Will AoC creativity be constrained by China's Market or something else?

BlackBrony

So yeah, basically I wanted to know if the ingame story, how things look, and what happens will be somehow dictated if the game happens to reach eastern markets.
I know many games just take the easy road and don't allow for many things.
I also don't like when games force certain things as well, but for example no one will bat an eye if you allow straight marriage, while same sex marriage is a different thing.

Representation is important, and I was wondering how for will IS go.
Will NPCs be blank sheets that just give quests? Are they going to have stories, life lessons, and pains?
How adult will the game?
I know Americans are extremely prude, and I was asking myself if Steven actually cares about this stuff?

I have lots of questions, mostly because I'm curious, but also because I know for many being represented in a game matters.

There's fantasy, dark fantasy, gritty fantasy. I'd like to know what direction the game will take

Damokles

Your guess is as good as anybodies mate.

Caeryl

They confirmed marriage between player characters without caring about sexes. So far we’ve gotten word that there won’t really be nudity (tasteful or otherwise). Drinking seems like an obvious one to make an appearance. Violence of course. It wouldn’t surprise me if illicit substances were featured at some point but that’s just a wild guess.

Rem_

Constrained by China's market as in censorship ? I don't think any game is really unless they're solely making it for the east. If there are any scenes that aren't allowed by Chinese government they can always have a separate version like WoW and censor stuff that isn't allowed. That could also be a TON of work so it would have to be a pretty large demand in the east for that.

Noaani

Poko wrote: »

Constrained by China's market as in censorship ? I don't think any game is really unless they're solely making it for the east. If there are any scenes that aren't allowed by Chinese government they can always have a separate version like WoW and censor stuff that isn't allowed. That could also be a TON of work so it would have to be a pretty large demand in the east for that.

Movies have been designed around China-specific regulations for a fairly long time (some events in World War Z were moved as a specific example, China is rarely the "bad guys" in movies any more as a more general example). Generally, these kinds of things are now baked in to the content in a way where people don't even notice it, as it is both easier and cheaper to simply make a product that works in all regions rather than segregating.

Games like WoW were developed before Chinese regulations were a consideration, and so to get the product accepted there, they had to alter existing content.

New content made for WoW is made China-friendly.

Revenue from China currently make up 25% of all worldwide gaming sales, and unlike any other market, the PC/MMO market from China makes up more than half of the over all gaming mrket. This means that China is actually the single largest market in the world right now for PC/MMO gaming.

I have no idea what that all means or Ashes though.

Damokles

They will have to change animations/textures if they want to cater to the chinese governments guidelines. No bones, skulls and blood for example.

Caeryl

Damokles wrote: »

They will have to change animations/textures if they want to cater to the chinese governments guidelines. No bones, skulls and blood for example.

I sure hope they don’t censor harmless stuff like that. That would be stupid

Joseline

^ Chinese law IS stupid for the most part

Based on Apoc, there wont be much gore in the combatsystem itself. If we see any its probably some design choice. Like "Death mountain hill" with a bunch of corpses and bones lying around or some native tribe doing human sacrifices (Steve said that the players are the "second wave" of people getting there but that doesnt necessarily mean that there arent any other human creatures or natives already living there)


The skin texture isnt very open to skimpy clothing. Unless they change the skin texture to a more.. appealing design, skimpy stuff will not exactly look great (a shame imo. I like vast diversity in any direction). Skin texture is too realistic and dirty, thats usually more distracting than appealing in games
^ If Im not mistaken here, this will probably be one - if not the - biggest annoyance for me when playing/trying out this game (the skin texture, not the lack of skimpy stuff. Noble dresses also dont look great with dirty skin textures)

Rem_

There's way too much to cater to Chinese law but I'm sure any of them who play mmorpgs of western making would just use a VPN anyway so it doesn't matter.

Nagash

well china hates skeletons in games so.....

Rem_

@Joseline I'd be hoping with all the stuff they talked about with their character customization that they'd have options to have dirty or clean skin. They said before it's going to be one of the best so..

Joseline

Poko wrote: »

@Joseline I'd be hoping with all the stuff they talked about with their character customization that they'd have options to have dirty or clean skin. They said before it's going to be one of the best so..

Yea
Im one of those people who sometimes just stare at their own character and theres nothing worse than not wanting to see your own character in an MMO. Skin texture plays a huge part in this as age and general look heavily relay on it
The current skin texture seems to make your character look "old" and dirty, I hope character creation will allow us to change something on that or that theyre still working on it. (Altough I dont like the texture as a whole too much)