Clarity and Graphics - why Less is More when things get Hardcore

Starcraft is old, and was conceived in the ancient days when 56k-dial up modems were a luxury and 3D-graphics were little more than a myth. Hence, it was built by Blizzard Entertainment in a way that now might appear to the untrained eye as very low-tech if not even primitive and ugly. That may be true in a way, but it’s not a weakness – it’s an essential strength.

In any professional sport, what you want is clearity so that players and spectators alike can see what is going on. That enable athletes to excel at what they do best and the audience to easily follow the action. These are the precise reasons why the soccer field is green with nothing but white stripes on it, and why the players wear easily recognisable colours.

Immediate understanding, once you’ve learnt the basic rules and dynamics, is what make any game or sport enjoyable – and that is the area where Starcraft with its no-nonsense grahics is more powerful as an electronic sport than any other comparable title.

Allow me to explain this further with two examples. Limiting ourselves to the genre of real-time strategy for the moment, it is appropriate to compare Starcraft with two of its more modern and quite different competitiors. These are Warcraft III, also a game made by Blizzard Entertainment and a title I have myself played for countless of hours, and Relic Entertainment’s Company of Heroes – a World War II-themed game that is my own personal favourite among recent strategy titles.

Whilst both of these games are highly enjoyable and immensely difficult to master, they are both far less suitable as competive sports than Starcraft – largely due to how how beautiful they are. A popular but, in my view, often unfounded idea is that a game should make full use of modern computers in order to be considered good. I’m not disputing that stunning 3D-graphics are anything but awesome, but I do argue that sometimes less is more, and this is especially true when it comes to games that are to be played professionally.

With these screenshots I aim to prove my point:

These images all show heated battles when the action is at its peak in each of the games. The amount of clearity, however, varies greatly.

In this shot from Warcraft III, we see two armies clash towards the later part of the match when both players have a wide range of units and abilities (so-called ”spells”) to use against each other, At this moment, it is absolutely necessary to be able to easily distinguish between different units in order to control your army properly and take the win, but the visibiltiy is severely hampered by the glossy graphics.

Rather, it more looks like a water painting on acid (to quote Nick ”Tasteless” Plott), albeit a very nice looking one. Warcraft III is a very good game, but in terms of professional depth it is limited by this lack of clearity, and it becomes a case of style over substance when compared to Starcraft.

On the other side of the table, we have the excellent World War II-strategy feast that is Company of Heroes. This game is a good example of more modern movements within the strategy game-genre, where there is much less focus on building bases and gathering resources (which is the classic formula, and what Starcraft is all about), and instead it is centered around tactical battles.

This game is a lot of fun, and has a very realistic look. Indeed, it’s like a very satisfying re-make of Your favourite Discovery Channel-show; rich in realism, amazingly beautiful explosions and an overload of tanks. It’s quite a movie-like experience, playing Company of Heroes, with a slow build-up of the action using infantry in the beginning and eventually leading to great clashes between heavy tanks and aerial bombardments.

Why this also make the games far less balanced than Starcraft is the topic of another article in this series, but still, it sounds pretty cool, right? It is, but it does little for generating high level competitive play in the manner of a proper sport. Why, You might wonder?

Because the game, in its attempt to give us as wide a Band of Brothers-like feeling as possible, becomes to intricate and over-complicated. There are six different factions to choose from, all with unique units that are all very realistic and highly detailed down to every single pixel. Not only does this create a fairly sluggish game (it is not uncommon for a CoH-match to last for over an hour), but the complexity makes the action very difficult to follow as a spectator, if not also as a player.

Again, playing Company of Heroes is like making Your own World War II-movie, only with less dialogue and more Stukas. Nothing wrong with that, it’s a lot of fun, but if You believe as I do that a sport with professional depth should be easy to understand but difficult to master, than this title and others of its kind are not well suited for eSports.

The idea that the old school-magic of Starcraft is what makes it not only everlasting but also the most fiercely competitive electronic sport to this day is a concept that forms the foundation of every article in this series, not only when it comes to the issue of visual clarity and easily followed action. This post has aimed to adress one of the main objections that many critics of Starcraft have, namely that the outdated 2D-graphics make the game inferior to modern titles and harsh towards the newcomer.

I argue that the opposite is true – that the stripped-down, rugged and everything-but-glossy look of Starcraft: Brood War is what make it easy for anyone to understand and appreciate the game. Less beats more when things get hardcore.

More recently released games, regardless of genre, aim to dazzle players with orgasmic graphics that require a new computer every six months. Some of them are worth it, but more often than not this comes in the way of actually creating a game with deep and genuine potential for skillfulness. Starcraft, on the other hand, is all about skill – fast, fierce and uncompromising skill, which is enabled by absolute clearity of vision.

That’s the way I see it, what do You think? Leave Your comments below, and continue reading about why this game is the sport of champions:

6 Reasons Why Starcraft is the Manliest game on Earth

1) Balance - the key to making an ever-challenging game

2) Clarity through graphics - why less is more when things get hardcore

3) Professional Korean Starcraft

4) ‘Foreign’, i.e. semi-pro/skilled-amateur Starcraft

5) Enjoy Starcraft as a spectator - where and how

6) The Rebirth of online gaming - Starcraft 2

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Tagged as: esports, starcraft