Dustin-Browder
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Blizzard: Sexy Heroes of the Storm characters 'not sending a message'
Blizzard is about fun and fantasy, not about preaching diversity, the studio said. Polygon pulled quotes from Heroes of the Storm Game Director Dustin Browder in which he defended the sexualization of the MOBA's female characters by claiming that, "We're not sending a message. Nobody should look to our game for that." He also claimed that he didn't "get the applications" of specifically hiring female developers for the title. Browder later apologized for those remarks. But this month, Blizzard Executive Producer Rob Pardo acknowledged that the studio still struggles in its portrayal of women, explaining that "most of [Blizzard's] developers are guys who grew up reading comics books." "We're not trying to bring in serious stuff, or socially relevant stuff, or actively trying to preach for diversity, or do things like that," Pardo said.
The complexity of Heroes of the Storm
Ten years ago, players told Blizzard that WoW was too simple compared to past MMOs like Ultima Online, EverQuest, and Asheron's Call. More recently, many (including me at one point) said the same about Hearthstone -- that too much complexity had been removed from the genre compared to games like Magic: The Gathering. Today, Polygon posted an interview with Heroes of the Storm game director Dustin Browder. His message: HOTS isn't "DOTA for babies." "If you come looking for complexity in exactly the same places," Browder said, "you will be disappointed. If you come looking for complexity wherever it may be, I think you're going to be surprised and have a great time." Blizzard has stripped away many MOBA hallmarks, such as the item store. Browder says that other features make up for this loss of complexity. Talent selection is crucial. Map-specific objectives also play a huge role in determining the course of the battle and require careful strategy to accomplish. In a video included with the story, Polygon's "MOBA expert" Emily Gera had some further comments on the game: "The masses don't want to play big, scary MOBA games... Blizzard is trying to create a game that has less of a barrier to entry and bypass the classic issue of MOBA games -- that MOBA games are full of jerks... There's a lot of infighting. In HOTS, everyone on the team is in it together." What do you think? Is HOTS dumbing down the genre too much, or are these the changes the genre needs?
Heroes of the Storm dev Q&A
The latest Heroes of the Storm dev Q&A is here, and you can watch it above when it goes live at 11am Pacific. This week, as the Tech Alpha runs on, the developers are talking about the talent system. Joining Kevin Johnson this time, we will have Dustin Browder, Game Director, Richard Khoo, Senior Game Designer, and Matt Cooper, Game Designer. As the talent system is a key part of the game that separates it from the Item Shop methodology of other MOBAs, it will be interesting to see the insights and design challenges that the developers have faced. You can send in your questions to the developers on Twitter at @BlizzHeroes by using the hashtag #HeroesQA. Following the dev Q&A, there'll be a live match, shoutcasted by Dustin Browder and Kevin Knocke.
Here's 17 minutes of Heroes of the Storm gameplay
You know you want to see Blizzard's new Heroes of the Storm MOBA in action. Right? Right! Game director Dustin Browder has you covered with a new 17-minute video captured on the Dragon Shire map. Heroes of the Storm is currently in closed alpha testing, though plenty of screens and playable character info have been sighted in the wild. Click past the cut to have a look at the gameplay vid!
Heroes of the Storm Developer Q&A highlights
Yesterday, Senior Community Development Manager Kevin Johnson sat down with Game Director Dustin Browder and Senior 3D artist Phil Gonzales to answer the community's questions on Blizzard's upcoming Hero Brawler. They covered several key topics, and provided some nuggets of new information. If you'd like to watch the interview in full, you can check out the video on WoW Insider. But let's go through and summarize the key points they covered. This isn't in the order it happened in the video, because it seemed more logical to categorize it by topic. Overall Design and Philosophy It is going to be free-to-play! Beta is not ready yet, they're working to get it out as soon as they can. There isn't an exact date yet. Internal testing is ongoing. One of the biggest defining qualities for Heroes is the importance of the different maps. This is something that separates it from other MOBAs, you'll want to take different heroes and different strategies and so on. Also, there's heroes with extensive lore behind them, that's a hugely important element, and they aren't afraid to challenge any aspect of the design to make it fun.
Heroes of the Storm game director apologizes for insensitive remarks regarding sexualized character designs
It's not often that you can feel uncomfortable pauses via text, but a recent interview about Heroes of the Storm managed exactly that. When asked about the character design of the upcoming game's female characters, game director Dustin Browder responded with: "We're not running for President. We're not sending a message. No one should look to our game for that." This went over about as well as you would expect, especially in the wake of World of Warcraft's next expansion's story getting billed as a "boy's trip" (and being portrayed as such in promotional materials). Browder has issued an apology for his statement, claiming that the topic is a serious one and that Blizzard is sensitive about how it portrays its characters. No part of the apology actually addresses the issue in any more detail, although Browder does insist that the team wants everyone to have a character to identify with and enjoy. Whether or not this will result in more discussion of this serious topic or any changes to character designs remains to be seen.
Heroes of the Storm director apologizes for response to interview
Dustin Browder is the game director for Blizzard's upcoming MOBA, Heroes of the Storm. The game features heroes, heroines and plenty more from Blizzard franchises, and it's Browder's job to oversee and, as his title might suggest, direct its development. When Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviewed Browder and specifically addressed the artistic direction of many female MOBA characters, Browder gave a response he is now apologizing for on the Heroes of the Storm website. "I responded poorly to a statement the interviewer made about over-sexualized character designs in games, and I want to apologize for that," Browder wrote. "This is a serious topic and I don't want anyone to think that I, or anyone else at Blizzard, is insensitive about how we portray our characters." Browder went on to state that he wants every player to find a character they can identify with, and thanked RPS for their feedback. The topic of sexualization in video games has been particularly prevalent as games continue to gain mainstream attention. Sometimes it results in a distressing moment with a mermaid. Sometimes it results in an apology.
Mission to evolve StarCraft 2 with 'Heart of the Swarm'
It was nearly five years ago now that we heard Starcraft 2 wouldn't be one game, but three: The long awaited sequel would become a trilogy, cemented into a three-year release schedule, with each iteration following a new race in the series. Though Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty arrived to critical and commercial acclaim in the summer of 2010, Blizzard is only now making its trilogy concept a reality. Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm is almost done, and set to be released this March.Blizzard showed off the first three missions of Heart of the Swarm this past week (and the studio has been running multiplayer beta additions and features for quite some time), and from our experience it's becoming clear the second release in this trilogy isn't a simple expansion pack. With the Zerg-focused Heart of the Swarm, the Irvine-based company has crafted something new within the renowned Starcraft tradition; a game intensely focused on the Zerg, their units and abilities, and of course the story of their Queen, Kerrigan.%Gallery-176756%
BlizzCon 2010: Starcraft 2: Secrets of the Masters panel
Yesterday afternoon at BlizzCon, Blizzard's own Starcraft 2 masters Dustin Browder, Greg Canessa, David Kim and Matt Cooper gathered to host the Secrets of the Masters panel. Seasoned Starcraft veterans won't glean much from the information they had to offer, but that's okay -- Dustin Browder himself made it clear that this panel was just for the noobs. That being said, the panel kicked off with Greg Canessa explaining how the Battle.net leagues and ladders system really worked behind the scenes, which is information even veterans wanted laid out nice and clear. He also went on to explain a few new features coming to Battle.net aimed specifically at the most hardcore of the hardcore Starcraft 2 players.
StarCraft 2's designer stands by tradition, promises updates 'soon'
To hear Starcraft 2 designer Dustin Browder tell it, creating games at Blizzard takes years of fighting and yelling rather than coding or creating art -- every little decision is a "a three-week or longer holy war." Browder says that the controversial decision to release the RTS as three titles was made to get the game out faster -- after all that arguing, Blizzard figured that it needed to release something, and if that had been the whole game, we'd have been waiting even longer. As it was, he says, "we wanted to get a product into consumers' hands sometime before the end of the decade. Even that we didn't quite make, I guess, but it was still sooner!" Browder answers fans' concerns about how closely the second game resembles the first by suggesting that adapting RTS competitors' innovations wouldn't have made the game more successful. "I haven't really seen another gameplay experience that's attracted millions of players with hundreds of thousands playing online," he says. "I have not seen someone else be successful by removing economy. I have not seen other RTSes be successful by removing micro." And finally, he says to look for future updates coming to the game, both in the form of patches to Battle.net, and in the other versions. There's no timeline set yet for the paid user maps program, but Blizzard is working on more art for modders, and updates "for our fans to get more value out of Battle.net." As for what updates will be in the second retail title, Heart of the Swarm, Browder seems to hint that Blizzard just hasn't decided yet. They must still be throwing things and yelling down in Irvine.
Blizzard's Dustin Browder talks StarCraft 2
Dustin Browder isn't just the lead designer on Blizzard's StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty -- he's also in the game! Well, sort of. According to a Blizzard spokesperson, "There are a few examples of Blizzard employees making it into the game. The portrait of the Vulture pilot was based on the likeness of Jason Huck, a level designer. Brian Sousa, a senior 3D artist was the inspiration for the regular Goliath pilot. A running joke amongst the team is that Brian and Dustin look similar enough to be brothers – so the extension of that joke was to make the mercenary goliath pilot (Spartan Company) look like Dustin." So there you have it. If you want your face in a multimillion dollar game, just get a job working on it. Easy enough, right? We talked to Dustin about StarCraft 2 last year, and this time he gives us more details about the development of this eagerly awaited title, and not just his vanity unit portrait. He discusses multiplayer plans, balancing, Blizzard's hardcore fans, and more, just beyond the break.%Gallery-91324%
Blizzard hasn't looked at the iPad for StarCraft
Last week, the folks from Ars Technica got a chance to stop by Blizzard headquarters in Irvine, CA. They kindly asked a question that many of us RTS gamers have been wondering about ever since the iPad was released: Is there any chance that we'll be getting StarCraft to play on the iPad? Sure, there are lots of games we'd like to play on Apple's revolutionary device. Real-time strategy seems a perfect fit for a touch interface, though, and when you talk about RTS, you're talking about StarCraft. Either a port of the old game, or maybe even a few teaser levels for the new version would be awesome to see in the App Store. Unfortunately, it's not in the cards quite yet. StarCraft II's lead designer, Dustin Browder says it's not beyond the realm of possibility at some point, but the team is "certainly not working on it now." Like all of us, they're intrigued by the idea of the iPad, but they aren't quite convinced that it's ideal for their gameplay. "It's possible that's a control scheme that would work for us," Browder says. "It's possible that it isn't... we're not going to put it out there just to make a couple bucks." That's a shame, because I'd definitely pay a couple of bucks for it. Still, the iPad is new, and Blizzard hasn't sworn off the device. Browder says that they, polishers and perfectionists that they are, would rather focus on matching experiences to devices rather than the other way around. That's fine, then. Command & Conquer isn't really what we expected from a marquis title. Hopefully someone else will come along and provide a premiere RTS experience on Apple's tablet.
Interview: Dustin Browder talks StarCraft 2 development and delays
Dustin Browder is the man in the hot seat as Blizzard's lead designer for StarCraft 2. Ultimately, he's the one you can heap the blame (or the praise) upon when the final product finally ships. At the time of this interview, we didn't officially know SC2 would be delayed, but given the sheer amount of things they'd shown us during our visit, it became clear that there was no way StarCraft 2 would make 2009. Still, Browder talks about the reasons for the delay, and ultimately gamers are going to be happy that they chose to make the game better, rather than rush it out for the holiday shopping frenzy. Read on for the full interview with him where we talk delays, easter eggs, the new matchmaking system, the single player experience, and hidden items in the game, including a fully playable Lost Viking arcade game with a data editor that will let you make your own scrolling shooters.%Gallery-69481%
BlizzCast episode 6 available for download
The 6th episode of BlizzCast was posted today, and though it contains very little WoW-specific information, the podcast still contains a ton of information general Blizzard fans would like to hear. When listening to it, keep in mind that it wasn't recorded in the last few days or anything like that, it's a few weeks old at least. They mention Wrath of the Lich King still being in beta testing and Sylvanas' custom model hadn't yet been implemented, for example. Their guests this time around are Lead Tools Programmer Monte Krol, Senior Art Director Samwise Didier, Lead Game Designer Dustin Browder, and senior artist for Diablo III Anthony Rivero. That lineup of guests really offers up a cool look at the early design and development of Blizzard games, and the guests actually offer a little insight into just how you can start working for Blizzard yourselves. They also have another installment of their Q&A portion with various developers.Starcraft and Diablo fans will find the gameplay information in this BlizzCast more interesting than people who are exclusively WoW players. As always, BlizzCast is available for download through the official website (EU has it as well), iTunes, or you can read the transcript right on their website.
