What do you get when you put desRow, Naniwa, Destiny, TigerLily, and Winter, all in one house full of video games and cameras for four months? You get “Daed Game: The StarCraft 2 Reality Show” the latest and greatest of StarCraft 2 entertainment!
Why Should The Game Be The Good Part?
That’s right, Blizzard continues to expand on its cash cow of media content related to the community surrounding StarCraft, instead of focusing on StarCraft itself. "We suddenly realized that it doesn't matter if we make a good game,” said Chris Metzen, Senior Vice President of Story and Franchise Development, “We just have to make an okay game, and then focus on the tawdriness of some of the more prominent, yet mediocre, players. That’s where the real fun is!"
Aficionados will remember that there have been some flops in addition to the successes.since Blizzard decided to take StarCraft in this direction. “Well yeah,” Metzen responded when questioned on the likelihood for success of such an initiative, “not everything can be ‘Flash Flakes: The StarCraft 2 Breakfast,’ our flagship breakfast cereal. For every ‘HuK ChuK: The StarCraft 2 Emetic ’ you may end up with a “Grubby: The StarCraft 2 Friendly Centipede.’ I still don’t know how Grubbys weren’t a hit. They were adorable!” He continued, “I just want you guys to know that we’ve done our research on this one. We’ve seen what the fans respond to and we’ve prepared something delightful for them!”
Early previews of the footage are extremely compelling.
In standard Blizzard fashion, we haven’t been able to see much. Clips from the show include an angry Destiny shouting “If I can’t prove I’m better than you by beating you in StarCraft, then I will prove it by stirring the pot on Twitter and Reddit until everyone hates you more than me!” Another clip followed desRow bumbling his way through San Diego to get Winter to Best Buy in time for his regularly scheduled maintenance. TigerLily never really seemed to be doing anything. She was just kind of there in the background in many of the clips focused on other people. But now we know what the record number of StarCraft developers have been working on!
While we didn’t get to see a lot of clips, we were able to get an explanation of the format. “It’s pretty simple, really,” said an unnamed Blizzard spokesperson, “these people live for this kind of thing. They were doing it all on their own without anyone making money off of it before we pitched them the show. So now we just have them living together so we can film it easier, plus it’s a lot more visceral. Each week we bring in a guest to live with them for a few days to mix things up a bit. For the weeks we couldn’t fill, we just sent out a mean, anonymous text so one of them will feel wronged. That usually keeps them busy for a week or so.”
An annotated list of visiting gamers leaked last week and distributed online included HuK, Stephano, MC, NeaTea, FruitDealer, and even IdrA as featured guests. Husky is briefly in the show at one point when desRow and Winter bump into him at the Chic-Fil-A adjacent to Best Buy. It appears that the list was incomplete, however, as we also saw footage of Avilo in the kitchen making breakfast and then suddenly bursting into a fit of rage, taking all of the eggs out of the refrigerator, and mercilessly throwing them to the ground, one at time.
An eSports Show About Nothing
The primary cast was also on the scene to hype up the show and answer questions. One audience member asked Naniwa to share a story from a challenge or competition of some kind in the show. “Oh no, we didn’t have to do any of that crap.” Nani answered, “At first they were trying to make it like Top Gear or Survivor or something and make us do interesting things together. We stomped that out right away. We’re best known for sitting in front of computers and arguing with people, not doing interesting things or charity work or anything. We wanted to stay true to what made us who we are today. Adding substance to our personas would only hurt the show.”
Winter confirmed a similar story. “Affirmative. No encouragement to give show redeeming social value given. Mostly just fight with nerds. Many nerd tears shed. Avilo breaks things and yells. TigerLily is bad at Skype. Destiny yells. NaNiwa yells. DesRow gets drunk, puts on panda makeup, yells, cares for WinterBOT. WinterBOT smurfs.” One alarmed journalist asked Winter to elaborate on the “care” that desRow has been giving to Winter, which was thankfully benign. “Affirmative. The human DesRow has been helping with WinterBOT maintenance as repentance for drama sins,” Winter finished, “other than that, everyone behaves as they otherwise would.”
Redemption for desRow?
“Yes, I felt that this would be a good opportunity to show that I have changed,” added desRow without prompting. “I could think of no better way to show that I’ve moved on from my past misdeeds by coming on this program, conducting myself well, and try to add some positively to the universe. Mostly I was able to do this by helping out Winter. He’s really not such a bad guy once you get to know him. It turns out the botting has literally been part of him all along; he was programmed that way!”
“Other than that, I’ve just been trying to not be a jerk. I post stuff to YouTube when I say I will, I start ReMax on time, and have been continuing to live a healthier lifestyle. After we’d been in the house for about a week, a camera showed up in the bathroom. I can happily say that I haven’t taken or sent ANY pictures from the bathroom. Not even once!”
“Just keep that Revenge Cycle Going”
“The key to conflict resolution in any scenario is communication and taking ownership, so we just try to encourage the opposite of that,” said Psione, who was recently promoted to ‘Psione: The StarCraft 2 Turkey Wrap Eater in Chief: StarCraft Community Related StarCraft Media; “I never saw myself in a position like this when I aspired to work with the Blizzard community. But hey, you gotta give the people what they want. We didn’t even have StarCraft installed on the computers in the house where the gamers live for the first two or three days of shooting. Winter was the one who figured it out first, but that’s a GamerBOT for you. It’s in his code to be the #1 StarCraft streamer on Twitch.tv at least one every couple days.”
“I’m just really excited for the community to get to see ‘Daed Gaem - The StarCraft 2 Reality Show,’” Psione continued, “it really illustrates everything the community values. People will see the gamers in a whole new light. I mean, you can already listen to them in their homes all day and see everything they’re doing. But this way you can see them all on one channel, at the same time! All while avoiding cumbersome StarCraft gameplay and strategy. I’ll admit it, it’s easier for us when people aren’t focused on the game, too.”
Coming this Fall to a Computer Near You
“Daed Game: The Starcraft 2 Reality Show” will be available for unlimited streaming for a one time fee through the Battle.Net launcher. Watching the entire show will reward players with an exclusive portrait in StarCraft 2, an exclusive cardback in Hearthstone, an exclusive banner in Diablo III, an exclusive “Human Streamer” skin for the WinterBOT in Heroes of the Storm, an exclusive WinterBOT battle pet in World of WarCraft, and technical pre-alpha access for Overwatch. Pre-ordering will unlock the above immediately as well as a virtual decoder ring that will reveal the release date WarCraft 4 when the secret code is released. (Code to be released Winter 2020/2021*)
