Speaking of China, Raph has a list of differences between the Chinese market and our own. One thing I don’t see in his list is any differences in content localization. And to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what those differences are.

In Korea, rumor has it that Starcraft had one bit of localization of content – removing a floating corpse in the intro movie – before the game was allowed on that market. In China, Magic the Gathering is fanatical about removing or obscuring anything that looks like a skull – be it animated monster, death armor adornment or random bone lying in the corner. The strange this is that zombies are okay, and skeletons with eyes are fine. Take a look at some of these minor changes that Wizards, for some reason, found necessary.

Of course, the interesting thing is that I don’t think our Asian publishers in China asked us for any changes to the content for Shadowbane, and as such it had the normal gamut of critters like Skeletons and Zombies. I suppose they were figuring that they were too small to attract attention from the Ministry of No Dead Things In Games.