bob1052 said:
I think you know a lot more into the specifics of this discussion than I do, so I will concede that you are probably right, but couldn't the same logic be applied to many other forms of media?
Why release Lord of the Rings as a trilogy (+1) as books when you can just take the extra time to release one for an epic journey. At the end of #2 the story was still unresolved, etc.
A lot of my information comes from articles like this one (also from The Escapist)
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103607-Blizzard-Explains-Tough-Decisions-Behind-StarCraft-II-Trilogy
While written from a pro-Blizzard standpoint, this is where they claim it would take 10-12 years for them to have done the entire trilogy (and I've heard longer quotes from other sources here and there), and to me that invalidates a lot of their own defenses due to the sheer "WTF" factor not to mention a lot of the defenses fans make.
It's pretty easy to learn about with a bit of digging if your ever interested in solid info other than just listening to people like me ramble second hand.
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As far as things like movies go, there are limits to how long someone can sit down and watch one consistant performance. Games might be able to provide hundreds of hours of gameplay but it doesn't require one to sit there and play the game for that time straight through, you can easily get up to use the bathroom without missing anything in most cases. With a movie sitting there for nine hours or whatever is pushing it, and if you get up to get a drink or go to the bathroom (or get tired and need to sleep) your going to miss stuff if you do. There are practical concerns for splitting things like the "Lord Of The Rings" movies up that way.
When it comes to books, a big part of the issue is of course the abillity of the writer. It took Tolkien a LONG time to finish "Lord Of The Rings" it was not one complete work that was split up. Other series like Asimov's "Foundation" likewise were split up over a lifetime.
With books in some cases splitting a story up into a triology or series is done to be practical, sometimes it's done to make money, in most cases however it's because the writer is doing it one piece at a time, and both the publisher and readers are of course dependant on the writer deciding to eventually finish things. There have been a number of series through the years where the writer never finished the work for various reasons. Roger Zelazny died before he coould complete the last Amber series for example.
The thing is that the videom game medium allows for someone to practically release hundreds of hours of content, and for people to consume that content effectively. What's more, you see various game companies releasing games of that length/with that much content.
Sometimes it might not take all that much time/content to tell a story, or make a complete game, it depends, and people argue about the length of games and how various titles turned out all the time. The thing with "Starcraft 2" is that they already had the entire thing planned out as a single, cohesive work. They decided to take that work and split it into a triology to make more money, and drag things out, and then cover it with lame excuses by claiming it would have taken them a decade to produce the entire thing.
I say lame excuses because if you look at what games looked like back in the year 2000, can you actually imagine in 2020 when they finish this game (if they are serious) what the current tech is going to be like in comparison? It's not going to be a part of it, it's
going to be something entirely differant by that point. No game is going to stay in development unchanged for that long where it's going to take 10 years to produce (which is why "Duke Nukem Forever" was such a joke).
See, what makes me angry is that Blizzard is not only being greedy, the stuff they are saying seems to imply that their entire fanbase is a group of morons. Over 10 years it's not a bloody Trilogy, it's Starcraft 2, 3 and 4.... and I doubt it's going to take that long.
