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.
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. :)
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!
I mean what else could they NOT like about the "world's" favorite sport?
Let me guess... Taiwan has it's own team?
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.
FIFA 2005 was banned because of its recognition of Taiwan as a country, which China has been trying its best to supress for some time. It seems that while China is claiming that this is an action to combat piracy violations, in reality we must recognise that it is the Anti-porn minister who's running this campaign so there's more than piracy that's afoot here.
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
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. */
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.
They discovered ideology.
--- Ban humanity.
Speaking of bans, they mentioned during one of the Prince Dumbass (the guy who wore the Nazi outfit to the party) news blurbs about Germany's ban on the swastica. Do they grant waivers for things like history books? Or do they have to blur out the symbol in any historical photos, or something?
--- Ban humanity.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Of course, it isn't really true that Chinese citizens are only allowed to have one child. For a short time, I dated a Chinese national who was enrolled in a US College.
She is the youngest child of 6 children. Her family spent most of its 'growing up years' in a farming community, although most of her brothers and sisters, as well as herself, have ended up obtaining rather advance college degrees.
I was a little taken aback when she said she had 5 brothers and sisters and I asked her about the one child law. She mentioned that wasn't necesarily true. It's encouraged, but not set in law where the government will break down your door for having more then one child and take you off to labor camps. That's mostly US propaganda.
Of course, she had several Chinese propagandist ideas about life in the US. It was pretty fun working through those things, while it lasted.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Do they grant waivers for things like history books?
Yes, they do. It would be a little pointless and self-defeating to remove them or blur them out from historic documents.
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
It's Xinhua.
- 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>
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.
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.
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":
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.