Austin GDC: Regional taste is a myth, says Morhaime

During his keynote at the Austin Game Developers Conference, Blizzard president and co-founder Michael Morhaime said that the idea of regional taste in games is a myth.

"You hear a lot of talk about customizing games for local tasteâ¦We think that there are different styles of play that exist everywhere, just in different concentrations," said Morhaime.

Instead of creating 15 different versions of the games to appeal to each region's tastes, for example, Blizzard looks at the game itself to see that there is something in the game to appeal to each different style of play.

That said, companies still need to be culturally sensitive.

"In the Warcraft III days, we thought it would be really cool to add a panda race to the game. Sam had them dressed up in samurai outfits with Japanese armor and weapons," explained Morhaime. "It turns out that our Chinese players didn't appreciate seeing their pandas dressed up in Japanese clothing. They were angry with us for being so insensitive to the culture."

Blizzard ended up changing the art very quickly, dressing the pandas in Chinese clothing with Chinese armour. The positive feedback was immediate: players appreciated that the company was listening and responding to their concerns.