Specter of Starcraft: Ghost Lingers at Blizzard

During a recent MMOG conference, one of Blizzard's lead designers made some revealing remarks about the process behind the abandonment of Starcraft: Ghost.

In response to the question, "When do you pull the plug on a project?" Pardo replied concisely, "Hopefully before you announce it."

He then elaborated using the planned title as an example.

"We're just willing to cancel the products that fail," he said.

"That's important to our brand. We're willing to bite the bullet and write off those expenses. Sometimes six months into development, the idea doesn't flow.

"Our most recent one was Starcraft Ghost. With that game we were very stubborn. I still believe in that game and the characters but we were not able to execute at the level we wanted to...Rather than work on that we had to focus on our other games. We're hoping one day to return to it."

While there is no evidence that the company is working on the game at the moment, Pardo's comments indicate that the project's abandonment may not be final.

The developer also said that Blizzard's success rate was no higher than that of other developers. Rather, he continued, the company simply buried its failed attempts before they become public knowledge.

Source: Next-gen.biz.