Joyland, a Chinese theme park due to open its doors in May this year, looks to be at least partly inspired by the games of Blizzard Entertainment.
The park, located in Changzhou, is built around the idea of taking “key scenery in cyber-games and [rebuilding]them into reality, enabling visitors to interact between the real and the virtual world”. It’ll feature traditional rides as well as locations for “cyber-gaming” (so, internet cafes).
That’s all well and good until you look at the names of the park’s different areas. There’s the “Terrain of Warcraft”. Not like World of Warcraft at all, that. There’s also the “Universe Of Starcraft”. Which is, well, it actually goes and uses the word “Starcraft”, albeit in a font where you could easily mistake “Starcraft” for “Storcroft”.
Other familiar-looking sections include “Moles World”, which looks a lot like Dr. Suess’ Landing from Universal Studio’s Islands of Adventure, the park’s logo, which again looks very similar to that of Islands of Adventure, and this appearance from Assassin’s Creed star Altair.
Sure, this stuff may all be totally above-board, but there’s not a single Blizzard or Ubisoft logo to be found on the park’s website, so make of that what you will.
Before you cry hoax, it appears the park is at least in some manner “real”, as these construction shots from 2010 reveal. You can also see a video of the park’s progress to your left. Whether it’ll actually make its May opening date – or whether it’ll open in any state similar to these promo images – remains to be seen.
If this stuff does turn out to be “borrowed” from existing properties and not officially licensed, it of course wouldn’t be anything new for China. A theme park recently copied Japanese mech icon Gundam, while there’s a bootleg Disneyland in Beijing.
We’ve contacted Blizzard for comment, and will update if we hear back.
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