MTV's Multiplayer blog has an excellent interview with Diablo III's lead designer Jay Wilson, in which Jay attempts to deflect some of the criticism leveled at his team due to the Lisa Frank-esque nature of his game's environments.
Jay's arguments are as follows:
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It's one thing to create dynamic lighting in Photoshop, quite another to reproduce these effects in the game engine
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Did you guys even play Diablo II? Hella colorful!
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When the game's that dark, it's tough to tell the difference between an enemy and a friend.
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The rainbows are scarce, and one of them was a joke.
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Excessive darkness leaves little room for variety.
Compelling arguments all. What a wonderful world we live in, where a developer can openly address these concerns. It speaks to the user-oriented corporate culture at Blizzard. This is a company that is committed to customer satisfaction, perhaps more than any other major developer. Consider the way they supported Starcraft for a decade, not only in running Battle.net, but in making slight adjustments to the core gameplay. They were interested not only in fixing bugs, but in improving the quality of the game, ten years on.
And here we have a lead designer taking the time to address the concerns of a bunch of emos on Deviant Art. Very cool.
Related Links:
Screen Test: Diablo III
Love-Hate: In Defense of the Cutscene
Screen Test: Alone in the Dark