Diablo 3 Lead Designer Jay Wilson says he has no problem with editing the game for sale in regions like Australia and Germany, but that the restrictions demanded by China may be “a lot of trouble.”
Diablo is a violent, bloody series and that’s a heritage Diablo 3 appears ready to embrace, but in order to make the game palatable for as wide an audience as possible Blizzard is building parental controls into the game which will let players tone down or turn off the blood and gore. While the specifics haven’t yet been finalized, Wilson said everything in the game has been built so it can be changed to accommodate not just parental concerns, but also regional ones.
“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,” he told 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 continued. “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.”
While the game may not fly in China and he admitted that he expects at least a small amount of controversy over the inclusion of parental controls, Wilson said Blizzard is committed to keeping Diablo 3 true to its roots. “Diablo is our Mature-rated series, and it’s important for us that it be that,” he said. “It’s our goal, and that’s where we want it to be.”
