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Asking for realism in a game about intergalactic space-wars is a bit of a stretch, considering that we’ve yet to take our lethal bickering beyond earth’s gravitational pull. Still though, we have a pretty decent hunch that real star wars will still involve some amount of blood, swearing, and maybe even a bit of smoking. This seems like a safe assumption.
Ask someone from South Korea, though, and they might not be so sure. Granted, they may also be 12 years-old, as that’s the audience Blizzard is aiming for with its censored release of StarCraft II.
”Since StarCraft 2 was originally developed to be a game adolescents could enjoy, we're very pleased with the Game Rating Board's decision [to award the game an Age 12 rating]," said Blizzard, via a translation. "In the remaining time until StarCraft 2 goes on sale, we'll do our best to continue to perfect the game so that even more fans can enjoy it."
That decision comes after Blizzard set its censorship phaser to kill destroy, coloring in-game blood black, and removing all signs of smoking and “vulgar” language. Originally, the game would have been given the dreaded, “cover your eyes, honey” Adults Only rating, which – reading between the lines – probably would’ve done a nuclear strike-sized number on its sales. However, Blizzard is still considering releasing an uncensored version as well.
But hey, since we’ve already got the 12 year-olds’ attention, can we also throw an anti-cheating PSA in there? Certainly couldn’t hurt.
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EthicSlave
May 21, 2010 at 7:01am
Consider the following from the original release of starcraft 1. There weren't gateways in use on battle.net yet and the korean to american ratio was 8 to 1 that played online. So it would be in blizzards favor to release a censored version if the following schematic plays out for SC II.
