ghost, but that certainly hasn’t been our strategy, but it may drive a lot of people to go out and try a console.
GameSpy - On the other side of the coin, do you think you’ll have a difficult time enticing console gamers with the StarCraft world? Is it too much of a disconnect for console gamers? Is there enough to lure them in?
Bill Roper - Well I think most importantly that we really focus on making a world or a universe. And then we put a game in those places. So it’s not like we build a strategy game and then make the StarCraft universe to work with only that strategy title. We built the StarCraft universe and placed a strategy game within it. So it’s just as easy for us to place a tactical-action game in it. So I think that when someone who’s not familiar with the world is introduced to it, it’s not like, "Oh, there’s all these things about this world that don’t make sense because they were constructed specifically for a game type."
They’re there and they make sense and this new game is set within them. It’s kind of interesting because even though it’s a license that’s well known, something we’ve worked a lot with, and something PC gamers have seen a lot, there are going to be console gamers that haven’t seen it before. I think that the advantage that we have is that maybe they’ve heard about StarCraft and even past that, and perhaps more importantly, it really is a rich, flushed-out world. It’s something we know a lot about, so we put the game in there with a lot of confidence that what we’re doing is going to make sense and that the continuity flows. A lot of time you’ll play a game and think it’s pretty cool, but the characters and setting aren’t flushed out until the sequel.
We get that jumping off point in the initial product. It will be the first time a lot of console gamers have experienced the StarCraft world, but we know how everything works in the world. I think it’s a real benefit to the player. There’s a strong continuity that’s been built. There’s a strong relationship that’s been built over several games between races. And now we get to put new players in the middle of that. We already know how everything works in this world and we can introduce them to that. They get the benefit of jumping into a story that we know how to tell and tell well.
GameSpy - One the GameSpy message boards, as well as the Blizzard message boards, you’ve been getting strong reactions from PC gamers about Ghost. Many are screaming things like, "Why are you abandoning us?!?" What’s your response to this? Is there anything you want to say to PC gamers to try and assuage them?
Bill Roper - We’ve definitely seen a lot of comments from PC gamers concerned that we’re abandoning PC gaming. I think that the important thing to remember is that even though we are a relatively small company, we do have enough teams to work on more than one product at a time. We were working on World of Warcraft at the same time we were working on Warcraft III. One of the reasons we wanted to do a joint development with Nihilistic is that we didn’t have enough people on our own to do a big console game. I guess the important thing to remember is that one project doesn’t necessarily impact another.
So the work on StarCraft: Ghost doesn’t impact the World of Warcraft team. It doesn’t impact what the Warcraft III team is doing next. It doesn’t preclude us from doing anything else in the StarCraft universe. We certainly don’t see StarCraft: Ghost as being something that replaced StarCraft II. It’s just as likely that StarCraft II will be released at the same time as Ghost. We had two Warcraft teams working at the same time. I think it’s a difficult thing to look at. We even see big assumptions based on our web site. We’ll pull something off and people will go, "Oh my God, they pulled material from the web site. Now the game is being delayed!"
It’s an entirely different team. Our web designers have nothing to do with the game that’s being built. Because we are a tight company and very family oriented, I can see where that perception comes out. But I can certainly assure people out there that this doesn’t mean we’re not going to do anything else in the StarCraft universe. It doesn’t mean that nothing else is happening at the company. More than anything, they should really be excited that we’ve been able to figure out a way to expand, while still being able to keep doing everything we’re doing on the PC while getting back to our console roots.
Article from GameSpy.com
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