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PK'ing Banned in China For Minors
Evoluder writes "Just saw this over on worldofwar.net as it appears to apply to WoW as well. A story at interfax.com says China just passed a law prohibiting minors from playing games that allow players to kill each other (i.e., player killing)." From the article: "Minors should not be allowed to play online games that have PK content, that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players...Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and leads to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people."
There goes BZFlag.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
"At least we see how they will check for age. Citizen ID Card. That just makes me shudder"
Oh you don't own a Social Security Number card?
Chess, Checkers, Mahjong, etc. etc.
The goal is to beat or kill your opponent, 'nuf said.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
It's interesting that we find censorship of boob'age or swear words to be completely socially acceptable, but we balk at the idea of censoring PK'ing in games.
Who gets punished for breaking the law - the person playing the game, or the company who let it happen?
You know Communists aren't just out to ruin every body's fun. My guess is the reason they don't ban all games is because it provides entertainment and leisure for their population (and takes up little space), plus there really isn't a good reason to.
I might not totally agree with the reasoning for banning PK games, BUT that doesn't mean I'm right - I do understand the logic behind it.
Blizzard categorise their servers and greatly limit PvP on some World of Warcraft Servers. It would presumably not be too difficult to create a server mode completely without PvP.
Players will still be able to cause each other's characters to die by bringing hordes of monsters down on them, but that can be prevented by banning it in the T&C.
But what is the SIGnificance?
If you look at boobs in a game, the effects are way more similar to the effects of seeing real boobs. Seeing someone die on a game is very different than seeing someone get gunned down in real life. Just ask someone who's witnessed a drive-by or been to war. They start sweating and their heart-rate increases when they start talking about it. The video game death is out of our heads in minutes. I still talk about the time my roommate and I had someone get murdered in our apartment building. I never talk about the time we almost saw someone's boobs.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
If PvP is the only problem and they do desperately want to cater to under 18 year olds, all they'd need to do would be to not implement the PvP servers (or the Battlegrounds) and remove the flag that you get when you attack a city guard (or similar NPC) that normally makes you targetable by players. That should be very simple indeed to do.
I'll say this though, I'd pay good money never to have to play with some of the evil brats I've met in MMOG's.
China is not entirely the "Evil Communist Empire" it is made out to be. As with any communist society or decocratic for that matter you get people in power who are "out for their own agenda".
Corrupt politicians are possibly the ones behind these bans, though we may not know the reasons why they want these games banned. China has always had a strong belief in Confuciousism, and Buddism (in some parts) .
The idea of banning this type of game perhaps is thought to undermine the morality and identity that the Chinese people would like to teach the next generation.
As the world evolves and China presses forward into the technological future, it must be struggling to retain some of it's traditional beliefs and ideals. This is also a country that for centuries kept it's ways and traditions secret to the outside world until Chairman Mao took over around the 50's.
The country and it's people have a rich history, I'm am sure that this is just a step that those in power within the Chinese government see as a way to protect Chinese identity, and preserve thier culture for the future.
Without a history, we have no future.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Why do the Chinese leaders have the self-restraint to not ban games altogether, but they don't have the self-restraint to ban games with PK elements?
If you think of the Chinese leaders as the right wing of the Republican party, you aren't so far off: these people are socially conservative and pro business. When those principles are in conflict, it is unpredictable which one wins. In this case, they found a compromise that isn't all that different from the US or other conservative Western nation.
One difference is that the Chinese leadership is less constrained by pesky democratic and legal principles, so they can act faster on their whims; but should a US party achieve a filibuster-proof margin in the US, we may be heading that way, too.
They drove tanks over those young people only years ago when they protested, and now they suddenly care about their well being?
That's not unusual for governments: even the US government has killed innocent protesters.
In fact, politically, social conservatism ("ban sex and violence") is often associated with repression of political expression ("ban student protests", "get tough on radicals"), both in the US and in China.
Remember, all cultures are valid and must be respected. Except Western Anglo-Saxon culture. That doesn't count. Chinese people *want* to be oppressed. That's their culture. Those students in Tiannamen Square? They *wanted* to be run over by tanks. Don't you get that? But don't even think about making me recite the pledge of alliegance in school. That's a violation of my rights.
Remember, all women must have rights (including the right to kill unborn children, as we're not 100% sure they're really alive), unless they come from a culture that traditionally subordinates women. In which case, it's fine to treat them as property. In fact, don't listen to what they say, that's what they want deep down. The fact that, until 100 years ago, Anglo-Saxon culture treated women as property is not relevant; as we've discussed, that's not a proper culture.
Remember, tyranny is bad. Really bad. Unless the tyrant doesn't like George Bush, in which case it's a legitimate expression of valid grievances.
It's this strange web of nonsensical alliances of convenience that have shut the Left out of Government for so long. You've just managed to pick up on one expression of it.
In other words, not much effect at all, and what little there is is probably good for you. In my opinion, seeing real boobs is perfectly normal among healthy human beings. The fact that seeing them on screen is a bit like seeing them in real life is hardly an argument for censoring them, is it? That would only make sense if the effect was harmful, and in all honesty, I think it's actually beneficial to be used to seeing boobs in ordinary, non-abusive situations, to the point of it not being a sensitive thing.
Do you think that's a good thing, that images of suffering leave your head quickly, even if they're very realistic? That you've become insensitive to portrayals of violence? That's not innate from birth, you know.
If you show a young child realistic images of murder and brutality - the nasty stuff, not mere brawls - they're upset by it. Older children less so, and all the more if they've seen plenty already. Don't you think extensive exposure to violent imagery might have something to do with the extent of that desensitisation?
It's easy to think that semi-realistic killings in games, by the time your old enough to enjoy them, aren't bothersome because you know they aren't real. And that murder and brutality in films aren't real, so they're ok. But desensitisation goes in deeper than that. Notice you don't break out into a sweat when seeing real brutal violence and murder on the news, either, even when it's much more horrific than what you have personally witnessed.
If you'd hardly ever seen a dramatic portrayal of killing as you grew up, if you hardly ever witnessed such images, then as an adult you'd be shocked and outraged when you saw it happen. You might be more motivated, in a way that's more deeply-ingrained than just overcoming fear and apathy, to prevent it from happening, to intervene. Think about that. Imagine if the world were full of people with that sort of motivation.
For an adult example: remember the first video beheading from Iraq? People were shocked. If another one came out now, peoples' collective response would be much more muted.
Isn't it something of a tragedy to become insensitive to portrayals of suffering, while hypersensitive to portrayals of pleasure and bodies and things like that whether real or not?
Often these debates centre around the way dramatised violent imagery might cause violent behaviour (the evidence is inconclusive), or the bother the imagery might cause to people seeing it.
It's easy to neglect the obvious, down to earth and undeniable effect: See a lot of something, whether good or bad, and you become insensitive to those types of images. Isn't it something of a tragedy that we grow up insensitive to portrayals of the most awful experiences, yet hypersensitively angsty over glimpses of the pleasures we're too frightened to admit are daily, happy, good occurences for many healthy people everywhere?
Guess seeing boobs isn't a big deal then, neither real nor dramatised. So why's it such a big deal?
-- Jamie
"Chinese people are my friends"
Here in Europe, well, everything seems to be trundling along nicely
unless you say something deemed to be hate speech by the powers that be, in which case you can be arrested and or fined.
Everyone's fucked just not always in the same hole
Snowden and Manning are heroes.