Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Gamers Circumvent Anti-Obsession Measures
Turtlewind writes "A survey by iResearch China shows that the Chinese Government's "anti obsession" measures, reported on Slashdot last year, are being bypassed by MMORPG gamers. While the controls - which force operators of popular games such as World of Warcraft to impose penalties on players who play for more than three to five hours a day - were welcomed by almost half of Chinese gamers, a core of around 14% of players admitted to registering multiple accounts to get around the restrictions. Meanwhile, the government seems to be taking a different approach to the problem of gaming addiction, planning a campaign over the upcoming summer vacation to increase enforcement of laws banning minors from internet cafes."
People get addicted to games. It shouldn't be surprising when the really addicted get around the filters. I imagine it was top priority for a lot of them.
But, really, more than 5 hours a day? Doesn't your ass get numb?
Where are there parents while they spend so many hours per day at these places? I think that they should bare some responsibility for their children's actions.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Well, a change is as good as a rest!
Meta will eat itself
office employee?
If this won't start an uprising in China, nothing will.
It may just be me, but I don't think the companies that make the games are going to be bothered with people paying for more than one account. Besides, just as with Jack Thompson, people will play no matter what regulations are in place.
Man... are they really trying to solve the addiction problem by forbidding
the youngers from playing the games? I have no researches to base my ideas
on, but to me it seems that's the worst possible approach.
Bad habits cannot be eliminated. If you want to get rid of a bad habit, you
must replace it with a good one. The government should be doing some outdoor
activities campaigns or incentive to practice sports, or anything else
(the solution, of course, is not so trivial), but restricting the game
hours allowed, and blocking minors from internet cafes *without*
replacing this activity for something better will *not* solve
the problem.
Hell, it may sound a little pessimistic, but this "solution" may even
aggravate the problem if these kids/teenagers start developing even
worst habits like drugs or alcohol because they have nothing else
to fill their lives with.
If I clone myself, can I call it a thread?
If a girl winks to us, can I call it a race condition?
Addicts find ways to break rules to get fix... Holy Hell my world is collapsing...
Gaming addiction is a lot less damaging than "needlessly threaten Taiwan" addiction and "brutalize non-Chinese nations such as Tibet" addiction.
Think of how much better things would have been if Mao had been addicted to MUDs instead being obsessed with racking up more murder points than Stalin.
I know how the gold farmers among those affected must feel.. I once had a full-time job cut me down to part-time hours.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I thought the people dieing from obsessive gaming were adults (20+).
Preventing minors to enter internet-cafés would target the wrong audience, wouldn't it?
What would those minors do when they have been DIEING to play a game because of all the media-hype around it, but couldn't because of local laws, and at a certain moment become "legal to game"?
Right.. play all they can to "catch up", even if it costs sleeping and eating...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
I have another suggestion for the Chinese government, why don't they create a squad of Orcs that patrols WoW looking for lazy unproductive Chinese players and executes them in game?
python>>> q="'";s='q="%c";s=%c%s%c;print s%%(q,q,s,q)';print s%(q,q,s,q)
It's fine to work for 8 to 14 hours a day, but not permitted to perform an entertaining, pleasurable activity for more than 3 to 5 hours?
I appreciate that some people have a genuine problem with addiction, but I have to question society's priorities sometimes. People do literally work themselves to death, too.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
From the outside looking in, I can see a couple things going on here:
When life is so force-fed and censored as it can be in China, outlets like MMORPG's are the only form of "freedom" and people flock to them... so much so that it is an epidemic.
On top of this I see a problem where the more people inside playing MMO's are not out pumping money into the economy for goods, services, entertainment, etc.
As an avid gamer, and someone who has worked in this field, I actually find this sad. It is not that WoW is such an amazing game, as it is a sign of how low many people value their lives and free time. Gaming is one thing, _needing_ to spend so many hours inside a virtual world is another. Most MMO's aren't really that great, and force long grinds and tedious gameplay with little reward for the time and money spent. This is not confined to China either, it is just magnified there. MMO's are a bad trend, and one that needs to be channeled in a different direction. Massive online playable games are good, and are very engaging, but they need to become more than long, drawn-out time wasters and overflowing coffers of money... they need to become fun and exciting and to the point even if this comes at the expense of some profit. I'll admit Guild Wars had me hooked for a few months myself, but the endless nerfs and radical gameplay changes that constantly rendered my time and effort useless made me remember why MMO's are a sham. I just think that many people are missing the real story here... WHY are MMO's such a big problem, what is the root of this problem?
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
It is interesting to see how kids and adults with ADHD who normally can't focus on anything can hyper-focus on a game. It becomes an addiction much like alcohol or drugs. It is very difficult to overcome by yourself. I have been there. I am grateful to have a wife who gets after me if I play too much now but not everybody has someone looking out for them or even parents that care. What can we do to help them? I don't think it is the role of government but the our role has human beings to help our neighbors.
I have a teen aged punk ass that locks himself in his room with his gaming machine flanked by two laptop's playing Lineage all day -the damn lawn is getting tall and I could sure use a dose of this in my household.
www.wildpad.com
Look banning minors from internet cafes is not really about combating internet addiction. If it were then what will it do for those that are adults, you know the same people that do not have parents anymore to not give money and permission to go to the internet cafe. This move is about preventing impressionable idealistic youths from reading about topics that will later lead to dissent. There is a certain danger to visiting certain sites from home or school. A lax internet cafe is a simple way around that.
Will you marry me? ;)
After X hours, the players turn into "Obssessed Peon"s that can be hit with a special Blackjack item to boot them from all servers for Y hours.
You could even make a quest/put in some kind of reward (honor points?) to encourage narc behavior.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
This system wasn't put in place to restrict the amount of time people play. Blizzard could care less how much time someone puts into a game. The rest system in WoW and Vitality system in EQ2 is in place so that casual gamers have some (albeit very small) chance of not falling behind power gamers in the XP grind. And as the article mentioned, it's common place to hear (out of vit/rest, switching to my alt) so in reality the only thing it limits is the desire to grind a single character to max level without alts. I've seen games that have messages that say, "You've been online for an hour now, please consider taking a break." But come on, do you think they really mean it?
Oh c'mon, I can't believe it. This is the communist, big-brother like China which keeps a very strict control over its citizens. Or is it???
I think that somewhere, somehow we lost a bit of touch about China's reality. Perhaps the government isn't as powerful as we thought...
If I was the chinese govt, I would issue ID cards with photograph and fingerprint to all people over 12, and then over 18, and use that to verify that the teenagers can't REALLY access internet cafes.
Oh well.
How are the laws are affecting the gold farming shops? (Not saying all gold farmers are chinese, just that there are chinese gold farmers) Do they just purchase an additional accounts or do they have more work arounds?
Because if you die at your home computer in your house, it just gets written as Trombosis, which is due to all that sitting without moving can cause. Or whatever else killed you.
If you do it in a cyber-cafe in Korea, they publish a story like "gamer dies after a month of playing Lineage!!!"
Note that in most of those cases the guy didn't exactly die at the computer, but did something like go to the bathroom and die or go to the bar to ask for some water and die. So if you did it in your home, they wouldn't even find you at the computer with WoW running.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Look, I'm all for people NOT becoming addicted to anything. Human beings need a healthy dose of a wide variety of things. But I am a bit pissed off when any government attempts to do something this stupid.
Look, I'm the work-a-holic type of guy. I spend most of my time working (even late into the night), and when I finally come home and sleep, I'm almost too tired to get up in the morning. For people like me, doing the best job possible (I'm not forced to work this hard) is an obssession. I'm admitting it. I literally only get like one truly free day twice a month or something. And when I do get those days off, I want to be able to spend all day doing something fun. Is it wrong if I decide to spend all day some month playing that $50-$60 video game I bought last year? Is it any government's business whatsoever if I decide to use my equipment, my internet connection, on my time?
Come on!!! This is the f***ing Chinese government. They don't give two shits about your health. This is the same government that has one of the hardest and strictest death penalties available on the face of the earth. They allow people to work in low living conditions with low wages and constant over-work on at least a slavery level. A good friend of mine left China as soon as he could because the situation over there is so bad. He'll tell anyone not to emmigrate to China.
To reiterate, I don't think it's good for people to have an unhealthy addiction to anything. But when rules get as picky as "you can't play this game online for more than 3 hours a day", well, let's just say you'll have me up in arms against the asshole government who wants to play 1948 (George Orwell) with me ! I like my rights. If I decide to overwork to make extra money one day, and my boss has no problem letting me take the next day off to finally finish Doom 3 because I've covered that day's work already, I sure as hell better be able to do that with no constrictions from the government that I pay taxes to.
What about children? It's the job of parents, not the job of any government, to deal with their own kids. If parents think it's OK for their kids to spend over 3 hours playing a MMORPG, then let their kids do that. Since when is having good fun morally wrong? And who is the government to decide what is right or wrong for us? Conversely, if parents decide to limit their kid's gaming time to "prevent addiction", what's wrong with that? The parents had to raise their kids, not the government.
And by the way, addiction is not always prevented with enforced limitations on "access" to the object in question. In my own case, the more I have of anything the more I get tired of it and want to do something else. I guess that's a healthy human reaction, I don't know. But I can only play a video game generally for around a couple hours max, and then I get sick of it. However, I have occassionally spent all day finishing a game. But I'm an adult, going to college and working, and I feel that I have a right in my own spare time to do what I please.
Yeah, I'm in the U.S. and these people are in China. But just because you live in a different continent doesn't mean you have to abide by stupid government-imposed addiction "prevention" regulations. China wants to take away an open-information internet from its people, China wants to force their people into accepting a communist government (not that I'm against that form in its true self), China now wants to take away our video gaming rights!? WTF? Does that sound assinine to anyone else besides me? It's not like we're talking about drugs here. We're talking about games like WOW, Half-Life 2, Doom3, Halo, Halo 2, etc...what gives anyone above a child's mom and dad the right to limit their video gaming useage? What the hell?
I find it a bit surprising that the Government in China thinks it needs to get so much into the personal lives of it's people as to limit how much time a day a person plays video games.
Maybe playing video games is a good escape from the dreary life of working in a crapy factory with low wages and scrapping by, while living in an oppressive communist country...
Make it silver and completly ignore him for a while - THEN go for the yellow. He's bound to be interested in a quest he just leveled enough to do because of the ph@t l3wt.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
I can understand this completely... the chinese population is sick and tired of people wasting away their lives playing video games, so the best solution is obviously to send them to jail where they can waste away their lives getting raped while they sleep. Perhaps that's even being too light... after all, there are people that have DIED refusing to move from their location... for such blatant disregard for the law we MUST incorporate the death penalty; it's the only way to save these children.
In Soviet Russia these Soviet Russia jokes aren't considered the least bit amusing...
As opposed to someone I know going fishing for 12 hours straight? Lemme guess, that's sooo contributing to society. It's been such a great gain for the country and community that he's caught half a pound worth of fish.
As opposed to sitting in front of the TV and watching football? Or soap operas? Or channel-surfing to see the same news again and again? Well, gee, that's so productive. I soo want to be like those when I grow up. Not.
No, you "grow the fuck up" already. People aren't at work 16 hours a day like in the middle ages any more. There are 8 hours a day of being productive. The rest is called "free" time. Hint: "free" as in "I'm free to spend it in any damn way I see fit, no matter how unproductive." Whether I want to use it tweaking a car, or collecting stamps, or playing a computer game, it's 100% only my decision. It's _my_ time, I used it as _I_ see fit.
If you don't like my passtime, tough luck, it's your problem not mine. Maybe you could find one for yourself that doesn't involve telling others what to do? Maybe grow up and realize that the world doesn't revolve around you?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So they let people play on-line games? Maybe a group of people should start accounts and use the dialog capabilities in the games to pass along news and info and get past the censorship they have on the rest of the web.
My dwarf warrior will be named "Tiananmen Massacre".
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
One good thing: it helps keep those MMORPG kiddies who play 12 hours a day from having such a huge advantage over gamers who only play a few hours a day and never get a chance to level up the same way. And it reduces the load on the gaming companies from those 12 hour a day players, who never free up resources for others to play on the same servers.
Let's have game companies make calculations about how to appeal to the most players and how to manage their resources to serve games. The advantages you suggest may be there -- they sound plausible, and as a casual player of a few games I have to say MMORPGs have never really appealed to me largely because of exactly the sort of people you're talking about.
Government intervention only imposes arbitrary standards for compliance with the law, preventing exactly the sorts of balancing you're talking about, though. Suddenly instead of "How do we serve our customers better?" it's "How do we obey the letter of this law some hair-sprayed politico cooked up in her utter ignorance of how games work?" Unintended consequences and ways to game the system will surely result.
(Speaking of the U.S. "No Child Left Behind" standards for schools.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Um, at 3-5 hours a day, don't you think that should be phrased "get around the ADDICTIONS"...christ, that's a lot of video game time...
Well, you may be somewhat happy to know that there is a new MMORPG in the making. The goal of the project is not to make money but to make a good game. The best part is that, unlike most games of its kind, it is being put together by gamers who code, model, and texture for the pure enjoyment of doing it.
If anyone would like to check it out, you can find it at the address below. There's also a forum.
http://www.etherea-dg.com/"In a world that exists without walls and fences, who needs Windows and Gates?"
When life is so force-fed and censored as it can be in China, outlets like MMORPG's are the only form of "freedom" and people flock to them... so much so that it is an epidemic.
Er, personally I know a handful of people in the US who've gotten seriously hooked on MMORPGs. The ratio of people I know with a gaming "problem" on that scale to people I know with a drug or alcohol problem is -- well, let's say there are more gamers and leave it there.
What does that mean about the U.S., based on your "escape into gaming" explanation?
I'm not seeing concrete evidence that things are worse in China. Given the terms of labor there, it seems likely the time spent per user is greater in America just based on our comparatively greater leisure time... Not that we're so loaded with time off next to other Western powers.
If we had real numbers about this, I'm going to guess that the US and Japan would rank very high in "obsessive" MMORPG by whatever criteria we chose, and that European societies with greater leisure time (vacations, fewer hours worked a week) wouldn't show the same thing. Just a guess, though. (And none of that's an argument for governmental intervention.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"I used to fall unconscious for hours at a time... Now with Equinox, I never need to sleep!"
Life is about work, work, work. When you sleep, you steal from society.
As the very sort of person who sees the problem being acted on here, I would deeply resent any attempt by Tipper Gore, Jack Thompson, or any politician to impose even the standards by which my kids were judged, let alone the specific measures to enforce them. That'd be every bit as likely to introduce unintended consequences as the consoring of library internet connections using government-chosen filtering software. It's sure less effective than what I did, too.
That said, it wouldn't hurt me at all to see game companies doing stuff like selling accounts at different thresholds of time, or giving me tools within the game, to cap time spent at different levels. Give me the tools in a way that works with the game, make it easier for me to choose this stuff. At the client end, this is a fine idea.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I wonder if the 14% has any correlation to the number of chinese players who are gold farmers. Gold farming is a system where it doesn't matter much about having the same character name, unlike real gamers who like to develop some sort of reputation for their character (or atleast have people know who they are).
Ok stuff like this is getting annoying.
"Come on!!! This is the f***ing Chinese government. They don't give two shits about your health." Its obvious you never lived in china. Ive lived in a chinese University for a year now and I hope to clarify things about the evil chinese government. Yes they are communist. No that doesnt mean people cant have a life here.Most things are the same as at home(In ireland) but with a safer society. 95% of Chinese people agree with rules like this. Its obvious the chinese government does care about the people (thats what communism is supposed to be) rather than dirthy politicians trying to get votes. Every town has an exercise area like an outdoor gym and canteens in college and Secondary schools only serve healthy food. Now ive seen about 10 fat chinese people since ive come here compare that too the 10 skinny people i seen in florida. Chinese lifestyle is generally alot more healthy than in europe(all countrys ive been in) and America. Chinese college students generally have a curfew of 23:30pm. This is mainly due to security reasons as there are 8 people living in a room. Most people I see in internet cafes are not minors in our sense but college students. College students and young adults are still viewed as children in China and so such rules are not viewed as opressing but culture(would you object to a high school kid having a curfew?).Just before some suggests about chinese getting death sentance for coming home late or circumventing the Internet censorship... No nothing happens really. Chinese usually dont go partying very much but alot are dangerously obsessed with WoW. Most chinese dont care about Tiananmen sq and all the things that most people seem to think they(the government) are evil for. Same as most americans probably dont care how many iraqis are killed everyday? The chinese view to freedom like in the us is probably the opposite as your view. Children bring guns to school and masacre their teachers and friends in the name of american freedom and democracy. I think you should look in the mirror before assuming any government that isnt the same as america must be evil. Maybe your the one being brainwashed by an oppresive government and dont even know it. Are you afraid to walk in the city alone at night. On most occations i would be and not in china. That feels oppresive to me if anything. If your interested watch the redux video from 911truth.org and see if you still believe everything your told on fox news. Sorry ive probably taken it too far but constently reading about how oppressive life in the country i love is is annoying, especially by people who have never even been here!
In the past, I would have scoffed at the idea of "video game addiction" being a valid concept. Traditionally, sure, you had people who *really* liked playing video games - but even then, most games involved you vs. the machine. Eventually, you'd solve all the puzzles, finish the levels, or just plain get burnt out on the repetition of it all. Once you've mastered the art of defeating the A.I. in a given game title, it quickly loses its charm. (I remember all of my friends who bought the sports games for their consoles, and within weeks, were guaranteed to start complaining about how it got "too easy" to do certain sequences of moves and perpetually fake out the computer.)
Therefore, your options were either A) invite a friend or two over and play "head to head" against each other instead of vs. the console or computer, or B) quit gaming for a while, until something else exciting enough was released and you had money to buy a copy.
With either choice, you were getting in some social interaction with other people, and were likely to get distracted from the "gaming" interest for a little while too.
But MMORPGs are a whole different beast. All of a sudden, not only is the world your playground, but you're *always* playing against real people on the other end. No longer do you feel that bit of guilt when you can't get any of your friends to come over to play you at the game because they've all got "better things to do". You *always* have willing opponents. The game designers even keep modifying the world you play in so it doesn't get too "stale".
I won't go so far as to claim an MMORPG "ruined my marriage", but it was a big contrbuting factor. My ex-wife got hooked on Shadowbane, to the point where we'd really have nothing to talk about when I got home from work besides her babbling on about this or that event that happened in the game. We had a kid, and I started realizing that while I was at work, she was often neglecting her to play her game during the day. (One of my friends clued me in when he told me about coming over and finding my kid up on a glass kitchen table, about to fall off, while she was completely oblivious because she was in the computer room concentrating on organizing a raiding party against someone's "clan".) I even had to deal with long-distance phone calls coming in at 3AM from people on the other side of the planet calling to get her to sign in to the game because their group had something or other "important" going on. (I guess they forgot about the time zone differences?)
"But MMORPGs are a whole different beast. All of a sudden, not only is the world your playground, but you're *always* playing against real people on the other end. No longer do you feel that bit of guilt when you can't get any of your friends to come over to play you at the game because they've all got "better things to do". You *always* have willing opponents. The game designers even keep modifying the world you play in so it doesn't get too "stale". "
Exactly! MMOs are a whole new thing. Can't you see your friends? In my case, all my gang hooks up in the same game, so we "see" each other very often. Lack of social life? Not really, if you actually are an active member of a guild or a community. Of course we could debate for HOURS if online social life == offline social life, but it still counts in some way. You still interact with people. And a LOT of people too shy offline learn how to deal with it online, and they actually apply it in the offline world. They learn how to manage. MMORPGs are the ultimate social laboratory.
I'm happy China has it's priorities straight. When was the last time someone died from video gaming (I've only heard of one case)? Is this REALLY a priority? What a waste of time.
If you can't stop a lemming from being a lemming, you might as well charge admission to the cliff.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Actually, with WoW they added parental controls a while back.
I imagined someone would have thought of that. Cool.
If only Blizzard had tastes as refined as their game engines, I'd be buying their products. As it is, the voice acting, the general goofy fantasy setting... Meh. It was all sort of cute, but wearing, back with Warcraft II. (The Myth series and Bungie pre-MS sort of showed me that it could be done with some class, and I haven't been back Blizzard's way since.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.