Seriously fucking incredible. If you're into single player anything, you definitely want to pick this up. So much fun shit to do.
I played it for a ~dozen hours during the beta.
I really respect Blizzard for their amazing ability to make a addictive game and market it really well.
It's amazing to me that after a decade of Starcraft 1 (and people still fucking play that on TV in Korea), they can deliver us the EXACT SAME GAME with 12 new units, and for some reason it's like 100x as fun and addicting. Literally all they did was clean out the shitty old Battle.net system and replace it with a Halo-esque matchmaker, but that made all the difference.
SC1 was not the greatest RTS game in history, but I think it was the most successful (I've never heard of someone getting paid to throw a match of any-other-PC-game)
World of Warcraft is not the greatest MMO out there, but I think it has the best brand recognition and largest playerbase (of American MMOs... I wasted 6 years of my life in Sony games, and 4 mos. in WoW)
SC2 is the same damn game I grew up playing but a) it's been marketed really well so far [just saw it on youtube.com main banner] and b) I cannot stop playing it. I think it has a chance at parring up to SC1's longevity, e.g a decade or until SC3.
I really, really, really like this business model. IMO, it's similar to what Xynga does -- building simple but engaging games, and getting your clients hooked on the dopamine rush of hearing a .wav of Susan from accounting saying "Level up!" into a microphone. And I'm proud to give Blizzard my money, because it's a damn fun game.
You should check this outIt touches on alot of points you mentioned. I am also a diehard gamer and I found this article very interesting.
5 Creepy Ways Video Games Are Trying to Get You Addicted | Cracked.com
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Edit: I just had a client bring in a machine for a video card upgrade so that he could play the copy of SCII he just installed... I think his machine won't be ready until tomorrow.
IMO, it's similar to what Xynga does -- building simple but engaging games, and getting your clients hooked on the dopamine rush of hearing a .wav of Susan from accounting saying "Level up!" into a microphone. And I'm proud to give Blizzard my money, because it's a damn fun game.
I've been following this guy since he wrote his first thesis -- the DAEDALUS PROJECT: MMORPG Research, Cyberculture, MMORPG Psychology
If you're at all interested in MMOs and the psychology around them, start here.