The Starcraft 2 Debate

May 17, 2012

I’ve been having a long-running debate with two other hardcore gamer friends of mine about a comment that was made a couple years ago about Starcraft 2. The game had just come out and the three of us were chatting about it when they asked me what I thought of the end of the game.

I responded that I didn’t even finish the single player mode because I was too anxious to get to the “real” game, meaning playing online and with friends in multiplayer mode.

They were shocked by this, saying that the single player game was absolutely significant, and that tons of people bought the game just to play the single player mode, and that the online version absolutely wasn’t the “real” game.

I further explained that while lots of effort and time obviously went into the single player mode, the focus for most hardcore gamers anticipating SC2 was on multiplayer play, and that all the tournaments, sponsorships, YouTube videos, etc. are all focused on that aspect.

They still disagreed, saying I was absolutely wrong.

The debate was just brought up again tonight, and I just pointed out that the many tens of thousands still playing the original Starcraft today are playing it online, and the same goes for SC2. There is a thriving Starcraft community today despite there not having been a game released in years, and it’s based around multiplayer, not single player.

Again, the statement wasn’t that the single player mode was not “a” game, or that it wasn’t significant or hard to develop, or that people didn’t enjoy it. The point was that to most people who play Starcraft the “real” game is multiplayer mode. The other two still disagree, saying many hardcore gamers still bought the game just to play in single player mode and they put it down after completing it.

So, I’m using the Internet as a tie-breaker here; if you are familiar with the franchise please add your opinion via the poll below, and feel free to add comments as well after you vote.

Poll closed

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