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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...
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 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?
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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.
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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? ;)
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.
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.
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.
There is a difference. Most people don't go fishing every single day. Watching football or tv is usually done with other people around as well. People can easily take a break from either without cause of any mental distress.
A video game addict spends anywhere from 40-80 hours per week playing a video game. Marriages are ruined, children are neglected and people become more and more antisocial as the problem persists. Eventually, when they do wake up they have a very hard time dealing with the real world, getting back into a real social circle of friends and getting out of the house. Some even experience social anxiety.
I know, I was one of them. I was single so I didn't have a problem with marriage or children but some of the people I played with regularly...different story. I knew numerous people who had marriages fail due to gaming. Also, on many occasion after an 8 hour grind session you might hear "I need to feed the 2 year old". WHAT?! You've been sitting here for 8 hours, having barely gotten up to even use the bathroom and you have a toddler doing who knows what!?
College and high school students who become addicted also suffer from grades dropping or even flunking out of school.
Now, your examples might be relevant comparisons in a situation of casual gaming however they are completely at the other end of the spectrum from gaming addiction. Your examples are things that I used to tell myself to justify my problem. "I don't have anything better to do", "I'd just be watching tv", "It's keeping me out of trouble". You know, they all sound like good reasons to continue gaming and very justifiable but in the end, the fact was that I didn't have anything better to do because the addiction had consumed so much of my life that I had lost interest in things that I liked to do (besides gaming). They were all excuses to make sure I got my EQ fix. Since then, I have found new things I like to enjoy. I've made new friends. I actually get out of the house on nice afternoons or weekends. For the 2nd summer since 1999 I actually have a tan!
Gaming addiction is one of those things that is more easily justified in the mind of the addict than drugs. It's also a very tough addiction to break if you've fallen to the point that your self esteem is tied to the characters in game. Every mental social mechanism ends up tied to the game, your sense of reward is tied to the game. When you remove all of that, its a personal rebuilding process from the ground up.
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!
I am going to have to disagree that addiction is "ok" depending on the level of responsiblity a person has or based on age.
An addiction is self destructive behavior whether it be mentally destructive, emotionally destructive, physically destructive or financially destructive. Kids are not immune to this. Sure, the consequences may be different but the resulting personal damage is usually the same. Antisocial behavior, weight gain, lack of physical activity, "replacement" scenarios in which a person replaces things they found gratifying before with things related to the game.
A student or child may be able to spend more time playing a game because they have more free time but even then a gamer playing 8-14 hours per day 5-6 days per week is very excessive. In any activity that is excessive (even work - people don't work that much because they want to - they do it because they have to make ends meet in some cases). Sure, the student may not have a job or a family to take care of but what about the damage to their social skills? Sitting in a room for 40+ hours per week does internal emotional and mental damage to self esteem, their fitness level and circumvents their real world social structure.
Sure, by going outside I may risk skin cancer some day. However, after going through my EQ addiction and pushing away people I cared about, always being late on bills, being sleepy and tired from staying up until 2 am on raids and having my life revolve around people who have never met me and only view me as a graphical avatar...I got sick of pretending to be someone else. Instead of striving to be a lvl 50 necromancer, I have since been striving to be a lvl 50 "ME" and do the best I can at everything real world.
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?)
It's easy to blame MMORPGs over other kinds of games because of the nature of the beast.
1. They're never ending. You can play forever and ever and never win. So of course they lend themselves to larger amounts of playing than 'other' games.
2. They're social in nature. Instead of static boring worlds, you have a dynamic atmosphere because of the sheer number of people involved. No two days of adventuring will ever be the same.
3. It's in the companys' best interests to keep you playing. Obviously, the longer you play the more they get paid... and they want to get paid, so they invent nice ways to keep you p(l)aying.
I know some people who spend hours upon hours doing everything in the world. Some of them ride horses, some hunt, some fish, some watch tv, etc, etc. But because those are accepted activities, nobody considers those things an addiction. But you get a video gamer playing his games for that amount of time, and all of a sudden you're some kind of crazy addict. If you compare the tv watching habits of the average person to someone who's supposedly addicted to gaming, you'd probably find that they're not all that dissimilar...