Blizzard man Jay Wilson, lead designer for Diablo III, has said they’ll be making every effort to launch the game in conservative regions like Germany, Australia and China.
The blood has to change for Germans and Aussies ”if we’re going to sell”, and the studio ”don’t really have a problem” editing it to match standards. China has ”a lengthy list” though.
”Definitely for regions like Germany and Australia, we will have to change blood if we’re going to sell there. And that’s fine. Those are the standards for those regions, and we don’t really have a problem with catering to what they need and what they want,” Wilson tells Wired.
”But China’s going to be hard for us. Because a lot of the restrictions there are really… we may not be able to do them. It may not be possible,” he admits.
Most recently World of Warcraft has just started up again in China after Blizzard were forced to make changes to the game if they wanted it to continue operations. Things like skeletons, or more specifically bones, were one of the issues causing huge redesigns.
”With our relationship with NetEase, we recently got new information about what China really wants, and it’s a lengthy list. It’s really hard for us to cater to. We’ll try. There’s no reason we wouldn’t want to go there, but there is a certain point where we’d have to redo so much of the game that it’s not viable anymore.”
Blizzard haven’t finalized what regions they’ll be hitting but they plan to go as wide as possible, but China? We haven’t decided what regions we’re going into, obviously. It certainly would be our goal to go there, but we will struggle to go to China.”
Could you handle an edited version of Diablo III, videogamer? Perhaps you favour a sneaky import?
