Shack: During this process, how do you balance the concerns of pro gamers and casual gamers?

Dustin Browder: It's really hard, because the casual gamer doesn't post. His voice is quiet. So we have to try to hear him. We have to try to listen to what he might be saying if he were here. And so that's what makes it really challenging. And that's what's so hard for the pro gamers too, because they don't hear or believe in that voice 100%, but that's okay.

So we definitely sort of have to keep a lookout for them as we're going forward. I've definitely seen some suggestions from the community where the casual gamer would just go out of his mind if he had to play that way. But I understand what the pro guy is going for. Like, your implementation is horrible, but your idea, your core urge, is 100% right. How can I give you what you want without hurting this other guy? And that's the constant tight-rope we walk.

Shack: Are you playtesting the game with pro and casual gamers simultaneously?

Dustin Browder: Sometimes. We do a lot more casual testing for the campaign, and we do that simultaneously. So we'll have guys on strike teams that have never played an RTS before, and guys on strike teams that have played way too many RTS games.

For the multiplayer, what we tend to do is focus on making it great for the hardcore, and then finding ways outside of the game for the casual guy to learn and get his feet wet. Just like level 80 raiding is not designed for the casual, but the 1-79 kind of is. We don't have the advantage of that tiering, so we have to find other ways to get that done.

Whether we'll succeed or not is open for debate, but we have casual leagues, our challenge mode. Better matchmaking, where we find ways to keep out the guys who are re-rolling. We've got a casual league that lets you play at normal difficulty on anti-rush maps. We've got plans for a version of the game where you've got challenges that you can play through that teach you a key component of multiplayer strategy. Each one of these 5-10 minute missions says, "Here's how you use hot keys. By the way, we've turned off the buttons. You're going to have to use hot keys to do this," and we'll score you.

And you really can't lose, but we'll just score you better and better, and then at a certain point it'll say, "You know what, that's good enough, you've learned basic hotkeys-- good for you. Now go use them." Or, "Hey, you know what, you need to learn to resource. You need to make these five things in the next ten minutes. Unless you're resourcing at full capacity, this is never going to work. If you're floating 3000 minerals and not spending it, you're going to lose this mission, so practice. Once you've got this challenge down, you'll be ready for some serious economy building in the game." Or, "Here's how you use some of the counters. Or here's how you do some basic micro."

So even if you can't always master it, it sort of opens your mind to the bigger world. You go, "Oh, that's what micro means, I get it." And we hope it'll open them up to a bigger, wider game experience. If you don't know how to hold a baseball bat you can hardly play baseball, but if you know the basics of how to hold and swing at pitches, you can start having fun right away. You'll just get better as you go.

Shack: Can we talk about Battle.net?

Dustin Browder: I don't know. Let's try. Let's see where they stop us, right? [laughs]

I can't tell you a whole lot because in reality, anything I say might be a lie. We're still working on it, and it's kind of up in the air. I kind of wish it wasn't, but it kind of is. What you saw today is not where we're going. It's a version that we have that has a lot of problems that we don't like. It was never meant to be the final version, but we're getting further and further away from that being close to the final version. We're trying to do more and more stuff.

We're hoping to have support for casual leagues, support for professional leagues, hardcore leagues. Hoping to do a lot more with friends, more with replay sharing. A lot of it you can probably guess, but what makes ship, what doesn't, what comes in later patches--what we decide to do with it exactly does depend. And I've got a design meeting today, and it's about what's going on with Battle.net.

Shack: So it's all up in the air then.

Dustin Browder: There's just a lot more work to do. I could probably show you a full flow of Battle.net today, but I guarantee tomorrow it would be a little different. So work is going on on that, but at the same time the design is "wheeeeeeeee!" And where it's at in the schedule is also sort of free-form right now.

Shack: In terms of the singleplayer campaign, and the decision to include one per game--the response, I think, has been mixed. Some people, myself included, can see how the content could ultimately justify the split, while others are still skeptical.

Dustin Browder: Yeah, no I know. And maybe they just won't like it and that's the way it is. You know, previously you were going to get a game and two expansions. Now you're going to get a game, and you're going to get two expansions. The only difference is that instead of having three campaigns in the game and in each of the expansions, there will be one campaign in each of these expansions. And that's the only difference.

New multiplayer units, improvements to performance, changes to Battle.net, improvements in our tournament system or whatever--all that stuff will come with these expansions just as it would have previously. So we just view it as, look, we're just making two Brood Wars now, except instead of having a bunch of ten-mission campaigns which are too fast, and don't let you experience the full story, we're taking all of that work and putting it into a single story per game.

So I don't think there was any intention to milk anybody of any additional money. This was always going to happen, it's just where the content is placed is now different.

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