Slashdot Mirror
China Bans 50 Games
Stargoat writes "The official mainland Chinese news agency, Xinhau, is reporting that China is banning 50 gaming titles. These titles include Battlefield Vietnam, The Sims 2, and FIFA 2005. A similar game banning event occurred six months ago in China, but not to this scale."
From the article:
"Chinesegovernment in 2005 will focus on combating illegal publications. This especially concerns pirated textbooks, electronic publications and illegal journals that will have negative influence on the youth."
It sounds to me from the article like they're cracking down on piracy and not necessarily passing judgement on the games themselves (other than the people making pirated versions of them). But then, it was written by someone that likely doesn't speak my native language natively so who knows? (Although their English is likely far superior to my total lack of knowledge of Chinese).
I'm a big tall mofo.
The name of the new agency is Xinhua.
Tyranny isn't the worst enemy of a democracy. Cynicism is.
Last time I played FIFA 2005, I had to turn away because the gore was so bad. I mean soccer, geez, what's next, a ban on any E rated games?
The only reason I can figure that it's been banned would be if there is a Taiwanese team as an option.
.. to undermine the chinese empire.
:P
Battlefield Vietnam makes sense from the perspective of Bejing, but the Sims? Maybe the strict control of your people hits a little too close to home :-)
"This especially concerns pirated textbooks, electronic publications and illegal journals that will have negative influence on the youth. "
I'm more concerned about my kids getting run over by a tank because they disagree with the government, or contracting some fatal disease because the country runs around like nothing is wrong, than with textbooks, publications or journals.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
The article says this is a crackdown on illegal games, and specifically mentions pirated versions of all the games listed in the summary.
Well... if women in Sims 2 are allowed to have more than one child, then maybe the Chinese people will start getting ideas.... The sims could lead a revolution, and their government simply can't allow that. :)
Are those soccer (err, football) games REALLY that controversial, to warrant a ban. Some of the others I can sort of see some rational, no matter how warped.
I wonder if they published a localized version where the Chinese team can't be beaten if they'd allow it?
I mean what else could they NOT like about the "world's" favorite sport?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
I don't know about most of you, but the link to the story (with pics) of the naked PETA protesters painted like tigers garnered a lot more interest from me than "China Bans (fill in the blank)."
I thought that was in Singapore
Missouri has banned video games in their prisons. http://news.corporate.findlaw.com/ap_stories/high_ tech/1700/1-24-2005/20050124163019_19.html/
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
From the article, it really looks like they are cracking down specifically on illegal copies of these games, and not the games themselves. The way I am taking it is if you were to purchase a legal copy of one of these games in China, you would be good to go.
"Among the 50 illegal games, 26 are pirated game software including..."
Wha...?
I mean... GOOD RIDDANCE!
Ehta nyeh IBM, ehta Macintosh!
Oh wait... that's only the US.
In Soviet Russia, they teach you how to spell.
I'm not sure what State GeneralAdministration and the Chinesegovernment were thinking when they complied it but I think it might be going overboard to ban anything that contains images that even remotely suggest potential acts of violence where to overall focus of the game is opposite to that.
I mean, as a die-hard The Sims and The Sims 2 player, I can't see much that would count as either capitalist or communist in it. It's a generic family, in a generic foreign country (they don't even speak English or any real language), and earning some made up currency (it's "simoleans" not "dollars", and you can't easily convert that into any real currency, because the price ratios and wages are all wrong for any real country.) They go to work, they spend their money on groceries and a bigger TV, and occasionally have dinner with their friends. They can't even open their own business at home, or anything that would count as capitalistic.
I.e., it's generic stuff that's no different in communist China from the USA.
I mean, that TS2 family could just as well be two communist patriotic comrades going to work in the government-owned factories, and buying their fridge from a government-owned store.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Congratulations! There are more /.ers than there are Chinese on the Net. Apparently.
By banning BFV, FIFA 2005, and Sims2, the Chinese are doing it to protect their society from the misconceptions that America was the "good guy" in Vietnam, from the notion that Taiwan is sufficiently independent to get a soccer team, and a game featuring characters that elevate their moods by "meditating" with pseudoscientific mysticism, see "ghosts", can enter same-sex relationships, and who frequently hop into a bed for pixelated "woo-hoo" -- the latter of which oughta be grounds for a ban in any civilized nation. But all three games are being banned for the same fundamental reason: they threaten the stability of the Chinese government.
When our lawmakers do it, it's for the freedom and security of our children.
40 years ago, Ted Kennedy had to leave his girlfriend to drown so he could continue defending our children's future. And the Senators from Disney probably had to snort a lot of cocaine from between a lot of plastic starlets' tits before deciding it was time to ban the internets.
That's the difference between freedom and repressive communism. Honestly, we have no idea the sacrifices our lawmakers make for us.
I can only applaud the Chinese government's effort to protect it's citizens.
Firewalling, monitoring, and filtering out entire hunks of the internet. Imprisoning people that attempt to view restricted political, religious, and philosphocal content (have to break a few eggs to make a omlete)
Now restricting games!
Good job! This is the only way a government can protect it's people from the horrors of child porn and hate speach. All dissidents do is cause problems.
I look forward to the day that DRM will allow the government to control what software a person can and can't install on their computer.
Unfortunately there are always very intellegent people that are mentally unstable that do things like distribute illegal literature, provide hacks to unlock restricted media, and cracks to install pirated and illegal software.
All that stuff allows much to much freedom to people. One should not be allowed to break the law. Sometimes people need to be protected from themselves.
Just a little barrier, a little help not to break the rules.
The day that the technology that is used in Valve's Steam and Apple's Itunes makes it way to all software and into the hardware of all computers.
All this freedom must be stopped. Hopefully the EU and the United States quickly follow China's lead in protecting their citizens against perverts and hate speech.
Viva la Socialism! Down with Freedom! Up with government controlled capitolism! Down with philosphopy and reliance on self control! Cheers for redundant laws! Down with spreading illegal information and mp3's! Yah for the RIAA and People's Republic of China!
Damn, I want to belong to the thought police.
With counter-revolutionary titles like The Sims 2 and Fifa 2005, it's small wonder that they were banned.
Government bans Sims 2, they don't like competition when trying to run the lives of 1.5 billion people.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ok, now this list is weird.
Well, I'm used to see 3D Shooters on banned... er... "do not advertise the game, do not show the game, do not mention that you have games on this list for sale, sell the game only to persons 18 Years+" list (I live in Germany *sigh*), but...
FIFA 2005? The game aint pornographic, or violent (except for fouls) and its not political either.
Sims 2? Same a FIFA 2005...
From the article: As part of the effort to protect intellectual property rights and create a good environment for Chinese youth...
If they only crack down on pirated copies, I can understand it, but the "create a good environment" part is definitly weird...
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Some have already mentioned, but this does not seem to be what the headline wants you to believe.
The games are banned because they are either pirated copies of popular games, or they are illegally imported.
Sample this!
China seems to be if not exactly ignoring the WTO and GATT agreements, then playing loosely with them. American and European governments promised their voters that China's entry into the various world trade organizations would a) promote democracy, and b) allow the West to export high-tech products to China.
Point A doesn't seem to be happening very quickly, but we can have hope for the future. On Point B, the Chinese economy is frankly wiping the West, exporting tons of goods and importing relatively little (while supporting the dollar's high value).
We may think that this is only about IP, but software is one of the few things the West can hope to compete in. This seems like a legitamate GATT / WTO offense. It would be pretty fun to see these agreements actually work for the benefit of the US by overturning the software ban.
/* Dang, I can't type that well. */
Shouldn't this be under "Chinese Dissident's Rights Online" or "Chinese Citizen Rights Online" or "Chinese Criminal Ring Rights Online"?
From some of the other comments I have read, it seems as though this could be something to do with battling piracy. I will have to read the article to find out. I still have no idea what this would have to do with my rights...
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
That's the difference between freedom and repressive communism. Honestly, we have no idea the sacrifices our lawmakers make for us.
;)
You forgot the 500 an hour AND a nice cushy chair to sit in
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
If they banned Katamari Damacy I think we should go immediately to DEFCON 2. And if they banned Ratchet & Clank games, well, it's time to send in Marines armed with sheepinators.
--- Ban humanity.
In another recent annoucement, the Chinese government has decided to ban fun, sex, and eating while watching TV. All of these activities are considered bad for the youth of China...
Seriously, how could the culture that discovered gunpower, steam power, acupuncture, and nearly started the industrial revolution hundreds of years before Europe/America did end up in its current situation?
"He who throws mud, loses ground." - proverb
Uh Huh.
And in a related story, the National Hockey League just announced a new expansion team in Hell.
Duke Nukem Forever!!!!! Now we'll NEVER see it...
They discovered ideology.
--- Ban humanity.
It's rated flamebait right now, and i don't think that's right
Sample this!
[Spies tell us the Chinese government has been overthrown]
[Spies tell us the Chinese government is now a democracy: Mao, President of the Chinese]
"The Chinese Ambassador wishes to speak with you."
Chinese: "Tremble in awe ah before Mao, President of the Chinese."
Chinese: "We grow jealous of your privileged lifestyle. We demand you give us [gunpowder]."
Carthaginians: "Your civilization is not ready for such knowledge. Will you take [The Wheel] instead?"
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I'm more concerned about my kids getting run over by a tank because they disagree with the government, or contracting some fatal disease because the country runs around like nothing is wrong, than with textbooks, publications or journals.
My friend, it is time to learn that all types of governments have one thing in common, and that is that they don't care about you in the slightest. They organize to use you for power. You don't even have a choice. There is only one thing that they do care about, and that is maintaining the special position that they have on top of you. This is the same the world over throughout history. I dare say it is inescapable.
Whether it be a cultural dictatorship that seeks to keep you in line by giving you no options to think for yourself, or a "no real choice" representative democracy that has two parties that look the same, it doesn't matter what you think. Pull the lever, bucko. No matter what you do, no matter what they say about thinking about "your ethnic identity" or "your freedoms" they still will give most favored nation status to ethnic cleansing butchers and corporations that make plastic crap, because that's where the friends are (and by friends, I mean pieces of paper with other famously successful a-holes on it), and honestly, who could turn down that much oil and cheap labor? I mean, cmon! Remember, life is a video game where the objective is to rack up a bank account score with as many zeros as a galaga champion on a three day meth binge.
Let me put it this way, your money (stamped with the very face of the kings that made the rules your life) has always been taken out of your hardworking hands and given to some bastard at the top to buy polo ponies. It's a graft... a fleecing of the many for the excess of the few, and their friends. Whether they are in charge of China, or getting seven hundred dollars for a special bolt for that aircraft carrier, or in charge of Citibank, in short, we play by their rules, and so they screw us, like they always have throughout history.
Best to find a way make as much freedom, time, happiness, and peace on your own. If you look to those guys for it, you really will get run over by a tank, for their profit margins.
No matter where you go, people want to put parts of themselves into other people, as often as possible. If you have and keep a population largely uneducated about reproductive health and safety, it is entirely possible that a vast number of them will get infected.
Without treatment, it is likely that those infected people will die within ten years. Bam, there goes your population control problem.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Among the 50 illegal games, 26 are pirated game software including Age of Mythology: the Titans, The Sims 2, Manhunt, FIFA 2005, Battlefield Vietnam and Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. The remaining are illegally distributed foreign games including Conflict Vietnam, Vietcong: Fist Alpha and Devastation.
It's quite clear from the text that they are NOT banning these games because of some political agenda (at least not the 26 games in the first category). They're not banning the games at all, per se. They're just banning the sale of some widely distributed illegal copies. Having been in China recently, I can tell you that it's easy to purchase pirated software (even in relatively large stores), and they are try to crack down (or at least make it look that way).
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Or, if Chinese couples who want more than one child are allowed by the government to have as many Sim children as they want, this could defuse the issue.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
And in early 2003, the same agency banned the Electronic Arts-produced title Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour Expansion for "smearing the image of China and the Chinese army," according to the state news agency.
While I understand that Command and Conquer and it's sequels/expansions could easily be seen as portraying China in a negative light, the premise of the "Generals" series is hardly anti-Chinese:
Anti-communist, maybe, but anti-Chinese, certainly not. Perhaps they were "smearing" the dreams of some political leaders? This came from Planet C&C, by the way.
Was this screenshot from one of the banned games? :)
That is the way I sorta understand the article/spin. They made a list of 50 games for their people to look for. The list includes 26 that were never imported officially (most likely not allowed due to censorship). The other 24 were imported and sold before being found containing thoughts that might pervert Chinese society.
Yea, the headline here on Slashdot seems like it tries to make the Chinese into bookburning Nazis. But I dunno, all they're doing is flat out telling people that this is illegal and they're going to stop it. Now, if in a week they turn around and ban a game because it includes Taiwan (im thinking of the right country aren't i?) then yea, they're being jerks. But until then -- we should stop trying to criticize people when they're doing the right thing.
--- Caffeine is directly responsible for some of my greatest ideas, and some of my most embarrassing moments...
Please list this under Business instead of Right. Chinese government only control 1% of the game distribution. The other 99% is illegal pirate which government has no control over. If you look at the titles banned in the list:
I am sure must of the reminding games are from major publishers. China use the ban as a leverage with the foreigner companies. It happened before that cnn.com, abc.com and other US medias are banned in China. Ban on CNN.com is left after they agree to carry CCTV contents in the US. It's business, stupid!
If you read the actual article, you will see, as many astute readers have pointed out, that this is an issue of China attempting to crack down on video game piracy, not ban games because they are evil communists.
It is my opinion that recently slashdot has started down the slippery slope of becoming what I despise about big time news agencies: a marketplace for sensationalized stories. Every dramatic article posted on /. recently ends up being far less dramatic upon further investigation. I used to love slashdot for the lack of glitzy CNN-esque flash headlines of empty news articles, now slashdot is becoming exactly that.
And don't give me that "well it's the readers who submit articles, so don't blame slashdot, blame the readers" crap. We all know how hard it is to get an article posted on the front page, and we all know that there are tons of articles submitted and only a few chosen by a handful of people who have their own ideologies/agendas. The only difference with having users submit the articles at this point is that the moderators don't have to dig up the articles themselves.
If trends continue along these lines, I think my days of reading slashdot are numbered. I can read sensationalized news anywhere (CNN, FOXNews, ABC, CBS, NBC etc). I come here for the in-depth, interesting, non-glamorous, I-might-just-learn-something-today news, and I am finding it harder and harder to come across on slashdot.
Mod this however you want. I might be a troll, but I feel like it needed to be said.
(continued) Cats: All your Tibet are belong to us.
I have a simple, two-person shooter that I affectionately call "Shoot the Gook".
Would it be banned?
Unless needed for help violating human rights, these people are only good for target practice.
Thank you very much, Sir. I copied it to my Palm to read it again occasionally.
... like hump some of the 100 million hookers that the Chinese government says don't exist.
Bottom line - It's almost impossible to find a legal copy of a game in China. But you can buy an illegal copy of any game you want anywhere you look for about 1 US dollar. The ban list is foriegn relations and no youth in China will notice it.
and who frequently hop into a bed for pixelated "woo-hoo" -- the latter of which oughta be grounds for a ban in any civilized nation.
[sarcasm]
You are right on the money! civilized people shouldn't be having sex and the more we can cover it up the better! Sex will be the downfall of civilization and the thought of pixelated "woo-hoo" just makes me want to stab somebody in the face.
[/sarcasm]
Nearly half of all people are below average
Next on the ban list are Mario and Dave.
They need to just realize that it's only a fucking game, and quit trying to oppress the people.
Unless whoever translated it in to English got hopelessly confused, they are cracking down on pirated/illegally imported titles and not banning the games outright. The list probably covers the most popular titles falling in to these categories; presumably if they spot Sims 2 it's more likely than not an illicit copy and worthy of further scrutiny.
In other words, they're doing nothing that would be considered unusual in the US or Europe.
This sentence no verb.
Every parent knows there no more sure way to convince a teenager to do something than to prohibit it. China's campaign will encourage many of the young men hanging out at the computer cafes to acquire and play these banned games.
It's pretty tough to decode the somewhat cryptic statement, but my reading would be as follows:
Games like FIFA 2005 and the other 25 on the list are not officially distributed in China, and the only copies that get into the county are illegal pirated versions. Therefore they've been (justifiably) outlawed.
The other games are being illegally distributed (for whatever reason, one would assume companies distributing games need some kind of license or authorization - perhaps an age rating) and are also being banned.
However, since the statement itself is not really clear, I doubt any of us can claim to have an authoritative insight into exactly what is going on.
That would be Taiwan. This should be common knowledge (at least for a US citizen).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan
Check out the political status section in the wiki.
Basically the losers of the Chinese civil war retreated to Taiwan and set up shop, so mainland China sees Taiwan as illegitimate - they just haven't gotten around to taking it back yet.
The reason this is so important to know is Taiwan is a major source of tension between the US and China. This is of course due to the fact that the US is/has been arming them. Not arming in the sense of giving them guns; rather arming them with sovereign country grade weapons systems. Taiwan has a world class functioning Army, Navy and Air force - thanks in large part to the USA.
The censorship of western content that recognizes Taiwan is an attempt to prevent the legitimizing of Taiwan in both the minds of the mainland Chinese and those in Taiwan.
Pits they didn't ban the sale and distribution of these games:
Freecell
Minesweeper
3D Pinball
Solitare
Philip
Signatures are broken
They are banning FIFA 2005 as well? Perhaps they are truly understanding that soccer is a violent as the vietnam war. ;-) (Toungue in cheek)
They forgot to ban Computers.. and the internet. oH WAIT, you can no longer breathe AIR, thats imported also.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
I would hope that if they are going to censor their people, they would also prevent them from playing games like DAIKATANA... ooohhh the crappyness.
Peep that
Polo ponies don't exist, and have never existed! I'm sure of it. They only use full size horses.
Me
What *I* don't get is why they're illegalizing games that are "pirated". What does that mean? They saw a guy selling pirated copies of FIFA on the street, so then they're blocking imports of that game entirely?
This is China. On every corner someone approaches you an tries to sell pirated DVDs, games, etc.
Police seems to ignore that.
Now if they see a guy selling copies of an illegal game I'm afraid, this guy might soon stand on a corner in Inner Mongolia (with other problems than selling illegal DVDs)
Copyright violation is no big issue in China. Selling potentially government-critical stuff is.
I don't need a signature.
Amen. There is way too much teenage carping about "stuff costs money, everything should be free" on Slashdot. Get over it. Get a job. Pay for the stuff you want. This is not the *AA asking for copyrights to be extended to (forever-1day), this is software companies making legitimate products and asking to get paid for them, in the first few years after creation. Entirely reasonable. Come on guys, how many of you want to be software developers? How many of you want to get paid enough that you can move out of your parents' basement? How do you expect to do that if the going rate for sales of your primary skill is zero dollars? You aren't going to make it up on volume...
Sounds like they need to take a cue from Matt Blunt, who not only steals elections, but banned all video games, (which he calls "[an] often violent style of entertainment",) from Missouri's prisons because video games apparently make one socially retarded.
This is after the violent video games had been removed from the correctional facilities - a move similar to the modest steps taken by the SGAPP.
I need sarcasm tags ... help!!!
FIFA, for example, includes a Taiwanese team. The Vietnam games are going to reflect a non-sanctioned view of the war. And so on.
Censorship for reasons of political manipulation masquerading as something else? the heck you say! (I'd throw stones, but then I listened to Howard Stern once last year when he was laying into Bush and company.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
What on earth is wrong with Fifa 2005??
You can't get games like FIFA or The Sims in China? Aren't they missing out on an incredibly lucrative market? I'm especially surprised at EA, they have shown themselves to be money-grabbing scumbags at the best of times.
Frankly, it's time to retaliate against abusive trading "partners" like India and China.
They go and subsidize things like "high tech" and "manufacturinig" then shove it down our throats. The working Moms and Dads of America can't compete against state subsidies, massive pollution, state run healthcare, slave labor and employer friendly guest worker programs.
It's time to manage this nonsense for the benefits of American citizens.
Jeezuz, it's bad enough that the Slashdot editors repost old stories, now the readers start doing the same. What's the world coming to?
(Only kidding, Ogman; I just don't want the editors to make a story out of your comment, in case they should bother reading the comment section. And it's quite likely that they read the comments, since they rarely seem to read the frontpage.)
Some people have pointed out that China is banning these games because they are often pirated games, not because of any political agenda.
That still doesn't make sense to me. If you ban The Sims 2 outright, wouldn't that mean that EVERYONE in China that wants to play that game will have to pirate it? Sure, it was probably widely pirated before, but now the Chinese will have no other choice but get a pirated copy if they want to play it, since the option to buy a legitimate copy at a store is now gone. And you know they're not going to just stop playing it because it was illegal, pirated copies of games are illegal, too, but that doesn't stop that, does it?
By doing this, China is not cracking down on pirated copies of these games- they are instead cracking down on legit copies of these games because those are the only copies that they can accurately track. People will still play these games either way.
I've got a great VCD published by the Chinese government documenting their China/Vietnam war. After the US finally completely pulled out of Vietnam in 1975 (under Donald "Surrender Monkey" Rumsfeld), China turned on the Vietnamese Communists they had backed in the war against the US. And became the last in a long line of imperial losers trying to defeat the Vietnamese. (Betcha never heard of that dirty little chapter in the International Workers Paradise brotherhood.)
The VCD is entirely first-person movies of actual military action, shot by China from their troops, and some captured from Vietnamese troops who shot their own footage. It's black and white, but full of action and fast cuts, along with subtitles in Vietnamese and (I guess) Han and Cantonese Chinese, over pair of Vietnamese and (I guess) Mandarin narration voiceovers. It all flies by so fast that I want to slow it down, which would stretch its hour into at least two, an epic on a war both hidden in the West, and doubtlessly fictionalized in the East. It looks like a trove of material to illustrate a historical game, even if crudely integrated with overlaid interactive game graphics. And I doubt it could represent that tawdry little commentary on Communism any less accurately does than its Chinese propaganda version. Plus, I'd expect its inevitable banning by the Chinese mafia government to spur its underground popularity in the vast Chinese market. Who's with me?
--
make install -not war
An oppressive regime that censors anything that might go against their agenda. A government known for human rights violations. Definately not a democracy. Iraq? No, China! I guess extremely cheap labor is worth more than cheap oil. I mean, if we bombed China and killed a bunch of people, who would make our fireworks and Wal-Mart clothes?
BTW, is China still our "Most Favored Nation"? Or was that just a Clinton thing?
The Chinese mafia government is pretty tough - they hanged 27 Windows pirates in the mid-1990s to appease some mid-bubble ranting from the West Coast, among uncounted other onslaughts against humans in the name of property. But they're up against a population pushing 2 billion people, many now grasping for slippery virtual property. Won't these draconian interventions just create more value adds for the Chinese piracy and gaming undergrounds? Won't they be outleveraging themselves out of credibility as a government, especially in the eyes of their most productive segment, computerized kids? Putting this repression on a group of fanatical people armed with paychecks, globally competitive skills and culture, and decentralized telecommunications, not to mention a taste for violence, seems a strategy that courts defeat in the long run.
--
make install -not war
This from a country that sends the world the majority of spam (2nd being Japan) and eats their own babies.
China is the new Axis of Evil. They kill Christians, ban good video games. And the whole dang country is going to hell.
http://www.john-neal.com/
It's a bunch of horse-hockey.
>>the developers are Swedish not American
Arn't the Swedes supposed to me neutral? It would kill the game somewhat if you only had the option to play as Sweden, all you could do is watch, (unless you wanted to play at transporting enamy troops to Norway by train).
At least if you played Switzland you could get to pick a couple of weapons (small Swiss Army knife, Swiss Army knife with compass, Swiss army knife with wood saw etc.)
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
It's Xinhua.
This has nothign to do with piracy. The reason all of that software is being pirated in the country is because the government either A) revied it and found it 'unfit for the minds of youth' or B) havent reviewed it because the publishers already know it wont get approved. This is about censorship plain and simple. If the games could be bought legally they wouldnt need to pirate them as much, Also if the games could be bought legally they would be crakcing down on only pirated copies, not BANNING the games.
I don't understand the RTFA posts. Sure the article does say that China is banning some illegal games, but history proves that China bans games and open discussion at will:
Football
Hearts of Iron
General BBC article
- Pirated copies of the following games are banned: Age of Mythology: the Titans, The Sims 2, Manhunt, FIFA 2005, Battlefield Vietnam and Painkiller: Battle out of Hell. PIRATED copies. Much to the delight of the makers of those games. They can still be legally sold and obtained in China.
- These games were illegal in China (they weren't allowed to be sold -- banned): Conflict Vietnam, Vietcong: Fist Alpha and Devastation. But, presumably, people sold them anyway and therefore they have been banned. Let me repeat, only the following games have been completely banned from China: Conflict Vietnam, Vietcong: Fist Alpha and Devastation.
First slashdot reports an urban legend as true and now this.<ranting about how incompetent news posters are and how careless slashdot editors have become>
What games have our lawmakers banned?
What? None? I thought so.
Now that I've utterly destroyed your idiotic post, I hope the moderators will mod this tripe down.
I'm not sure that Funny is what I'm thinking of when I read that post. Maybe, (Score:5, (Accurate) Dire Predictions of the Future)?
Sounds like an abridged version of 1984 minus a nice cosy room at the ministry of love
But the US won't, because Freedom is doublespeak for Capitalist Market, which China already is.
Thus, bring on the fascism, as long as the US profits.
It should be China promoting 50 new games
AP- In a flash of brilliant marketing, China has given 50 games the kiss of life by banning them. Young students were clamoring to see the list so they could figure out what games they wanted to get ahold of first. One unnamed student was quoted as saying "I've never had a way to find out what games would be good. This list is awesome".
-Nuke the moon
I don't know about China, but I can tell you first hand that in Eastern Europe during communism, people also bought stuff to feel good about themselves. There were people starving themselves and their family for a lifetime to get a bigger TV or an imported car, or to show off at work that they can afford imported cigarettes or whatever.
Again, from experience, I can tell you that The Sims could have been just as well about a Soviet family, or a Czech one, or a Bulgarian one, or an East German one. Maybe the prices would be 10 times higher, then, but that's about it. (Well, and also homosexuality would get your sims arrested.)
The difference is the abbundance and cost of goods. In America you might not _need_ to take a loan to get a new fridge. (But you might do it anyway.) And in The Sims you only need to "save up" for 3 days or so for a fridge. In Eastern Europe, you'd feel the monthly paymets a lot more.
But the basic phenomenon is the same. It's basically about keeping up with the Joneses, or preferrably one-upping the Joneses.
And it's existed everywhere humans live, and for as long as humans have existed. No offense to the Egyptians, whose ancient culture I actually admire, but the pyramids are the perfect example of that phenomenon happening verbatim some 4000 years ago. They started with a small mastaba, and ended up with monstrosities that took a lifetime to build, and cost the country a lot. Because each pharaoh wanted to show all y'all that his... ahem... obelisk, is bigger than yours. And than the previous pharaoh's.
Or in the same ancient times phoenicians made a fortune trading in luxury items, like purple dye. It had no other value than being an expensive thing to show off with. Made some people good about themselves that they can afford it. Proto-Consumerism at its finest back then, eh?
And so on, and so forth.
So basically I think the Chinese government is kidding themselves if they think that China is above consumerism.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I wonder when the 1,3G Chinese people will be fed up enough with their dictators pretending to be communists that they get rid of them at last.
Although banning games is useless meddling with symptoms, I normally can grok the intention behind (like trying to reduce violence by banning violent games). But in Sims 2 there is no violence, no sex, no [anything harmful] at all!
Sex is gread. Pictures of people having sex are good. Pixelated pictures of people having are bad. Pixelated pictures of 2005-era CGI characters having "woo-hoo" is beyond the pale.
Not interested in the US's freedom to be stupid.
So piating the games is illegal. But can they be bought legally from the Bureau of Video Games? Could they ever have been? The article was ambiguous, so does anyone have outside info?
Like I said, it's *mostly* a terrible evil law through the 'wonders' of US Propaganda. Which is little different then the propaganda foisted upon Chinese school children.
If all the world's governments or individuals teaching school could simply overcome the need to spout off only partially correct or completely incorrect propaganda about everyone else...
Well, let's just say the human species would likely be better off.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
You hit the nail on the head. Too many people
seem to value money far above people, and will
bite and claw their way to the top, even if it
means fucking someone else over.
Speaking of that, I live near Hollywood, the
home of multi-million dollar mansions,
limos, glitz, glammer, and loads of money. Yet,
there are men, women, and even runaway children
selling their ass on the streets just to add
a few extra points to their
monetary "score"(translation: to be able to eat
that night.) I'm sick of this giant, cold hearted,
cruel, and yes, *DEADLY* "video game" that we
usualy refer to as "the economy".
Mod Parrent up
+5 insightful
The article says China is banning 50 games, 26 of which are pirated. Since they are banning the game and not going after sources of piracy, the explanation is simple: it's disguised censorship.
Take a game like "The Sims 2". It's not published in China. Hence, all copies of "The Sims 2" in China are pirated. Hence, China can claim they are fighting piracy... But the truth is, if EA decided to publish "The Sims 2", they would not be able to because it is banned. (Interestingly, Ubisoft tends to publish EA games in China; for instance, Call of Duty. AFAIK, EA doesn't publish in China.)
That being said...
The dychotomy of China is that, while a game, movie or book might be banned from legal publishing, the Government makes no real effort to prevent piracy! If you're a movie director who does gay movies in China, the Government will most certainly 'ban' your film, which means you'll never find a distributor and cannot make money from projections. Your movie can still be found for a buck on the street corner, though.
So, the result of banning a pirated game just means publishers will never be able to publish it in the Mainland.
Result: it encourages piracy by preventing legal publishing.
sanitize life for all of your citizens. Reduce the amount of lifestyle variation in your culture. It's your own downfall. So get crackin!
In keeping with Hitler's "tell a big enough lie and people will believe it" principle, China persists in maintaining the myth that Taiwan is not a sovereign nation. This despite the fact that all evidence is to the contrary. They are helped in this by nations that want their business (like the US and most of western Europe), but even that is handled with a diplomatic wink and a nudge.
Suppression of the truth on this sort of scale is the death knell of dictatorships, and I predict we will see the fall of these tyrants in our lifetime. Just wait until their economy takes a downturn (as all economies do from time to time) and 1.3 billion hungry people take a hard look at their situation.
S
Soon books and people will will burn for owning
books from the west or speak of overturning the government.
I pray our own laws won't do the same to US.
--
Farenheit 451 proves that knowledge is powerful
----- You know you have ego issues when you register a domain in your name.
[This isn't flamebait--just trying to make a point] ...
I hear that the Chinese are also banning titles like "Assassinate Chairman Mao" and "Kill Those Commie Bastards"
I wonder why?
C'mon. Do you think the US government would probably frown upon a game from the Middle East entitled "Death to Infidels" where one tries to assassinate the president, drive planes into buildings, and behead Jews? To some of these extremists, these are perfectly appropriate methods of war but we call them terrorists. I could only assume that the Chinese find any games laced with "imperialist dogma" to be equally offensive to their culture. I'm not saying it's right, I'm just pointing out the double-standards we live by. It's all relative, man.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I guess this means that "Grand Theft Auto - Tiananmen Square" is also out.
Slashdot is really starting to suck hardcore lately.
The post seems to be trying hard to imply that the games themselves were banned, as if for content or otherwise in the name of censorship. But if you actually read the article, it's nothing of the sort. The games are banned because they're only being distributed illegally (all copies of the game in China are inherantly pirated). This is completely different. It's more likely to mean that China is trying to pave the way for foreign software to enter their market, not the other way around.
It's bad enough when people here don't RTFA, but when the original poster's start not RTFA either, this whole website is going to shit.
----- sXe
i thought she was knocked-up too? gee if so, he got away with what would be today a double murder.....
> non-violent drug offenders getting the electric chair.
Such as?
. You hit the nail on the head. Too many people
seem to value money far above people, and will
bite and claw their way to the top, even if it
means fucking someone else over.
Speaking of that, I live near Hollywood, the
home of multi-million dollar mansions,
limos, glitz, glammer, and loads of money. Yet,
there are men, women, and even runaway children
selling their ass on the streets just to add
a few extra points to their
monetary "score"(translation: to be able to eat
that night.) I'm sick of this giant, cold hearted,
cruel, and yes, *DEADLY* "video game" that we
usualy refer to as "the economy".
Shouldn't that be Xinhua
Boo hoo. My government turned out not to be a surrogate mother. Boo hoo. Life sucks.
My government likes other bad governments. Boo hoo.
No matter how hard I work...I still have to work. Rich people don't work. Boo hoo.
My government isn't serving me happy burgers...but try to be happy anyways.
(Someone's not having a good Wednesday!)
damaged by dogma
You do bring some valid questions about communism, so here's some first-hand info. And the comparison to The Sims. Now I dunno about China, but in the Eastern European/Soviet kind of communism:
- you did get more money if you got a promotion, or simply by staying longer in the same job. They had some standardized lists of job levels, number of years in the same job, etc, which gave you a standard salary for whatever bracket you fit in.
I.e., if anything The Sims is _more_ Soviet style than American capitalism. I don't remember my Sims ever negotiating a salary... and discovering that they're paid half of what Bob Newbie earns at the same job level. Just because Bob is a white male, whereas your Sim happens to be black or female, so he/she can only get a token job at the reception.
- communism was all about giving everyone a job, and keeping them in it, regardless of any economics. (Which is one thing that drove their economy into the ground.) It couldn't happen that you suddenly got fired because the comrade commissar leading the company got a better deal outsourcing to India, or "downsized" half the company to please the shareholders.
Just like in The Sims. (You can get fired in TS2, though, but only if you choose the most spectacularly stupid choices in those random events.)
- You certainly could move to another company or switch carreers, and I personally know people who did. E.g., from economist to programmer. Or here's another bit of _fact_ for you: _all_ KGB employees had branched into it from another job. Their agents had to have a university/college degree in some unrelated job, and had been later given the opportunity to switch carreer to the KGB if the KGB deemed them worthy. Or a lot of the army officers and NCOs were poor workers and peasants who had basically switched carreer to the military because it paid better (and obviously went through a military school for it.)
Just like in The Sims, eh?
- You could definitely buy _most_ stuff without a waiting list and without anyone's approval. There were indeed things like cars, and a few others that did require waiting for years, because the economy could only supply about a tenth of the demand.
But then again, you can't even buy a car in The Sims, at all, ever. So...
- You did have to go through approval (and massive corruption) for some other stuff, depending on the country, like moving to a major city. Or in China for moving to another city at all.
Then again, in The Sims you can't even move to another _street_. You're stuck to living around Sim Lane for ever. In TS2 you can move a family to another town, but neither of them is really more than a village, so in most communist countries that would need no more paperwork than in, say, western Germany. You just had to inform the authorities that you moved there, basically.
- A lot of the stuff was heavily based on corruption and nepotism. Knowing the right person and giving them the right "gift" did more for your carreer or your position on those waiting lists, than basically anything else. Having a friend of a friend who can introduce you to the one who'll approve or deny your paperwork, was usually more than half the solution. (Yet another thing that drove their economy into the ground.)
Where have we seen something similar enough? Yep, in The Sims. You need enough friends for a promotion.
Etc.
Basically communism wasn't _that_ different as you seem to assume, once you get to the micro level that The Sims is all about. Yes, it was pretty much a synonim for oppression, corruption and poverty. No arguments there. But at micro level, you weren't exactly a slave chained to the desk where you work, either.
Their brand of slavery was slightly more subtle, and based on having not much other choice. It was a _macro_ thing, rather than micro-managing everyone. E.g., they didn't plan that _you_ are sold into slavery to do Job X for the rest of your days. They just planned that there are 200,000 of jobs i
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Such as I was being facetious in my response to a troll.
Too many people in this country believe in the myth of the meritocracy. It's true that we have more social mobility than say, Feudal Japan, but the idea that anyone can bring themselves from rags to riches is pure fantasy. Only a select few, the ubermench among us, are capable of this.
I'd also like to recommend the film Born Rich, made by Johnson & Johnson heir Jaime Johnson. I took a personal interest in this movie, having at one time been on his father's payroll (very briefly). He stops short of analyzing the sociatal implications of hereditary wealth, but the film is telling - not a single one of his super-rich friends did a thing to earn their vast fortunes (including the ones who are considered "new money").
It would seem that the President of the United States posts to Slashdot. His comment above mimics those reported in Ron Suskind's NT Times Magazine article "Without A Doubt":
The difference, eloquently summed up by another as in "we have more freedom", is that you are free to become one of those few rich, and in your cynical view, exploit the many poor. While not everyone is poor out of choice, some of the poor are there due to laziness. When was the last time you did something to change your situation, or the situation of those around you for the better? Even if you believe your post, and are firmly convinced that the polo-pony riding elite power structure will never change, you can still make every effort to go out and get yourself a pony and fake your way into the country club.
Later, you ask what I did to change it.
I try to change it all the time. I am a journalist, and I work hard. The truth is to be told, and there are literally millions of people in this country, who are poor, who have great intelligence, and who could do a better job than our current elected man-king.
Ignore all the facts about Bush but one: When did a son of a powerful man ever do a good job in history? What? We have had maybe a handful that have ever been worth a crap.
Since when did hiring the loser son of anyone in power make any situation ever better? Usually that is the last person your civilization ever gets as a leader, if you count up all of the implosions of societies. How can anyone ever think that it was a good idea? The son of a powerful man is always a punk. ALWAYS. Why are we surprised when Dubya acts all snotty to anyone that disagrees with him? That is "Rich Kid 101."
"Dude, my dad owns a dealership and knows the Sherriff, so we're cool, alright? So do it, man."
Back to America.
How can you explain that the system is not a feudalistic sham when only once in a blue moon someone of ignoble birth gets to be President or a Senator, and instead we have a parade a line of nepotistic skull 'n bones brat-children who can't add two and two together as the leaders of this system?
Freedom? Freedom involves choices. If the freedom that you speak of is the freedom to climb to the top of the pile to kick the other dogs off of your hill, then that isn't freedom at all, it is feudalism, exactly as I stated, where families push their bratty, maid humping progeny off on us generation after generation, and the differences are moot.
The truly smart, and the truly good hard working intelligent underclass of this world have always been beat down. How else do you hold them, they got nothing to lose. That is the only way to hold your power. There are a freakin' billion on this planet that are smarter than your high-class idiot spawn even without a Ivy League education. When your cocaine-sniffing son can't intellectually compete in an advanced society, what do you do? YOU BUY THE ELECTION, KOWTOW TO THE POWERS THAT BE, OR CHEAT.
Surprise surprise where we are right now. We have a boy-king. And he wages the sport of kings, WAR, at his discretion. I am shocked. "My GOD, WE HAVE NEVER SEEN THIS BEFORE! This is a totally new global dynamic going on!"
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
There are a lot of smart people buried in phone answering jobs out there because of the misfortune of birth. I think we can all attest to the caring, fantastic morals, honesty, appeals to higher thinking, and absolute brilliance of the current President of the United States... and how it all seals my argument against your flag waving.
Just don't try to shove that one word (freedom) down my throat to explain a complicated universe that no one can comprehend. This kind of talk is for the big boys with big ideas.
Don't come peddling that intellectual marketing that we call the political process around here these days.
The poor get screwed. Don't sell me otherwise.
Oh, and indeed, no matter what I say about America, China is a freaking hellhole. So stop that counterargument right there. They aren't connected.
In keeping with Hitler's "tell a big enough lie and people will believe it" principle, the United States persists in maintaining the myth that Iraq was a threat to us. This despite the fact that all evidence is to the contrary. They are helped in this by nations that want their business (like the UK and most of eastern Europe), but even that is handled with a diplomatic wink and a nudge.
Suppression of the truth on this sort of scale is the death knell of dictatorships, and I predict we will see the fall of these tyrants in our lifetime. Just wait until their economy takes a downturn (as all economies do from time to time) and 300 million hungry people take a hard look at their situation.
I was not even remotely commenting on what you said, I think you're 100% right about China - but I couldn't resist this, it just fits too well...
If any of you guys can read Chinese, the Chinese version of the story says that 26 of the games banned were pirated games and the other 24 were being sold before getting any permission from related authorities.
And BTW, some people here need to update their information about China. I can still remember when I casually mentioned that I had watched a movie named A Clockwise Orange or something in an interview with a HK reporter a few years ago, the shocked look on her face (she was pretty... but that's another story). Wake up from the Cold War! Basically people here in China (at least college students) can get mostly everything from the Internet, from anal porn to H-games (oops, these things sound belonging to the same category?) to Friends (SitCom) or 24 Hours. I'm not trying to say that everything is perfect here, and there are still a lot of restrictions officially, but... things are changing, and it's not all that bad.
Will Google help enforce the ban?
from http://www.cctv.com/news/china/20050126/102938.sht ml
...(26 in total) are on the piracy list.
(yes, Simplified Chinese)
The Sims 2, Painkiller, Battlefield Vietnam, Titan and FIFA 2005
The Doom and other games (don't know their names in English) (24 in total) are on the illegal distribution list, which they are translated and sold in China without the approval. There are some names of the companies involved in the "illegal selling" in the news.
Apparently, China didn't ban any games. They don't need to, they can simply refuse to give out the permission of some particular games (too violence, political incorrect)they don't like, and it will fall into piracy category if someone try to play it, unless it is copyright-free.
Why is this offtopic?
What is this "sex" you speak of?
All good things...
This means, if you copy those games in US and sell them in China, you can charge 4x the price because first you will have almost no competitor, and second people can't find these games anywhere else, and third these games are good.
Idiotic Chinese government, or maybe they did this because they wanted to monopolize these games. (grin..)
You sure sound like one!
I think this is wrong
c ategory=63268&item=8164233005&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW /
searching on china's ebay show Sims 2 being sold.
http://cgi.ebay.com.cn/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&
have a look for yourselves and try a few more title of the list of banned games and see if they are for sale.
ebay in china http://www.ebay.com.cn/