Dustin Browder Talks eSports and HotS at GDC 2011

Dustin Browder recently gave a talk on StarCraft 2's development at GDC 2011. A small update was given at what the future might hold for the release of Heart of the Swarm.

The lead designer of StarCraft 2, Dustin Browder, admitted that creating StarCraft 2 as an e-sport was a daunting task. Akin to reinventing the sport of Basketball and making it into Basketball 2, he admitted that it was going to be insanely hard.

One interesting note that most StarCraft gamers will want to know is that the Reaper is currently not where Blizzard wants it and will be addressed in Heart of the Swarm. To quote Browder specifically: "The Reaper not in a happy place. It was a bit of a mis-step for us. The players showed us what it was capable of and we nerfed it into obscurity. This will be addressed in Heart of the Swarm."

This will most likely resonate with the hard-core gamers the most as a Reaper buff or change could be pivotal to multiple match ups, currently they are quite under-used for very good reasons.

Browder also talked about the difficulties of making StarCraft 2 into an e-sport not just for the design team, but for other teams such as the artists as well. Making sure that battles and units were clear and easy to distinguish was a challenge for artists. He also pointed out that the multiplayer had dealt a lot of damage to them and they had been "completely screwed around for five or six years."

Links
PCGamer.com - Source
Gamasutra.com - Source