Could they go from M to G rating?

This was in a letter from Bobby K :point_down:

“In-game Changes. We have heard the input from employee and player communities that some of our in-game content is inappropriate. We are removing that content.”

Yours sincerely,

Bobby

1 Like

What exactly is inappropriate in any Blizzard game?

1 Like

Won’t affect Diablo just Warcraft

1 Like

With all that is happening what else might be in store?

Some of the Dev’s mentioned in the lawsuit have NPC’s in WoW, these NPC’s will be removed, is what I understand.

2 Likes

It is about the WoW people who have in-game NPCs who are implicated in the lawsuit.

Your assumption and title are way off.

4 Likes

It was a ? deal with it.

2 Likes

Seems inflammatory and based on wrong information. How about you deal with being questioned on your post title. It sounds just like click bait media who want you to engage on false premise with no backing.

No, they are not going from M to G.

Further, Diablo is not rated M for sexual content. It is rated M for:

Animated Blood and Gore
Animated Violence

Those things are not going to change and are not part of the current “issues”

5 Likes

They could do whatever they feel like doing, so if that means dropping from Mature to General, they could. Many movies used to not be made with R ratings for fear of losing an audience so most were PG-13 (or whatever equivalent in non-Murca) so… if they think it means a larger potential sale, then yep, you betcha sweet donkey they’ll do it.

But, they won’t as the reasons for the quote are much more defined than some G-rated string.

Hopefully, they won’t change these things but at this point, honestly, I don’t think Blizzard is in the driver’s seat on content anymore. The CCP will have a say because of $$$, but more importantly, the “outrage mob” at Blizzard is going to have a say. I know it’s a terrible word choice because the outrage is justified. I just can’t think of a better one. If you’ve got less writer’s block than me, suggest an alternative, and I’ll edit.

The point is that there are political voices that are very dominant right now at Blizzard. We could not, for example, ever hear the War 3 dryad joking “I’ll attract them with my human call: ‘I’m so wasted, I’m so wasted!’”. For me, it was a hilarious joke and made fun of stupid frat boys and sort of implied she’d be getting her revenge on ones who took the bait. Now, someone would call it “rape culture.” So it’s gone. There are lots of funny lines that pushed boundaries in the name of comedy, and would immediately get rejected by a company which desperately needs to control its image. It can’t get away with taking the kinds of risk it historically took in making great, memorable games. The company will always be looking over its figurative shoulder to assure itself it offends no one and that cripples creativity.

The current climate at Blizzard doesn’t have any sway over the type of content in the games. Games that are designed specifically to have the type of content such as what we have in the Diablo series will continue to have that. The only changes that are going to happen are those that have to do with references to real life people that have been found to be part of the problem of “bro/frat” culture at the company (and in the entire industry at large).

Content that is thematically appropriate to the franchise and that doesn’t specifically reference a specific person or group in real life isn’t going anywhere.

I’m not much of an artist. When I do great creative, it’s after I get a spark of inspiration. Something strikes my mind that I feel I need to express. What little I actually make reflects my life and my experiences. I think that’s true of any artist, especially the great ones. Picasso’s Guernica for example, inspired by a bombing (I want to say in the civil war), Monet, whose work reflected his view of the world as he went blind, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, inspired by a bout of digoxin toxicity, IIRC, etc. I could go on. Unrequited loves, loss of a parent, the cold war fears of nuclear holocaust, fear of aliens, whatever.

Blizzard’s artists are the beating heart and soul of that company, and they’ve been hurt. They’re living a collectively experienced trauma and working through the healing process. That experience is going to be on their minds as they look to create elements of the games they’re working on. Diablo’s universe is an exploration of good vs evil. The definition of evil will be on people’s minds, and I’m certain you can guess how they might define that right now in the wake of what’s been going on. We’re watching real life define a demon (or even demons, plural) for them if you think about it. It will inspire something, and it’ll come through the lens of the activism we’re seeing now.

It won’t be all of it of course. We’ll have a lot of the standard boilerplate high-fantasy stuff, some of the nostalgia stuff from previous games as a hat tip to fans of course. And likely they’ve already storyboarded the main story. But as they’re creating side quests and thinking about new characters for NPCs, etc, I think we’ll see some of this experience find metaphors or parallels in their games because that’s how artists work and how they draw inspiration.

Please let Khanai not be one of them…

This response is a bit aggressive. Maybe cool off a notch before responding next time.

She has a point, and Avalon is known for making clickbait titles. Looks like MissCheetah finally had enough of it and called him point blank on it.