benjerry

Nice listen. Some thoughts on why Starcraft II struggles in popularity relative to, for instance, Lords Management games or other similar games. You got close to what I think is the answer in your discussion when discussing how SC2 is not "rewarding" or fun when it is difficult, but I´d like to zero in on a more particular explanation. The answer I believe is not the skill ceiling or even skill floor per se. Starcraft II is certainly not harder in every way compared to, say, DOTA2 or LoL. For instance, DOTA-ish games rely far more on teamplay than SC2, there is a ridiculous amount of learning to do with regards to abilities, items and champions, and so on. I think that the answer to the question is captured in one word: Multitasking. Humans aren´t very good at multitasking and switching very rapidly between tasks. It´s not something that we´re evolved to do very well, and hence we have to do it "in software" to use a strained graphics card analogy. That in turn means that introducing a lot of multitasking into a game is great for raising the skill ceiling, but it´s also great for making the game feel strangely unrewarding and taxing when you are forced close to your skillcap (and ELO matchmaking ensures that this will happen on ladder). Lords Management games might be difficult in many ways, but their difficulty is more focused on domains where humans are pretty comfortable. This is I believe the primary reason for why SC2 lags relative to games less focused on taxing your multitasking skills. There are other reasons as well, such as the need to find and memorize pretty detailed build orders in order to be competitive even at fairly low levels of play, but I feel that´s pretty secondary. So, TLDR: Heavy reliance on multitasking is not that fun for most people. This also helps explain why the problems of Starcraft are not particular to SC2 - indeed, SC2 is the game that´s doing the best in terms of player base and viewership (by far) in the RTS genre. That´s why this is pretty bad news for SC2 and RTS in general - the issue is not easily fixed without changing the traditional RTS formula radically, and that´s pretty much what DOTA-likes did. PS. Props to Tom Chick for (kind of) pointing this out in his infamous SC2 review. I was way into SC2 at the time and I failed to grasp his point, so kudos.