Interview with StarCraft 2 cinematic creative director

I'm not big into modding or anything, but you have to give props to companies like Blizzard who openly offer the tools to the people who want to do so. That is pretty damn cool.

I can picture it now....Starcraft 2 + Star Wars mods = t3h awesome.

I don't know..never been huge on modding, last game I did that with seriously was Morrowind. But I can definitely see some amazing things coming from this.

And definitely kudos to Blizzard for making this available.

the marine has "suck it down" with an arrow pointed down to his crotch.

That is just... Who the hell spends time writing on the front of his chest plate like that? heh. Can he ever take the chest plate off? is it pre-programed to have that statement painted on it?

The modding tools were awesome for starcraft. I cannot wait till someone makes turrett defense for this and my personal favorite, ELEMENTS! blizzard mod tools ftw!

Well, it's not exactly NEWS that they're including the tools. I expect it's much the same as Warcraft III, where the scenes are just created in the map editor.

Still, it's always excellent to have confirmation of things.

And I've never been big into custom content -- for anything except Blizzard games. I have a whole CD full of custom single-player missions and campaigns for the original StarCraft. I even did a tiny bit of work on a long-defunct StarCraft mod. (It was one of about 4 Star Wars mods in development at the time.) I was heavily into War3 scenario-building, too, right up until WoW came out, and now I have a small collection of half-finished interface addons that I made, as well as a more complete editor program for addon-related use.

In contrast, I've never attempted to create ANYTHING for another game. I've fussed with the editors, but really just because I wanted to see how they worked. I don't know why my custom content tastes are focused like that, as it isn't like no other company in the world makes awesome games, but that's the way it is. Maybe it's the combination of awesomeness and of easy-to-use and powerful tools. Emphasis on the easy-to-use part -- most of the editors I've seen for other things...well, without question, there's no class of software that I've encountered that's so intimidating. AutoCAD, Photoshop, and 3DSMax all look easy compared to your average game editing tool. Maybe I'm wrong, though -- it's probably largely a matter of perspective.

I always loved playing some of the RPG style maps in Starcraft, and with that kind of fanbase already in position its going to be a glorious future.

Okay, let me state my problem with "too much" user modification capability:

I was big into custom StarCraft maps back in the day. There were some really intelligent ones created. That all changed when more editing tools became available...

Next thing you know, wannabe map gurus were creating all kinds of crap that looked bad and played worse, because they were trying to use tools that they either didn't understand how to use, or didn't want to take the time to get it right.

Things were good when the editing tools were simple enough that it was hard for the common man to screw it up. I miss that time.

My suggestion would be this: two editors. A simple editor and an advanced editor. Have a channel on battle.net dedicated to each, so if I only want to play maps made with simple tools, I can ignore all of the potentially screwed up maps made by wannabe professionals.

Anyway, just my opinion.