Starcraft (A History in Two Acts)

As a data point, the Blizzard sales team’s projections were that we would sell 4,000 copies of StarCraft in a year in South Korea, so there was no reason to in localize the game.

First year sales were on the order of 100x that amount, quite the surprise for everyone at Blizzard!

One less talked about thing when discussing StarCraft, that might be more pertinent to HN audience, is that this game was almost endlessly hackable. And I mean that in the truest sense of that word. Many a careers were launched by playing around with OllyDbg and learning to reverse engineer code all so you could create an awesome plugin [0] for the community.

Which brings me to my next point, which is that the community aspect of StarCraft is a huge part of why it remained popular for so long. As previously mentioned, there were hackers and programmers developing awesome tools that helped the scene, but also there were map makers which were essential in keeping the game balanced. One little known fact about StarCraft is that the last balance patch released by Blizzard was in 2001, at the early beginnings of the pro scene. After that, the game was kept fresh and balanced by community map makers.

Combine that with people who created websites where you could follow news about Korean pro scene (TeamLiquid has its roots here), talk with other people about StarCraft, and other people who organized tournaments and did everything else; and you get a formula which almost ensures the longetivity of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if there are people playing and following this game in 20 years time. I know I'll be one of them.

[0] - https://github.com/TheEngineeringBay/Awesome-Broodwar-Resour...

The bit about Starcraft being a hit in Korea also misses that there was a 50+ year ban on importing Japanese culture that was loosened in late 1998 through the early 2000s, which made Korea a much more receptive market for non-Japanese game makers up through that period of time.

Add into that the different domestic cryptography requirements, and you get a lot of explanation of the uniqueness of the Korean computing landscape.

I strongly recommend reading Pat Wyatt's blog [1] for some insights about an early Starcraft development from more technical point of view.

[1] https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/tough-times-on-the-road-to-...

I’ve attended Blizzcon 2018 and it was a very memorable experience. Not just because it was the pinnacle of Starcraft for me, but also the moment when i saw the first non-korean player to win the championship. Serral, the champion on that year and one of the greatest Zerg player ever, wouldn’t be coming as underdog to the matches with Koreans that dominated the stage for almost two decades. Once the final match was over i heard the most humble and respectful words from the champion to the audience and other players. This was such an inspirational moment for me. Shortly after my starcraft journey ended, the interest faded, but that speech left a huge mark on my further activities and perception of the competition in anything. Reminded me that the race is long and at the end it’s always with yourself.

I have such fond memories of the original Starcraft. When I was like 7 or 8, my parents got a computer for the first time (this was ~2004) and installed Starcraft on it. We still didn't have internet so all I got was the single player aspect but I loved it and must have dumped close to 100 hours playing it over the next 2 years or so.

After that I stopped playing Starcraft but when I was in high school I picked it up again and started playing online. The regular matches were cool but the coolest matches were "custom scenarios", my favorite being "mouse hunt". It was a scenario where one team had the weakest players and the other team had the strongest players but the weak team could create barriers that the strong team couldn't destroy. From there the small team would slowly build up and defeat the stronger team or the strong team would wipe everyone out before they could.

It's been years since I played the OG Starcraft but I think I'll be picking it up again soon. It's just such a damn good game and it's really stood the test of time where even if you pick it up today it doesn't feel like a dated game, Blizzard made a truly timeless game with Starcraft and that's not an easy thing to do.

Never played Starcraft II but from what I heard they mostly kept to the original formula and many folks love that game.

Nice synchronicity — I just reinstalled Brood War last week.

Does anybody know the current state of Battle.net emulation for the older non-Remastered game? The bnetd drama was twenty years ago at this point and I would like to be able to play online without the Microsoft-Vivendi-Activision-Zenimax-Blizzard Borg having any say in it. RE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bnetd

I prefer to patch only up to 1.15.x to keep network compatibility with the Classic Mac OS version of the game :)

What I really want to know is why all three worker units float. What caused that design? Was it a result of having to balance spider mines? A happy accident? A conscious design from the start? If so why? This keeps me up at night.

I see many people in the comments nostalgically talking about the custom mapping scene and how it got them into programming.

The same is true for me, so I think here is a good place to plug my starcraft custom map archive website [0]. In 2020 because of the pandemic StarCraft enjoyed a surge of popularity again, I went looking for some custom maps that I remembered from the early 2000s but I couldn't find them. The existing websites at the time were not solving the problem for me so I set out to solve it myself. The website is a passion project for me, I don't want it to generate any revenue. It's been a fun ride and it's now easily the largest map archive that has ever existed. I think eventually I'll make a show HN post about it when I implement a few more cool features, but that will have to be for a later date.

[0] https://scmscx.com

A bit disappointed to see the discussion peter out at the release of SC2. Pro Brood War is not where it was at the time, but is still alive and well, with a much less exploitative business model, in fact. No more team houses and skeezy managers, the pro players make their money streaming these days.

Gameplay-wise, it is still in an incredible place. New builds are still being developed, not just one-off cheese builds but legitimate new approaches to matchups. Depending on matchup and player, you might watch a game where the core build hasn't changed in 15 years or a game that would be unrecognizable from 3 years ago.

Also, I would love for this guy to do a deep dive on the SC:BW approach to balance, which is map-based rather than based on traditional unit-based balance changes. This way the community is effectively able to balance the game themselves.

Did anyone else think gameplay was not anywhere near as enjoyable in SC2? There was something a bit more raw about SC1/Brood War which I felt went missing in SC2. I didn't invest enough time into SC2 though.

I've yet seen another game with as good pathfinding as StarCraft 2. The way 100s of units flow around another 100s of moving units like water is very impressive, even today.

Does anyone know what's the special sauce?

Long time HN lurker, decided to make an account because I have some knowledge about this.

I think there are two interesting things the article misses around PC bangs:

1. StarCraft could run on a potato. The PCs in these cafes were not always the most modern, and the lack of system requirements was a big boon to StarCraft taking off. This is also why League of Legends became very popular in South Korea.

2. Ironically, piracy. The article mentions that cafes bought copies of StarCraft to install on their PCs. This isn't quite correct, in practice a single CD key would be used to install StarCraft on all PCs in the cafe.

StarCraft Brood War in Korea is alive and well. It's had a recent resurgence and is currently the most watched game on their popular local streaming service Afreeca (essentially Korean Twitch.tv).

What’s amazing about Blizzard is that they got me so early that I saw Warhammer Fantasy and 40K as the store brands until sometime in my twenties.

Someone should make a documentary about the history of StarCraft and where it's going next

I also wish we saw more AI leagues and gameplay

One of the best games of all time.

Who else still listens to the StarCraft music OST? I listen to it a few times a year and get in the zone.

Really hoping that Microsoft buying Blizzard, might lead to a resurgence in interest and development, along the lines of the resources put into Age of Empires.

I stopped playing when Blizzard made you create an online account to play your newly purchased single-player game.

and no lan play.

wonder if that kind of friction kills things.

Competitive StarCraft (and it's successor) is very much alive still today! I recommend checking out sc2casts's best-of-year lists[0] for each year where you can find a selection of what ends up being the most "interesting" matches played throughout the year.

These can range from games that explore a new aspect of the meta, to nail-biting matches where the apparent loser makes an unbelievable comeback, to the career-making game of an upstart unseating the king.

(I have no affiliation whatsoever with sc2casts.)

[0] https://sc2casts.com/best-of-2023/

There is a lively stage of SC2 YouTubers, be they commentators (like LowkoTV) or gammers. Harstem is dark and edgy, including his iconic series "Is it IMBA or do I suck?". At the same time, it is lovely to watch challenges by MaNa and uThermal - especially on how much fun they have, regardless of whether they are winning.

Also, it is still interesting to see the diversity of grandmasters' personal play styles. In a mature game, one would expect it to converge to a single "optimal" playstyle. Yet, even after the dust of a new balance patch settles, it is impressive. And for a reminder, SC2: Legacy of the Void is over 8 years old.

>Adham and Morhaime fostered as non-hierarchical a structure as possible at Blizzard, such that everyone, regardless of their ostensible role — from programmers to artists, testers to marketers — felt empowered to make design suggestions, knowing that they would be acted upon if they were judged worthy by their peers.

General question, how do you balance between trying to get everyone's feedback vs just being more fast and efficient?especially in the early stages where time is usually pretty critical

This game brings me so much nostalgia. I used to play SC when I was a middle school student from 2000 to 2002. I was so good at the game that around my age group I was probably the best in Seoul. I also participated at a pro tournament (ongamenet I believe), but lost to NaDa during the knockout stage. Then I moved to the states so I stopped playing.

Whatever happened to Giyom (Gulliaume Patry)? I saw ElKY (Bertrand Grospeller) is a well known poker player now.

I used to play Starcraft a lot, but i don't know anything about mods, extensions, multiplayer, etc. From where can I download the best current release (official or not, i don't care) + maybe some extra such as better/HD textures? Is there any easy path to follow?

I just want to go play a game of broodwar now on battlenet. Guessing this isn't possible?

> Starcraft was a superb game by any standard, the most tactically intricate, balanced, and polished RTS to date

I'd say M.A.X. was no less tactically intricate - albeit through infinite configurability of things.

The person who returned to them the source code disk has done everyone dirty. I’m optimistic Microsoft will eventually open source stuff but goddammit.

I will never understand how Starcraft II failed

My only beef with the article was in how in North America, broadband was challenging. We had cable modems back in 1994. I grew up in a single wide trailer with a single mom and even we could afford it. I was downloading from Napster in 1996.