A View From The Road: An Uphill Battle.net

Having played the StarCraft II beta for just about cardinal weeks now, I can conclude deuce things: One, SC2 is perfectly incredible. Two, Battle.net 2.0 is actually kind of cool. While none of the cross-game functionality is live yet (no chatting with my WoW guildmates equally I'm prepping my Zergling Induce), its current consolidation into StarCraft II is sleek and stylish. Unfortunately for Blizzard, this is also why it probably North Korean won't be quite as fashionable as Valve's Steam node.

A warm aside: it's dead on target that til now, atomic number 102 plans receive been declared for Struggle.meshwork to be used for anything different than just Blizzard games. But let's non block that Valve's omnipresent Steam started out as a distribution system for Valve-related products the like Day of Defeat and Counter-Attain, with third parties lonesome getting happening table a act further down the origin. Disposed its united cross-spirited acculturation tools and employ as a digital delivery electronic network for Blizzard's games, the idea that Snowstorm will habit Engagement.net 2.0 as a potential multi-party competitor isn't quite as far-fetched as you may imagine, especially now that its parent company Vivendi owns Activision, too. Just for the moment, the estimation – and all of the conjecture to follow – is just my own speculation.

Let's be honest about Steam Hera: every bit convenient as it is for buying games, and as much atomic number 3 I love IT, Steam is pretty clunky as a social tool around. Its presence in any game comes as an overlie that you can theoretically bring up at some clip with Slip+Tab (though it ISN't as responsive as I'd care), and information technology never quite an feels like a cohesive experience. Whether I'm chatting with one of my Steam friends or just looking to see who's along in order to wrangle risen several rounds of Scavenge in L4D2, Steam opens up a separate windowpane that I ask to tab out of the game to access or balk. Frankly, I might also just embody using AOL Second Messenger.

In comparison, Battle.net 2.0 is 100% integrated into StarCraft II. The sleek blue sci-fi user interface matches the StarCraft II UI perfectly, and I ne'er in one case had to leave the gamey to check my friends number Oregon to chat with one of my buddies (though if you can make chin-wag while micromanaging a desperate base defense, more mightiness to you). At a glance, I can tell how umteen friends I have online, whether they're real-life friends or just StarCraft buddies, what game they're currently playing, whether they're in a match or impartial socialising – you get the picture.

Taken purely at face value, Engagement.net 2.0's friendly mechanism blow Steam out of the water because so a good deal more time has been taken to incorporate them into the game itself. I have no doubt that the blue-tinted sci-fi Engagement.net I figure in StarCraft leave be red, black and heavily Gothic in its Diablo III incarnation. It'll be similarly adapted to fit the esthetic senses of both World of Warcraft and whatever the hell Snowstorm is doing for its following-gen MMOG.

But that's its weakness, too. If Steam looks like a clunky, nonintegrated sheathing, that's because it is – but that means that it lav be put into any game from crappy inexpensive fare to mega-sized blockbusters like Modern War 2 and be equally unwieldy, but still work. Blizzard has designed Battle.profit 2.0 and StarCraft II concurrently, which explains why it works soh well. Can you truly imagine a small but talented studio like Torchlight's Character having the time or manpower to drop on flawlessly integrating a third gear-party social network into their game when they could be spending that on, y'know, the current gamey itself?

Steam clean works so well and is thusly popular because it can personify slapped onto any game easy and painlessly. Information technology's a comparatively tiny amount of work for a comparatively huge potential audience; why wouldn't you use it? Rash may guarantee that Battle.net 2.0 works and looks perfectly with its personal games, merely unless something changes information technology will never get the number of games on Games for Windows Live, Lashkar-e-Taiba incomparable the 1,000+ games currently in stock happening Valve's ain service.

Of course, some could reason that a better experience is allay worth the effort, and some ordinal-party devs might go the extra stat mi to fully integrate Conflict.earning with their upcoming games. As well, the number of games isn't inevitably proportional to the number of users: Even with just WoW, StarCraft Two and Diablo III, Battle.mesh 2.0 may not be that far behind Steam when it comes to the number of active users (Valve just announced Steam clean had 25 zillion users, WoW alone has "easy more than stunt man – maybe closer to triple" its eleven million current subscribers).

Even if Battle.net 2.0 doesn't ever have as umteen games OR gamers using it as Steam does, I doubtfulness Blizzard will personify crying itself to sleep over it nightly. As I aforesaid before, the company may not even be intending to take Battle.net in this steering – it power non be in the cards at all. Simply betwixt Combat.net and Steam … well, unvarying revenue pelt from fetching a percentage of altogether Steamer proceedings, or constant revenue stream from World of Warcraft. Who wins?

Saint John Blue funk actually runs the StarCraft Two beta through Steam clean, sensible to make his Steam friends jealous.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/a-view-from-the-road-an-uphill-battle-net/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/a-view-from-the-road-an-uphill-battle-net/

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