Blood and gore and bones and intestines
Wired has an interview with Blizzard’s Jay Wilson which is mainly about the mature content in Diablo III, and about the interviewer’s apparent shock that Wilson allows his nine-year-old daughter to play a gory game. Wilson makes a number of good points about how different segments of the public perceive different types of content as more or less objectionable than others, and comes down, with all intelligent people, on the side of "people need to make their own decisions about what’s unacceptable to them." Too bad he makes an ass of himself by saying that he doesn’t let his daughter "see games that have any guns in them," following on almost immediately by mentioning that she likes World of Warcraft.
You know me; I’m never in favour of centrally-enforced anything, much less censorship. And I’m glad to see that Wilson is bright enough not to compromise the artistic vision of the Diablo series just to appease busybody dipshits or to court a dubious expansion in the fan base.
Also noteworthy to me is where he talks about bashing the skeleton right out of some dude, and how something even as over-the-top gory as that got kind of stale and humdrum when they used it too much. That’s a nice insight: keep the really spectacular effects uncommon, or you’ll cheapen them and nobody will think they’re such big shit anymore.
