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Chinese Govt Limits Kids to 3hrs of Online Gaming
1MC writes "The Chinese govt is requiring game houses to modify MMOG's to restrict under 18 users to 3 hours "productive" gameplay per day. This "anti-addiction" software must be in place within 4 months, with games not compliant by July 15 liable to be shut down in China. Net9, Shanda and NetEase will be moving to comply with the government regulations. Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games."
I'd rather say, thank-god-i'm-not-in-china!
That kids getting caught faking identities to get around this would be dealt with harshly by the government.
Parents (or kids?) going to jail because junior wanted to play WoW for more than 3 hours a day and faked ID?
Looks like I'll have to look to India for my gold farming.
Can't they just restrict their manufacturing to 3 hours a day too?
...so that under-18 players could be restricted to certain servers, and the rest of us could play in peace, basking in the huge decrease in leetspeek, ninja looters, griefers & beggars.
Seriously though, this whole "nanny state" the Chinese have going over there just cracks me up. I wonder if one can "bank" one's hours by not playing for a few days, in order to have enough time to join an end-game raid without worrying about one's big-brother software logging you off at an inopportune time.
Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'
How about it starts by improving the country's dismal human rights record? I would be a lot less worried about my kid playing too much WoW than I would be about the possibility that he could be thrown in prison for the rest of his life because he made a speech at his school bad-mouthing the government.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
FTFA: "Under the system, known as the "anti-online game addiction system", the first 3 hours of play for each day is considered "healthy", during which players will be awarded full points in the virtual world. The next 2 hours will yield only half the normal points and there will be no points after 5 hours. "
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Users will have to register with their real names and Chinese identity card numbers to be allowed access to the games.
THAT is the real reason. Register for this...soon register for ALL internet use.
"We want to know who you are and where you go."
The 24x7 Chinese Communist Party Youth League meetings in popular role-playing games have been rescheduled to 1700-2000 hours, effective August 1.
Unchanged is the mandatory attendance policy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Arguably, so are most of our elected officials.
Ok, I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but...
There was a time - back when I was actively playing a MMORPG (Final Fantasy XI) that I would have agreed with the idea that MMORPGs are addictive. However, my experiences over the last year or so have made me far less certain.
I started playing FFXI in November 03, importing a copy from the US when it launched there. For the first couple of months, it was just a curiousity... something I logged into once in a while and ran around a bit. Then somebody else I knew in real life started playing. And then another. The amount of time I was putting into the game increased considerably, to the point where it was taking up well over 50% of my non-work time (I have what's essentially a 9-5 office-based job). I was going out less, particularly at the weekends, playing other games less and watching fewer movies (never complain about MMORPG monthly fees - you wouldn't believe how much money they save you). About the only other past-time that didn't suffer was reading.
I got heavily into the game. I did the whole end-game thing, with all the grief and drama that went with it. I slogged through the Chains of Promathia expansion, which was exhausting, frustrating, and infuriating, but also responsible for some of the biggest adrenelin rushes I've ever had from gaming.
At this point, if the addiction analogy were really true, the next stage of the story should write itself; losing contact with real life friends and family, locking myself away in a darkened room, losing my job, dying alone in poverty etc. Except... it didn't. Some time last summer, I noticed that I just didn't quite care about the game as much as I had in the past. Logging in felt more like a chore, the game itself rarely did much for me and I was losing interest in the community. Over the next few months, my play time dwindled rapidly. By Christmas, I was only logging in for a couple of hours a week for scheduled Limbus runs. By February, even that had stopped.
There was no dramatic intervention. No moment when I realised I needed to go cold-turkey. In fact, I never did go cold turkey. I've still got the game installed and still pay $15 a month for my account. I just don't log into it, because I can't be bothered. It's not that I've moved onto another MMORPG. I have a WoW account, which I do log into occasionally, but I just don't find that game fun enough to grip me for long periods. Rather, I've more or less gone back to using my free time to do the things I did before FFXI came along. I'm not alone in this... the real life friends who got into FFXI shortly after I did followed a similar trajectory.
Now, compare that to how a genuine addiction works. I've known lots of smokers. I've also known a guy who started smoking cannabis at 15 and who was dead of a heroin overdose at 23. I've never known a smoker just give up the habit because they found cigarettes just didn't do much for them any more. From what I've seen (and I've never smoked), giving up smoking is painful (emotionally and perhaps even physically) and requires a good chunk of will-power. When drug users find that their current drug of choice doesn't do much for them any more, the response seems to be to move onto something harder.
MMORPGs have the effect on people they do for a number of reasons - interesting game worlds, clear goals of the kind that people lack in their real lives (this one is important), the ability to act out fantasies, a sense of worth from standing in a virtual community and so on. However, I can no longer believe that genuine addiction is one of the factors at work in most cases.
Without commenting on your arrogant assertion that you know how someone else should live their live, this rises up a rather interesting point: why does the Chinese government want children to spend their time in reality rather than virtual reality ? After all, people playing WoW are far less likely to demand freedom or engage in other activities antithethical to the Chinese political system than people spending their time speaking with each other and perhaps coming up with dangerous ideas lie freedom from censorship. Warm cocoon makes people drowsy, cold reality shocks them wide awake. The former makes it far easier for the Chinese government to stay in power than the latter.
Is this a case of a tyrant starting to believe his own lies about his benevolence, or does the Chinese government just have absolute confidence in their iron fist ?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
> I think the distinction between "government" and "family" is actually a little artificial
I think this is one of the most wrong things I've ever read.
A parent has a direct compelling desire to protect and nurture his/her child. The parent has intimate knowledge and experience of that child's unique requirements. The parent has a genetic drive to insure the child's welfare. I can tell you as a parent that this drive is powerful and in the same realm as the drive for food and shelter. I feel the need to care for my child the same way I feel the need to eat.
The "government" is not a single entity, but the resultant vector of millions of competing agendas and forces. As such it doesn't "care" for any child and it doesn't have knowledge of any child. It can only set broad policies that hopefully indirectly cause "good" but often cause "bad" in it's pursuit of particular agendas.
Corporations and Governments are not people. They are not living entities, although we often treat them as such legally.
To say the "government" can care for a child is simply incorrect. A teacher, a nanny, a social worker, a lawyer and a congressman may be affecting a child, but there is no such person as "the government".
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Dude, I read everything you wrote. I have only three words to say: you are sick.
ilex paraguariensis for all