Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Government to Put a Time Limit on Gaming
Flyph writes "The Chinese Government unveiled a new online gaming timer mechanism that will try to prevent gamers from playing online games for more than three hours at a time. From the article: '"This timing mechanism can prevent young people from becoming addicted to online games," Kou Xiaowei, Deputy Director of the Audiovisual and Internet Publication Department of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), said during a press conference.' Maybe this is a way to prevent the goldfarming that goes on in MMORPGs." Of course, China may just want to avoid a tragedy similar to the recent South Korean man's death covered on Slashdot.
From TFA:Mabye I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that your average gaming young person will simply switch to another chracter in the same game, or failing that, another character in a different game.
Again from the TFA:Seems to me that the members of this "Beijing Accord" aren't as concerned with the welfare of young people as they are with insuring that the average gamer must have accounts on two or three different games to keep playing as much as they'd like.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I am astonished that it was suggested that China is doing this to prevent a death from game addiction. Was this serious? When I think of a government protecting the health, safety, and rights of their citizens I don't really think of the Chinese government.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
Of course, China may just want to avoid a tragedy similar to the recent South Korean man's death covered on Slashdot.
That's not a tragedy, it's natural selection at work.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
Polution laws? Maybe next year.
Internet-gaming-related death? We'll get on that right away.
And stock pile on Kleenex.
Example: in WoW, you de-level from 40 to 20. What happens to all your kit that requires level 30 to equip? Conditions like that could make the China WoW code quite a pain in the ass to maintain.
-EvilMagnus
If the guy was really worth something to society, he wouldn't be wasting his life playing video games. End of story. I agree, Psavo.
Note, too, that evil people write books, not computer games. Hitler or Mao, a piece of them will always live on in a book. The people who blow themselves up in the name of Islam in Iraq, Israel and lately London do it because of what they read in a book, not because their character on WoW does it.
China has got it all wrong, again. If they really wanted to do themselves (and us) a favor, they would make sure their population can't read.
Of course, China may just want to avoid a tragedy similar to the recent South Korean man's death covered on Slashdot.
Hawaii has decided to cut down all coconut trees to prevent people dying from a coconut blow to the head. (there are more deaths per year by coconut then by sharks and gaming together)
Maybe when they say the character is crippled, they actually mean all characters under the same account name. Although the real hardcore players can easily have multiple accounts at the same time, probably 99% of the MMORPG players play with a single account, thus the discouraging effect should work on them. But on the other hand, those 99% of the players don't kill themselves by playing 40 hours straight to start with.
The Chinese government scares the hell out of me and I'm hoping for a revolution of some sort. I think that pissing off a generation of people with such a crappy law will surely make a revolution come that much faster.
probably 99% of the MMORPG players play with a single account, thus the discouraging effect should work on them.
So do you claim that fewer than 1 percent of MMORPG customers play more than one publisher's game? Three hours on EverCrack, three hours on World of WarCrack, three hours on Guild Wars, and you can still feed your addiction. Or are you counting on some government-backed federated identity system to enforce a cumulative limit of three hours per day across all games?
That bit you quoted doesn't say anything about characters being de-leveled. Second, if you could level from 20 to 40 that fast before they found whatever bug you were using, you're probably playing those games too much anyways. Finally, if you're level 40 but still wearing level 30 junk, you need an upgrade badly.
As much as a "westerner" would laugh at this, for the Chinese this is probably appreciable (to a degree). Some context:
- China is host to a lot of conversative thinking. This includes suspicion of videogames, which are strongly associated with 1) Japan, 2)western excess, and 3)isolated youth. Korea and Japan have an obsession with games, which many Chinese find disconcerting.
- Youth, despite being routinely used for hard work, are considered important to the degree that they should stick with the familiy. A cultural gap, as societies (there's more than one in China) modernize, has appeared that includes new elements like pop culture and urbanization. Chinese parents are concerned about this new future for their children. It might also be shameful for a youth to be idle, disassociated with the family, and over-enthusiastic about videogames.
- The PRC has recently been pressed to provide more services and better responsiveness to popular worries. It started with lip service by Jintao and Jaibao, but the presence of strikes and media decentralization has forced the need for good press. This flimsy "service" is a gesture.
- HCI (human computer interaction) is new to many Chinese and the government's help in softening the introduction (including addressing addiction) may be seen as a good-will gesture. We don't like Big-Brother, but it's common for a government to assist in the spread of "new" technology and allay worries of adoption. Control can be comforting.
- Health is a very important concept in China. Often it is linked to a religious/philosophical notion of balance. Obviously, too much of anything like videogames will distort balance. Good familial relations also ties into this concept of balance. Until videogames become cross-generational and respected, they won't neatly harmonize with traditional views.
In fact, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Labour Party opposed communism. Communist states became Teh Enemy only after the transition from World War II (the Allies vs. the Axis) to World War III (the West vs. the Soviet Bloc, fought in such places as Korea and Vietnam, often called the Cold War because it didn't go nuclear as expected, nor was there any armed conflict on USA or USSR soil).
This is really going to mess up the gold farming economies...
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
They are about individual accomplishment and usually materialistic gain. Even most non-MMORPGs are about individual accomplishment in the way of score.
Plus, heaven forbid, you might meet someone who doesn't toe the party line.
Addiction my ass. They are protecting their addiction to exploiting their own people under the guise of socialism. Some are more equal than others.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
In communist China...
I think it's more likely that the companies are pledging their support because it's not a good idea to argue with the Chinese goverment. Greed is secondary to survival. On the flip side, corruption from either side will enable the existence of loopholes in the laws or implementation where multiple accounts may allow gamers to bypass the time limit with multiple accounts. Just as likely would be (for WoW,at least) where rewards for killing specific NPC's (i.e. The last boss of any major instance) would be unaffected as those battles are expected to take a long time to reach and complete. Well, that or they incorporate some kind of weekend/holiday filters.
Too bad this won't affect the gold farmers on the US servers. Even if they made it so that chinese accounts on US servers were affected, there would just new hacks around it, if not just new accounts created. What will be interesting is how the farming on the Chinese servers.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
This may also put a stop to the sweatshop-like use of outsourced labor in China, in regard to harvesting gold and weapons from multi-player online games.
See this article, linked to from Slashdot a while ago: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815
"It was hell!" recalls former child.
The moment my government tries to prevent me from gaming more than three hours is the moment I start guerilla warfare.
God spoke to me.
So it makes it harder for your character to level up after you've been playing for a certain amount of time? Isn't that what World of Warcraft does normally?
That's not gaming. That's business.
LMAO if we are on the same level, that means sitting AT A COMPUTER, killing VIRTUAL CREATURES is now a form of work.
OK, slashdot geeks. Calculate this: what is the work expenditure per hour to move your mouse back and forth enough to camp a [high level mob] in [game of your choice] and what is the income relative to said work expenditure. Extra credit for pie charts calculating relative work/income ratios for varios MMORPGs.
I have to say, FFXI is the most expensive one out there, but I still love it.
How in the world will it be enforced? And what is to stop somone from leaving there (think of the monitary loss) and going to another place and playing 3 more hours? The determined will find ways around this.
To the streets, comrades! They have gone too far this time, with their laws of crap!
Heaven forbid they piss off them young folks, what with the RIAA offices around the world burning to the ground and everything.
Seriously, if video games are anywhere near the short list of things you woud fight and die for, then your revolution deserves to be put down. Sure, limiting personal freedom in any way is bad, but I can think of about 100 other issues in China that would be a tipping point anywhere else, and they haven't stormed the armory yet.
In other news, anything that limits the actions of that one dude in the raid group who doesn't say anything and rolls on EVERYTHING, well, that can only be a good thing.
goddam idiot. The government wants this regulation! Not the firms, they just play nice so they don't loose all their business.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
>probably 99% of the MMORPG players play with a
>single account
Probably because there is usually no need for more than one account. However, that can change with things like this.
Follow me here. Online Gaming is always reduced to the guys who spend 18hrs a day sniping at newbs. Pick any game, its always reduced the same, if you didn't buy it in the first 6mos, by the time you get in you are a serf to a hundred jobless LVL32 (insert Superior Class here). To give everyone a fair shot, maybe developers should limit online time to say 6 "in world" hours a day, Extend other (Under-utilized at present) areas of gaming for the interested. Character development and customization, Economic commerce decisions, etc.. all that stuff that drags us out of the immersive feel of the game. Instead of layering "windows" and text on-top of the 3d world, move it all out of the world. Library, Hospital, Commerce, School, Chat & Socializitation, Story & Quest Info. All these would benefit from being free of 3d paradigm (except Combat school).
Seems like it would go a long way to extend the funlife of the game. The truly addicted will all be off by 6am. Take a lot of work to pull it off well.
Any Takers?
SourceForge is waiting....
Think about it, we already have a captive chinese audience, what is that 1..2.. billion?.
As a parent I wouldn't mind seeing a max hrs listed on the box. As a player, hmmm the extra stuff would have to be done very well, you know with Professional Writers and Artists. What? It could happen.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
This might get the somewhat left-leaning /. audience to wake up a bit about the PRC?
I know it's so very fashionable to b**** about corporate America or the religious right, but the religious right are libertarians compared to the atheist PRC.
Can I have permission to send this in to a newspaper the next time they pull that "gaming is evil, children can't read" crap?
Is the great Chinese network able to identify both big budget MMORPGS like World of Warcraft and smaller ones like the classic MUD? These I think are more prone to causing addiction than any "here today gone tomorrow" packaged MMORPG...
The first line of text I saw on my first mud was (roughly) "YES! 32 Hours nonstop and counting!!"
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
The government of China announces a ban on the sale of tobacco products, citing their addictive nature and negative health consequences for users. "Protecting our citizens from new tech such as video games is important, but we must also keep them safe from long standing dangers like cigarettes. To ensure consistency in our policies, we today announce a ban on the sale and consumption of any and all tobacco related products within the People's Republic of China".
There's a lot more to this than people are talking about. There have been multiple deaths in China directly caused by online gaming addiction, the most recent in Beijing about a month and a half ago. A man had been logged onto an online game for about 50 hours (I forget the exact number, but it was close to that) without eating or taking bathroom breaks when he just fell over.
More problematic is the indirect deaths that have been caused. There have been quite a few cases of internet cafe customers beating employees to death when they try and kick them out.
Not as deadly, but related, is the fact that some high school students have been found selling thier school books to fund this addiction. In one case the students stole hundreds of books from thier schoolmates and sold those as well.
1) You would get bad press from the hardcore players who generate a lot of early word of mouth for your games. These will probably be a large portion of your beta testers. 2) MMO's are basically IRC with a pretty screen saver. Personally I am running the game most of the time just to chat with friends while doing other stuff. 3) Addiction is how they retain users. They don't really want you to have the spare time to try out another MMO and decide you like it better. They would rather users had no spare time then to be constantly competing with other MMO's.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
My Scottish and Irish ancestors were knocked around, dispossesed and pissed on by the english.
The Normans conquered and ruled my English forebearers.
My Loyalist great-great-great-great-grandparents had their land stolen by the Americans, who then threw them right out of the country.
I've managed to get over it and live my life.
Why does everyone focus on video games so much? Seriously, there are a LOT worse things to worry about, and I'm not talking about wars and genocides here. In America, we have lawyers working punishing, stressful 70+ hour workweeks, but when someone plays video games for even half that amount everyone goes berserk over how bad they are. In Tokyo, rank and file bussiness workers called sararimen leave early, then get back VERY late at night, seeing their family only for a few hours each day. These people are dying fairly regularly from stress and other things, but no one lifts a finger to try and stop this from occuring. The one time someone does die "from" a video game, it's suddenly everywhere on the internet, and in some newspapers.
There were many economical and political reasons. But slavery was a KEY issue, despite many neo-revisionists.
Yes, it was a key issue, but it was a key economic and political issue. Oh, human rights had something to do with it, too, but even raising those issues had only become possible once it had become economically unnecessary and politically expedient for the north. If human labor were still as important for economic success today as it was back then, we'd still have slavery, human rights be damned.
Unpleasant as it is, nations need time to work things out for themselves and to work through various developmental stages. The US itself was historically rather late compared to other nations when it came to human rights and equality, and it is still behind many other nations. The US can see lots of flaws in China, but a holier-than-thou attitude or a verbal lashing isn't going to help the Chinese people either.