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The Chinese Socialist MMOG
GP writes "How different is China? In the online game version of the idealized Socialist state, you gain experience points by 'doing good deeds' and 'thwarting spys'. You can even meet Chairman Mao!" From a great writeup by Scott Jennings on the game: "And now we have the online MMO version, 'Learn From Lei Feng Online', which allows you to... mend socks. Again - not making any of this up. To quote from the original Xinhua story 'For beginners, sewing and mending socks is the only way to increase experience and to upgrade,' said Jiao Jian, a six-grade pupil in Yuexiu District, quoted by the newspaper. He then continues. 'Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average,' he said. I'm pretty sure this isn't a translation screw up. The longer you grind, the more you look like everyone else. I guess new users wear designer pastels or something."
I wonder if you get an immediate ban for using 1337 Falun Gong macros.
How much do you get for killing infant girls?
//and before you ask, yes. When this type of thing is so pervasive in your country, it is very necessary to repeatedly point it out
Where do I wait in line for a copy?
in real life, Mao believed that deflowering virgins would help him live longer
All I need now is a steady stream of corsage bearing virgins.
Just one question: What do I do with the flowers?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
Yeah, cause countries like the United States never make propaganda games, right? Man, china's such a fucked up country! How dare they do this?!
MABASPLOOM!
I have level 25 Narcing ability! I can tell the authorities in mere seconds if I see someone reading banned materials or thinking subversive thoughts!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
A virtual sweatshop.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
What's odd is that the game is a throwback to something the CPC really quit trying to sell to anyone but party cadres. However, there's never homogeneity of opinion in any organization, including the Party.
Luke, help me take this mask off
To monitor what people are doing on their computers.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
It happens all the time in communist China and it is a major part of their culture.
Here are some facts for other mods to read:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5953508
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Remember the whole GBLT-friendly controversey in World of Warcraft? I can only imagine what the situation must be like in this "game." I wonder what the GMs are like...
And this is different from WoW in what way?
...would be if all PC gamers in China were REQUIRED to play a few hours of this game a day.
Muha muahahahhhaahaaa
Life is not for the lazy.
Amazing how well the ideological absurdity of utopian communism finds its expression in the mechanics of a multi-player online game. Or maybe it's not that amazing. Surely you World of Warcraft players, engaged in the "grind" of leveling, have heard an Orwellian Animal Farm voice calling "Work is Fun. Fun is Work. Fun is Unfun." Co-operation and submission to the group is explicitly rewarded through "Guilds" and similar organizations.
Of course, not only is the gameplay of multi-player online games ideologically communist, but the mechanics of game economies are explicitly communist. They are planned economies. Gold farming and black markets are exactly the same phenomenon. The Chinese Socialist online game will be interesting to watch for observers due to this inevitablity. How will they deal with external and internal black markets? Will it be possible to distinguish countermeasures gameplay from reality as ingame countermeasures are taken?
America's Army is more of a recruiting tool then propaganda. I consider it more like an ad.
I will be spending all my time farming socks. I can hear them now, damm these American sock farmers.
Killing virtual stuff is fun. Mending virtual socks doesn't even merit a put down.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
We get to meet mao, do we get to protest at tiananmen square?
You must be new here.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Since when is an advertisement not propaganda?
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
Yeah, you should probably look up what propaganda means..
MABASPLOOM!
Another enticing feature in the socialist game is that the level 1 sock menders make the same gold/minute as the level 99 epic monster slayers!
I know - it's comments like those that make me wish there was a "-1, idiot" moderation...
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Doesn't anyone see how this could be fun? Yeah, mending socks doesn't sound like a thrill, but what do you do for XPs when you're weak in a commercial fantasy game? Endlessly stab chickens? How is that more fun? No, I think mending socks in a sweatshop that more of a feel of honest labor.
I think my talent would be in being a newspaper reporter for the government. I'd try my best to sound like this North Korean paper. Really, it would be a blast! And I bet there would be all sorts of neat quests, like stopping burglars, helping fishermen, getting a village to quit smoking... the sort of stuff that would be really refreshing after months of "deliver this scroll to Naldemor and you shall receive this +2 sword and lots of XP!" Yes, it would take a lot of creativity to make this game fun, but I guess I am one of these people who still appreciates creativity.
From this article "Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average."
"More average" is not it is supposed to mean. That word should mean "simple".
Also, the title should read the Chinese Revolutionary MMO.This has to do with the person Lei Feng itself and the background at that time. "He was characterized by propaganda as a selfless and modest figure after his death and consequently was an idol to many." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lei_Feng
He is protrayed as a selfless person, including his accidential death at 22. A quote from him: "Life is limited, but the service to the country is boundless. I want to use my limited life to boundless serve the country."
It was the time whe loyality to the party that matter's most. In was in the 1950 and 60's in the history, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution
Hell, even if it happened in the U.S. some people wouldn't question it. "The pillows accidently smothered it in its sleep. We should be sueing the pillow company instead for this tragedy!"
I really hate it when governments try to sneak propaganda into computer games. This indoctrination of youth is really creepy. You're never going to see me advocating or playing a game like this. Those Chinese are just so... so... sinister.
[/goes back to playing America's Army]
I can just picture a giant Dalai Lama breathing fire and throwing his nobel peace prize at you...
But since everything in the shops (plus rent etc) costs about the same is here IN RELATION to that nickle, you can have quite a good standard of living. Or if you get bored with working, you could go back to your hut in the countryside and tend pigs for zero an hour.
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
Where's the torrent?
OK...
I can do this. I am, after all,
a superhero!
Most slashdotters don't know a damn thing about China. It is like listening to a bunch of humanities students talking about computers.
"Man, I just re-formatted my processor because I got a virus or a bug or something in my window."
"Yeah I know, you should use that linux-program I heard it really zaps those bugs!"
Some say he is made with ascii, others that he is eyeballed daily by millions. All we know is, he is known as the Sig
I'll be the karma whore.
Propaganda is a promotion of a cause or a particular idea - often times presented with a one-sided or distorted bias.
Advertising is a promotion of a product or service - often times presented with a one-sided or distorted bias
Put it another way, advertising may compel me to become fat or poor while propaganda may lead me to the gallows or the gas chamber.
I'm not a Troll, it's reverse psychology.
Amazing how the same lame sophistry dating all the way back to the first MUDs, and maybe even before, still gets spewed as if they were some deep revelation about humanity.
In fact, probably even before. I can imagine some "but I really want to start directly at the top of Pong's high score table" whiner sitting on the side and spewing rationalizations about how actually playing the game is "work", and how those poor Pong players got scammed into working in their free time and paying for it. (And make no mistake, playing arcade games used to cost a _lot_ more than 13$ a month.) Fast forward a bit in time and you find the same kind of people whining about how deluded people are to invest any kind of time or effort into their entertainment and, god forbid, to cooperate with other players.
That's all that levels, xp, epic equipment, or PvP ranks are: a way to keep the score, not all that different from Pong's or PacMan's high score table, or from a RL football team's rank in the leagues and championships. And some people "grind" for that score (in fact, for some trying to beat the high score _is_ the challenge and the fun), some people just play the game for what it is and let the score just happen on its own, and... some busibodies stay on the sideline and try to sound deeply philosophical in their lament about how sad it is that people put up with "having" to spend hours on their entertainment, or "having" to interact with other people or whole groups. (E.g., the group around the arcade machine.)
And yes, some form of coop play always existed even in those arcade machines. Ever since the first game got a fire button to mash, in addition to the directional joystick/trackball/whatever, I recall people "grouping" and having specialized "group roles" at the arcades. E.g., one would guide the character/ship/whatever around and dodge enemy fire, and one was mashing the fire button and dropping the AOE "bomb" at the right moment for maximum effect. I.e., using the modern MMO terms very loosely, one was the "tank" keeping the team from taking damage and one was the "damage dealer", even if noone used those words at the time. I.e., even when the game didn't actually offer the in-game mechanics for that, some found their own makeshift ways to cooperate and interact with other humans, regardless of how many others sit around and whine about how everyone else should be a loner.
Get this: it's not a matter of "work" or "grind" to some end. That's the actual game. It's ok if I "have" to spend some hours doing quests in WoW, because exactly that was the whole point and purpose in the first place: to waste some hours in a game. Gaining some level or armour piece at the end is just a virtual pat on the back, but the real purpose was to waste those hours in the first place. That's what entertainment is all about: filling your time with something better than staring at the walls.
It may surprise you, but it's not just MMOs. Actually _most_ of the RL passtimes need some time or effort, and most are someone else's "work". Do you enjoy tweaking your car? That's a mechanic's "work". Do you enjoy going dancing? A professional dancer would call that "work". Taking digital photos in the park with your cool new camera? Yep, pro photographers would call that "work". Play tennis or basketball with your friends? That's a pro athlete's "work". _Watch_ sports? Sports journalists do that for a living. Watch a movie and maybe discuss them with your pals? Yep, that's a movie reviewer's "work". Etc.
You'll notice that they also all involve some time spent on that hobby. E.g., a movie buff may spend hours a day "grinding" through movies on their DVD player. E.g., someone with a digital camera may "grind" for hours taking photos of squirrels in the park. Etc. Some of those, *gasp* may even involve "grouping" with people. E.g., going dancing with a couple of friends instead of doing it solo. Some of those *gasp* may involve joining some kind of a "guild". E.g., joining some photo community or whatever kind of associati
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
No they aren't and factory workers in China or anywhere else in poor countries do not have a good standard of living. Stop believing economists' lies, sweatshops are not good for anyone except corporations; why do you think they're illegal in the developed world?
The worst factories are obviously horrible and should not be allowed anywhere, much as child abuse should not be allowed anywhere ever. That said, a regular chinese factory offers better opportunities *for those choosing to work there* (not for you and me, obviously) than what is otherwise available.
The option really is tending pigs for zero an hour. That may or may not make the person happier, but it definitely makes him poorer.
Wait, mend socks?? But then how do I gold farm? How can I sell my clothes once I get it to look like everybody else's?
But they're not advertising a service or product, they're recruiting people for their cause. Following these ads could end with returning in a casket.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
russians != chinese
2006 != 1998
nuff said?
Surprisingly, the Chinese will go pee pee in your coke when they want to play a joke. I guess a few of the stereotypes are based in reality.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
When do they add the new Cultural Revolution expansion pack?
Nope. The whole revolution and "dictatorship of the proletariat" was Lenin's addition, and the reason why his "bolshevik" faction split from the "menshevik" faction that advocated gradual reforms, i.e., from the actual Marxists. Marx's vision was more of a long term utopia in which eventually the production levels become high enough to comfortably support everyone (and indeed in the 20th century they did), and basically there's no more reason to be a slave to those controlling the capital.
Marx's communism, since you explicitly mention that, was indeed all about sharing, as the GP mentioned. It was simply about having plenty to share. In his utopian vision there was no need to replace one set of slave owners with another set of slave owners, Soviet-style, because his utopian vision was all about a time when there's simply no more need for slaves or slave-owners. (By "slaves" and "slave-owners" I pejoratively mean the 19'th century workers and factory owners, not slaves on a cotton plantation.)
Transforming that into a "screw this, we'll just shoot everyone who stands in our way" theory is Lenin's work, and partially because Russia just wasn't economically at the point envisioned by Marx. There was no over-abbundance to share, but an impoverished country ravaged by war, with too little industry to be anywhere _near_ Marx's vision.
At any rate, if your country went the social reforms way, yes, you're not anything like Lenin's Soviet-style communism, but you may be closer to Marx's ideas than you think.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Basically what you describe there is insightful in its own right, but it's basically a sub-set of what Bartle described for MUD players. His division went something like this:
- socializers: basically the people who are there to chat, make friends, organize a guild, organize a player town/community/whatever, and generally be social about it
- achievers: people who want to have the highest score, a level 60 character, the biggest player house or the full epic suit for their class, etc.
- explorers: people who like discovering stuff. It can be finding a new quest, a new piece of the story, a new area, seeing a new instance, or finding out some cool new trick using the tools the game gives them. E.g., that you can get some cool effect by using two spells as a combination. (A lot of people who "just like to play the game" actually fall in this category: they like constantly being given new stuff to do or new pieces of the story. Then again, some don't fall in this category.)
- killers: these are the people whose fun is to annoy, harrass, humiliate, and whose greatest achievement is if they can get someone to leave the game completely, effectively perma-killing them from the game. A.k.a., "griefers". (Note that unlike what the term "killer" might imply, this isn't equivalent to "pvp players". Not all pvp players are killers, and not all killers are into pvp. Indeed a lot find more effective ways to harrass their victims.)
Basically while your distinction does have merit, and indeed is made by Bartle himself too, you seem to be sorta lumping the achievers and killers in one large category, and the socializers and explorers in the other. The distinction does exist in Bartle's paper too, as one of the divisions of his set: people who "play with" something/someone, versus people who "act upon" something or someone.
But it's only half the story. Dividing it again, gives some important distinctions too. For example while both might grind to level 60, an "achiever" may do it just for achievement sake, while a "killer" might do it to better gank or humiliate others.
And yes, you're right in another aspect: it's one of the major reason for social frictions among players. Many of those falling mostly in one category can't possibly understand what those in another category find fun in that. Maybe they're immature? Or whatever.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Diversity of information is good.
I don't have a problem with a socialist game, as long as its just a game. All the talk we give on censorship, the least we can do is be accepting of their version of free speech even if its not something we'd find popular.
We can have socialist games, or communist games, ultimately it's not real. As long as we can sell our ultra capitalist games to China, I think they have the right to sell their socialist games to us.
In which case encouraging military enrollment can be classed as propaganda, it's not a product.
However you define propaganda, the principles are the same in this case.
What word means in the dictionary
,complete data on a subject matter,highlighting some compelling aspects of a product,concept,or feature.
is different then what word means
In Reality(which is propoganda)
Political or economic goals that propoganda presents both end up CHEATING
the viewer to promote their goal.
Legitimate advertisement is presented as unbiased
I consider pop-up ads and spam a form of propoganda.
I'll bite.
The point is to provide a safe refuge for people who are sick of hearing "gay" or "fag" being tossed around as an insult. As a human being, I hear things like that and think "Are they ignorant or just being thoughtless?" As someone who's bisexual, it makes me queasy to think that the people I game with might spit on me in real life.
Consider what it's like to be a member of an openly despised minority and to have the slang word for that group be used as an insult. Nigger, kike, spic. If you're caucasion and say that won't happen to you, think of what it would be like to go to Japan and hear an old lady calling you "devil" behind your back.
Hot Chicks, Rock Music, Evil Masterminds, Superweapons, Giant Squids...
Sigh, Real Communists are so boring....
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Just a reminder that because of the Chinese calendar, today is the equivalent of April 1.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Oh, I agree with you entirelt that it was a retarded use, I'm just saying that /. seems to think that any loose connection makes it oblig. That and the irony of telling *you* that you must be new here.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
In China, the Party has been working to reduce the rate of female infanticide. They allow people to drop off female infants at state hospitals, orphanages, and elsewhere, without penalty, and the girls are then raised by the state. The downside of this is that to me it's somewhat creepy to have people raised entirely by a Communist State. But I guess it's better then death. Also, the only penalty for exceeding the one-child limit is a monetary fine. Many wealthier families (yes, they have those in China) simply suck up the fines and have as many kids as they want. This is a roundabout Party way to ensure that any family with more then one kid is able to afford it, so they don't have people on welfare with 15 kids pumping kids out for a bigger check. Instead of financial bonuses for extra kids, it's more like a tax on having kids. I learned all this when I asked someone in Military Intelligence who specializes in China what she thought of the one-child policy.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I'm an explorer, didn't know that. Little bit of killer, but I don't go out of my way to gank. Usually.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
The Chinese party does *not* kill infant girls. They kill *fetuses*. Fetus != human, got it? There's nothing wrong with killing a fetus, as long as it hasn't come out of the womb. Now if they do "partial-birth abortions" (infanticide), that's something to worry about. By the way, 95% of these abortions are at the behest of the father or mother. I guess CNN missed that when they did their little yellow journalism. (pun intended)
(behest = request, don't ask why English has so many similar words that mean the same thing)
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
YOur understanding of choice is mistaken given much of what is presented about the sweatshops. These are places where you go, get a loan from the company to rent an apartment from the company and buy food at the company store. Then you work for a nickel a day and use that to pay your rent (1/5) - by your food - (1/5) pay principle (.5/5) and interest (2.5/5) on your debt
Many people chose to work at these factories and are stuck there for thier lives. Not a very pleasant choice
Oh yes Chinese factory workers choose to work there, because there are so many other alternatives like begging, starvation, prostitution or crime. Please. If sweatshop factories are so wonderful why did workers in the developed world fight so hard to get rid of them.
It's only a better life relatively speaking, and once China becomes too expensive for the multinationals those people are going to be just as fucked as they were before - it's not like they could buy a house or save some money on the wages they get.
Developing economies should not be competing on the cost of labour, that is only a short-term win situation for corporate cost-cutters, they should be competing on quality. Although Germany and Japan have fucked up their world position in recent years they had 20 to 30 years of success even though their products weren't particularly cheap in comparison to those from other countries, they were just better.
This race to the bottom is in the long-term going to benefit no-one: workers in the developed countries see their incomes and lifestyles reduced, workers in the developing countries have a choice between working long hours in dangerous conditions for a pittance or starvation, and most multinationals lose the income from a well-paid workforce buying their products. The likes of Walmart will win big from this situation, but I can't see many other corporations that depend on people having disposable income doing well.
Yin and Yang. Ying is something else.
He's just using the standard economists' practice of trying to make people feel ashamed about being justifiably upset about their livelihoods being taken from them; a practice that is primarily designed to make rich people and organisations richer and has zero to do with altruism.
They probably won't spit on you in real life. They'd probably be too scared. See John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
if a right can vary by culture, then it's not fundamental. By definition a fundamental right is one that applies across cultural boundries. You can argue that there are no fundamental rights if you like, but you can't argue that they vary from one country to the next. That's a non-sequitor.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
America's Army is a game meant to advertise joining up for the army by being fun and entertaining. The goal is to make people want to sign up for the governments message because it's fun.
There's no way in hell that this rumored game could be fun. There's no way that people would voluntarily sign up for this. This is likely to be forced on people or to become just another ritual to go through to prove one's loyalty to the government.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The fact that the indoctrination of their people continues to this day with the myth of Mao as a great man of the people etc scares the crap out of me to be honest.
I'm in the midst of reading 'Mao The Unknown Story' by Jung Chang, and its a hell of an eye-opener.
How widely regarded is he as a great man in China by the general populace?
I've experiments to run, there is research to be done on the people who are still alive.
Is this actually real? All articles reference the Xinhua one, which seems like kind of a dead end for something supposedly on the internet. Can anyone actually back this up, with like the Chinese site or something? (Just wondering, our irresponsible western media has been known to get pwned)
Sendou Wave Kick!!
that they are about to expire. Why deny the unaidable?
If I were a female virgin, I would rather risk death by killing the old coot than be raped by sick disgusting wrinkled ass.
None of your supposed resources refute my claim: female infanticide (including abortion) happens en masse in Communist China.
That is Communist China, is it not? Or are you arguing that it is happening in alternative-universe China? Sidereal China? Capitalist and Democratic China? Huh? Help me out here. If it isn't happening in Communist China then where is it happening?
Here's a reading comprehension aid for you: I said it was happening in China, not because of Communism. I do stand by the fact that the Communists' One Child Policy is at fault for this despicable tradition reinfesting China. Call that racist. Call that whatever. But it is 100% irrefutable FACT .
Now please, tell us all again, in the name of abject intellectual dishonesty, that female infanticide does not occur in Communist China. What part of what I said was racist or wrong? The part where Chinese girls are being killed (at some time during their pre and post natal development) with prejudice? Or that it was happening in Communist China?
I'm totally sick of your lies, and I have karma to spare.
Female infanticide is a major problem in Communist China
Female infanticide was brought back by the one child policy
and the men in Communist China are going to pay. Dearly.
That is not racism.
That is not ignorance.
That is a fact that millions of Chinese men are going to face with a level of reality so vivid and frightening that their lamentations will be heard loud and clear for generations to come, in all corners of the world.
Please, carry on with your Holocaust Denial, and bring on those Holocaust denial moderators. The families who have wrought this horror upon womankind in China will still pay for their crimes against women, even if this post goes to -1.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Since it seems to be a 1st of april hoax, all the lively discusions are for nought :-) ;-)
:-)
Oups
(although I'm sure that the PR CP has some PC games for the PC (in latin languages its even more "alliterative" CP becoming PC)
Sorry to end my mail here I have to mend some socks before my batery closes down due to electricity shortage