WARNING: This post violates the rules (but it’s really cool, so I’ll let it slide this one time).
It took a while, but Civilization IV is finally available legitimately in China. Localizing it brought with it a number of problems…there were several gameplay changes that were necessary to get it past the governmental censors (I won’t go into them here, but if you play Civ, it’s not hard to guess what they might be).
In any event, as a way to steer people towards the legitimate version of the game, the Chinese edition is really, really cool. For the low, low price of 元139 (that’s about $18), you get the game, a soundtrack CD, a tech tree, manual (slimmed down from the original English version…a fully translated Chinese language manual would probably have been enormous), a t-shirt, and a statue. Yeah, a statue. And it’s a really nice one, too. It’s hand painted, and has some really nice touches, like the string on the warrior’s crossbow. Anwyay, I’ve put some photos up, so check ‘em out. It’s really cool.
If you can answer the question, what’s the average price of a legitimate copy of a game in China?
That seems low, but then again Civ4 isn’t the newest game on the block.
I’m not exactly sure, but they’re really cheap. They have to be to compete with the pirated versions that are everywhere.
Hey, I want one of those shirts. ;)
Jon
… and they say that piracy is the cause of the games costing so much! I guess this does not apply to China. :(
Umm, I am a bit slow today, so please could you go into details what had to be changed ? Did they take out all religions ???
OK, where can I get this? It might make a great Mandarin teaching tool since I already know the English menus inside out.
[...] Jason Bergman has the skinny on the Chinese version of the only game I still play at least twice a week. They get a shirt. [...]