- StarCraftis making a shift from the real-time strategy genre to the open-world shooter genre
- The development team realised during early discussions that “we weren’t talking about a game from above”
- According toStarCraftgeneral manager Dan Hay, “it was boots on the ground every time” when the team was talking about the game
The process of StarCraftshifting from real-time strategy to open-world shooter emerged naturally from repeated team discussions about “the story we wanted to tell,” as well as in-game moments, armor, exploration, discovery, and the desire to experience the world from ground level, according to the game’s general manager, Dan Hay.
In an interview with TechRadar Gaming at BlizzCon 2026 in Anaheim, Hay went on to describe the process that will see the series’ perspective change entirely in the next StarCraftgame: “Every time we drew a picture or every time we talked about it, it was boots on the ground every time.”
These conversations then snowballed, gathering up other game features and elements, it seems, which kept the direction of travel going towards taking StarCraftinto being a shooter. “We started to talk about perspective and how that’s going to work; we started to talk about the armor, and we started to talk about what could attack that armor and how it could rip it apart if it needed to.
“We would talk about things with the characters [too], and we started to very quickly realize we weren’t talking about a game from above; we were talking about a game down on the ground where you felt every inch of the game,” described Hay.
He added, giving a nod to the narrative in store for players when StarCraftreleases, that it was obvious that the game would be “down on the ground, and that just made sense for the story.”
But as well as changing the player’s perspective from looking down to looking out and around, the team looked at this change for the series to embrace the open-world exploration and discovery aspects of the upcoming game.
“[We wanted to] make sure that there is an opportunity to explore. Make sure that there’s an opportunity to discover. See a thing off in the distance and go — ‘is that something that I saw from the first game? Is it?’ And then head off to it.”
StarCraftwas teased with a cinematic trailer at BlizzCon 2026 and is slated to release in 2030.
