Zerg Coverage >> Chris Sigaty Interview

Chris Sigaty Interview

I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Chris Sigaty (Lead Producer of StarCraft 2) and ask him a few questions. With me I had Andreas Sander from the German fansite inStarCraft.de, fellow Swede Patrik Hellstrand from GosuGamers.net and Morten Skovgaard, Editor in Chief of the Danish paper magazine PC Player. It was a nice and relatively casual conversation, but you could easily recognise Morten’s veteran skills in talking to game developers or handling interviews in general, as he managed to snatch up he majority of time in the spotlight. There were some really interesting topics of discussion, and over all a quite interesting interview.

Andreas Sander
When you hear some statements from Dustin or some fan or some other Blizzard Developer, they are saying “we don’t want to do the same over again for StarCraft II, we’re going to do it differently”. Well, on our fansite we have a lot of people, who think that this is exactly what [they] want, StarCraft II being the same as StarCraft: Brood War. What will you say to that?

Chris Sigaty
Well, I actually think that this is one of the hardest games to make, period. Because there are so much expectations out of it. But because StarCraft one had such a huge fanbase we made the decision to specifically stay close to the original. We want to enhance some of the fundamentals of the original, like making the races even more diverse than they were in StarCraft: Brood War, but at its core it is a “fast action RTS” that we are creating, and moving it to the next generation.

So really, we are actually catering to the long-time fans that love the original. We think that we’re putting enough new there to make it exciting and different enough to sit down and play that, but not giving players the feeling of “what the heck happened to the tech tree I’m used to”? It is the philosophy on core gameplay. We are trying to ensure that those people that just want that new experience have some of that, but for the hardcore fans I think they’ll love it. In fact, we just got some reports from Korea that many of the pro gamers are saying “I think we’re going to make the leap over to StarCraft II”. They mean it for professional gaming (but nothing official yet) so we’ll see.

Morten Skovgaard
Is the feedback you have been getting from the hardcore pro-gamers from Korea decidedly different than the feedback you are getting from the Europe and US then?

Chris
No, actually! It is similar and we are listening to that as well, it is just that there are more fans in Korea that are anxious to this new thing. It’s much more their national pastime than the other regions, but we know that there’s equally hardcore and and skilled players in Europe and in US as well.

Morten
So you don’t see one territory being more conservative than the other? What they want to be changed or not?

Chris
That depends on what voice. I think there is a harder core voice coming from Korea, because there are more hardcore players, and that you won’t have as much coming from Europe, but there are STILL hardcore players in Europe that don’t want to change it at all, saying “What are you doing? The art was perfect in the original, how can you change it at all? Don’t change anything!” and there’s other people that asks “How come I can’t map the camera?”, and such things.

So there’s all these different groups that’s firing, and we’re walking a very specific line in the middle. Based on the reactions we’ve had from BlizzCon [‘07]when people got a chance to play, and early feedback from Korea as well, we made the right choices in the beginning. We’re going to change some of the elements, but we are keeping that same core. There will be some different units and there will be some different tactics amongst each race, we’ll enhance some things but the core will still be that fast furious action RTS gameplay that is StarCraft.

Morten
If you have hardcore here [holding up his right hand], mainstream here [holding up other hand], and we have middle here [pointing in the middle], where would you say StarCraft II is compared to the first one? Is it more hardcore and more micromanagement?

Chris
You know what, it’s interesting, I think we’ve added in less [micro]. Currently there are some things that help the player and there are a lot of hardcore players that are freaking out to a bit about some of the decisions we’ve made so far…

Morten
Say one, for instance.

Chris
Example: Unlimited selection. I mean, amongst our own *team* it took us literary a year or something to sell the team on “lets just try it, why set it at 12?” and another thing, Multiple Building Selection. So now you can have three barracks selected and just hit (M)arine [rapidly hits finger at table] and then just go away, where as in the old one you had to specifically select each one. So the hardcore gamers think that: “now the AVERAGE gamer can be as good as me” so we’re not really too worried about being to hardcore, we are still experimenting. We are not really to worried, because there are a lot of elements that we want to approach. Micro will have to be there so that a pro gamer can do what an average gamer can’t. We are adding some of these UI features that will help people that never could bridge the gap, but I still think that there will be things that sets a pro gamer apart from an average player.

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