Dustin Browder - Page 5
Can we expect easter eggs and jokes in the finished game?
Oh yeah. We're going to hide some more, I'm sure, before we're done. It's definitely something we like to do is have little things on the ship. We've talked about lots of things we haven't implemented yet, and I don't know ever will be implemented. We've talked about if you hit a button or something on the Battlecruiser, setting the modifiers off by accident, and the whole ship goes to red alert and you can see a shot going off into the distance. Horner says something snotty about it, like, "Be careful where you put your drink, Jim." I don't know. We'll see what we get to and what we don't get to, and what we decide will be fun at the time.
I just wish we could see an actual transforming planetary center.
The Terra-Tron.
How long does it take to make something like that that's complete bullshit?
If it's complete bullshit, it's not that long. That doesn't even work in the game at all. That's totally hacked together.
Yeah? It looks pretty slick.
Yeah, but you can't control or do anything with it. You can only play the animation in that environment, doing that thing. If you've set up the ends perfectly, then it works. If you try to move anything around, it doesn't work at all. It's literally just the animation playing in the environment. That's pretty quick for some of the artists. That's a couple of hours for one of our artists to bang it together. The audio took a little bit longer, but it was all sort of ninja'd in. To make it work in game is a lot more work, so we'll see if that happens or not.
So is the StarCraft team working on Battle.Net, or is there a Battle.Net team?
It is Battle.Net. It's really going to be an experience. We're talking ... you're going to log in, and then you're going to play StarCraft, right? So it's not just a question of somewhere you push a button and a different app launches and there's Battle.Net. Like it's the integrated experience that we're working together on. But there's a whole team and they're working pretty hard on it.
Have you guys thought about, you know, linking that out to social media? Like say you hit a certain level on a single play or something and it sends something to your Twitter feed.
No, no, I haven't been part of that discussion if it has happened. We've definitely looked at those sites and their success at creating social networks which is core to the way we deal with Battle.Net or WoW. We've definitely looked to their success and said, "How do lessons learned from their success apply to our business?" But I don't think I've ever heard specifically about having a Facebook app that simply pops out. Although I've got some on my Facebook, actually, but they're not made by us.
That's why we were asking about like a Battle.Net client, because you kind of want something running on your machine to say, like, "Oh, my buddies are playing. I want to jump into their game."
Yeah, no. I agree. It's thin, and easy to run, and yeah, it keeps running all the time.
At BlizzCon last year we were told that Blizzard may be trying to find a way to monetize Battle.Net.
Jay ... Jay Wilson. We know who said it.
Like buying your own Battle.Net email domain or something like that. Is that still ... I mean, right now it sounds you guys just want to get it to work.
If you buy a box of StarCraft, it'll be free to play.
Have you read all the things people are saying about LAN in StarCraft 2? "We're going to hack it, so LAN will work on it."
Yeah, they may. And ultimately we can't win all those fights. I'm sure they'll do that and they'll do whatever they want to do. That's very different from us, you know, saying right on the box. The other thing, too, is there are actually a lot of problems with it, you know, in terms of technology. We build such an integrated experience, and we are in the process of building such an integrated experience, there's a lot of stuff simply doesn't work without Battle Net. And it's all very, you know, technical and bizarre, but like right now our score screens are handed down from Battle.Net. And we do this so that games like Defense of the Ancients can have their own custom score screen.
So our game has no concept of a score screen, only Battle.Net knows about the score screens. In regular Battle.Net you don't get a score screen. That's so strange. But it all does make sense if you're thinking about it supporting a mod community. So for us then to have LAN support a score screen would cause us to reduplicate all of that work all over again. And that's a bunch of work we'd kind of rather not do. So there's a bunch of things that would be a little bit more challenging if they decide to duplicate it. I think it might be a little bit more challenging than they imagine, because it was more challenging that we thought it should be. But you know, I'm sure they'll do it.
Well, I think that's about everything. We'd better leave so you guys can get back to work.
Cool, man. Well, thanks for coming in.
Thanks for inviting us.