Obsidian Entertainment - Blog Updates @ Official Site

Chris Avellone has a handful of new blog entries since we last checked, covering subjects such as internal communication in Obsidian and a couple of GDC reports:

What affect does culture have on your game? Do you try to add or remove any content because X culture/gender/religion won't or will like it?

Plenty, especially with regards to "localization," the process of translating games into other languages. There are a list of requirements for each nation's localization procedure for what parts of game are acceptable and what is not – for example, Germans can't have too much violence or blood in the game and will not sell titles that are excessively violent, so that has to be taken into account with game design, even if it's something as simple as a setting in the code that switches out red blood for green blood (which is acceptable). Publishers and franchise holders also have a say in what content they find acceptable as well, but that varies according to the publisher.