StarCraft (gotta love that one word and double capitalized title). This is a cool game. Even the metallic lettering of the title is cool. The music is good. The voice lines are funny. If not entirely dignified, StarCraft feels mature where other games in the 90s were often irreverent or puerile.

The human campaign follows the rise of a terrorist faction in the midst of a galactic race (species) war. The Zerg campaign follows the quest to bring their species to biologic perfection, where the Protoss campaign is somewhat more muddled, and has maybe aged the worst. The Protoss are sort of Roman? Having an honor culture that is a bureaucratic nightmare for those just trying to save the galaxy. But their units are maybe the coolest so there’s that.

The campaign is long and it really shows its age. It has almost no tutorials and the beginning of almost every mission is the same: a 15 minute period where you plod along and get your economy up to a point where you can actually build an army. The pathing of the units is also atrocious: marines can fight but pray that they never encounter an elevated path/ramp because that is the ultimate counter.

A lot of our StarCraft opinions are informed by and likely inferior to observations made by game designer David Sirlin. Kind of essential listening is his podcast on both StarCraft and Starcraft 2 as we reference it a lot (links below)

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Timestamps:

• 0:00 - Intro


• 4:25 - What is an RTS


• 6:40 - MOBAs are the new RTS


• 14:57 - New to the RTS genre


• 16:38 - The campaign is a challenge (to learn)


• 32:40 - Overcooked and replayability


• 35:25 - VIBE


• 48:00 - Strategy beyond rock paper scissors


• 54:00 - Balance and meta


• 1:04:25 - StarCraft 2


• 1:16:40 - Skill ceilings, do they really exist


• 1:25:00 - Ratings


• 1:30:41 - Next game, IMMORTALITY.

Show Notes:

• IMMORTALITY: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1350200/IMMORTALITY/


• Sirlin’s StarCraft criticism: https://www.sirlin.net/posts/sirlin-on-game-design-ep-13-starcraft-2


• Sirlin “playing to win”: https://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win