The way it used to work was that a videogame developer would have a videogame journalist [sic] out to the studio. They'd show him a bunch of canned demos. They'd answer questions. They might let him play a little bit. They'd all sit down to lunch. They'd then leave it up to to the journalist to write an enthusiastic article.

But with the Internet, game developers can go straight to you, without us pesky writers getting in the way. Sometimes, you just get a lot of hype. But other times, you get valuable first-hand insight into the development process that guys like me simply can't give you after an afternoon's visit.

A case in point is Blizzard's slick write up of the evolution of one of the early levels in Starcraft II. It's well written, informative, and attractively laid out like a magazine article. It details the evolution of one of the early missions, when the player is still learning the game. A colony called Agria has been overrun by zerg, and the player is tasked with evacuating the colonists.

One of the earliest versions of The Evacuation of Agria required the player to clear out colonists from several different locations on the map, which proved to be a problem. Frantically moving around, abandoning previously built defenses, and keeping an eye on all of the different evacuation routes turned out to be too frustrating and stressful for such an early map, and it distracted from the intended "zerg invasion" feel of the mission. Another version featured colonists marching toward their destination on foot, but the developers decided this didn't quite fit. After all, no one in their right mind would go for a walk during a zerg invasion, especially if they were unarmed.

Blizzard also explains the important subtle differences in how you present objectives.

Simply altering the initial mission goal of "Don't let X colonists die" to "Save X colonists" helped make the player feel more in control, and providing Dr. Hanson with a fortified position out of harm's way eliminated another source of stress. (In the original design, the mission failed if Hanson died, even if the player managed to save every last colonist.)

Read the full article here, where you can also see a video of the mission in action.