The curse of StarCraft: Ghost rises again.
Blizzard has cancelled a spinoff first person shooter based on the StarCraft franchise. According to some familiar with the studio, the game had been in development for the past 2 years. And according to what Blizzard told their studio staff, the game was canned to focus more on their Diablo and Overwatch franchises.
The game, codenamed Ares, was meant to be similar to a Battlefield game, only set in the StarCraft universe. There was a functional prototype which had the player control a Terran marine, fighting against the Zerg. There were also plans for playable Zerg units as well. While development on the project was slow, those that saw it though well of it, and were surprised to find it canceled.
According to those same sources, none of the team members lost their jobs over the cancellation. Rather, Blizzard supposedly axed the game so that those same staff members could be moved to the development of Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. Notably, Overwatch 2, or whatever they wind up actually calling it, will have a sizeable PvE element, in the vein of Left 4 Dead and the like.
When asked by Kotaku about the cancellation, Blizzard sent them the following statement:
We don’t generally comment on unannounced projects but we will say the following:
We always have people working on different ideas behind the scenes – including on multiple projects right now – but the reason we tend not to discuss them publicly is because anything can happen over the course of development. As has been the case at Blizzard numerous times in the past, there is always the possibility that we’ll make the decision to not move forward on a given project. Announcing something before we feel it’s ready stands the risk of creating a lot of frustration and disappointment, both for our players and us, not to mention distraction and added pressure for our development teams.
We pour our hearts and souls into this work, and as players ourselves, we know how exciting it can be to see and know with certainty that a new project is coming. Knowing that changes or disappointments can happen doesn’t make it any less painful when we have to shelve a project or when an announcement doesn’t go as planned. We always make decisions about these things, regardless of the ultimate outcome or how things might be interpreted, based on our values, what we believe makes sense for Blizzard, and what we hope our players will enjoy the most. The work that goes into these projects – whether they ship or not – is extraordinarily valuable. It often leads to great things and helps foster a culture of experimentation here.
With all that said, we’re very much looking forward to revealing other things we’re working on when the time is right.
This is far from the first time a spinoff of one of Blizzard’s properties got canned. Aside from the much-beloved-around-here Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans, the StarCraft spinoff StarCraft: Ghost, a third person shooter/stealth game centered around Nova, was famously killed off in the mid-2000’s. Ah, well, here’s to what could’ve been, eh?
Source: Kotaku
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