Starcraft II - Interview with Lead Producer
IncGamers interviewed lead producer Chris Sigaty about Starcraft II during the announcement weekend.
IncGamers: RTS games were the games that made Blizzard into a major gaming company, but now it’s been a while. Warcraft III was 2003. What took Blizzard so long to get back?
Sigaty: [Amused] Well, there was a little something that came along called World of Warcraft. We made the decision to make Starcraft II right after the ship of the Frozen Throne. But we couldn’t start in true earnest because of the impact of World of Warcraft. It was so huge, and so foreign to us at the time. RTS and action RPG games (like Diablo) were our bread-and-butter.
We made the decision to do it, and there were always a few people working on elements of it, but we couldn’t collectively attack it, because our artists would be pulled off to help work on this or that [for World of Warcraft].
IncGamers: There was a big gaming website that stated – definitively – that this big announcement would, in fact, be a Starcraft MMO…
Sigaty: [Laughing out loud] Yeah, I read that.
IncGamers: So why, at the last minute, did you switch things up and go with Starcraft II instead?
Sigaty: [Still laughing] Well, here’s the deal. Last Monday, we decided that because they said that, we wanted to screw them over and go with Starcraft II.
Read the interview here