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China To Crack Down On "Undesirable" Games
The Chinese government is getting ready to launch a new round of content restrictions for online games. Kou Xiaowei, a senior official with the General Administration of Press and Publication, said, "Although China's online gaming industry had been hot in recent years, online games are regarded by many as a sort of spiritual opium and the whole industry is marginalized by mainstream society." The article points out that China has already "banned children from Internet cafes and last year ordered their owners to enforce time restrictions after several cases involving obsessive players dying of fatigue after marathon game sessions." We've also seen Chinese restrictions on player-versus-player content for kids, as well as required content modifications such as removing skeletons in order for games to be sold there.
Do as the Chinese do....actually China has come a long way in the last decade, and its difficult to really get a clear perspective from our cultural context. I just hope that our relations with them, and the rest of the world improve, and that we are all tolerant of one another. One thing I do know about the Chinese, having been vary close to a gentleman from Shanghai, a graduate business student who now works here, is that in China their greatest fear is CHAOS. That one is not on the top of our list, but it gives a little insight as to why they may often seem heavy handed. Lets try to understand where they are coming from, when we hear about how they seem to be. I always liked Chinese food, and the people are cool too.
Or is this a ploy to decrease "imports?"
Somehow, I just don't see China treating World of Fight on equal grounds with World of Warcraft.
Fuck you and the OP. You're enablers of oppression. Go tell the people in prison for speaking out, or the families of those who just vanished, that they shouldn't complain, and they just "lack understanding" of their own culture. Go out somewhere and get your head kicked. You need it, cum stain.
China has the power to do many things other coutries frown upon. Of all the things they did, I think this one is the least disturbing.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Please slashdotters, click..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Race_(1976_game)
For a little video game history in the US.
Back in the day (3 years after I was born) this little gem of an arcade game was released. It was protest by parents groups, it was on 20/20. This was during that wacky time in the 70's when even stuff like AD&D was considered by some religious extremists to be a "Gateway to Satanic Worship"
OK so granted, our country is now fucked. China exports more goods to the US than we send to them. That's OK though because I see a little bit of history repeating.
Certainly we shouldn't take pleasure in others miseries, but I can't help it. You're (you are china) trying to restrict a game. I should cite some more recent examples, like the "Nintendo Seal of Excellence" where the crosses in the American version of Castlevania were removed.
Hopefully in my inebriated state I've somehow managed to convey a message here, and that message is "So what if they censor games now? The subsequent Chinese generations are going to be just as if not MORE into capitalism and consumerism than today's (just like with the US). At some point, some government official is going to realize that it's a huge waste of money trying to censor everything, and that department will get cut. It will probably have more to do with cost savings than some sort of moral obligation to the population.
Just look at how the internet has changed radio. Howard Stern gave up on terrestrial radio and FCC censorship. Same thing will happen in China. Just watch, and laugh at their governments laudable efforts to control it.
Usually we consider it beneficial if what we call "opressive" governments take over ideas from what we call "free" democracies.
In this case I'm not so sure if I'm glad.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Can someone who understands Chinese culture a little better than I explain why skeletons are considered so taboo?
I've heard of the problems that WoW has had including them, as well as other games such as Magic the Gathering being told to take the bones out if they want to sell in the Middle Kingdom. I haven't heard much of an explanation other than that skeletons aren't allowed...
Anyone care to give a bit more of an explanation? (I've tried a quick google, but all I get is people reporting that WoW got rejected in China.
Well there go the sales of "Lego Battles" in China. (OK, I kid when I talk about "actual" software sales in China) Pretty much any plastic Lego set that has skellies in them as well. Pirates, Castle, Indy, etc. At least I can take to heart that there will be no more pirated versions of "Clash of the Titans" floating around China. Heaven forbid China should decide to invade North America on the evening of Oct. 31st. That is when we allow the skeletons, princesses, superheroes, witches and ghosts free to patrol the streets looking for sustenance. They will find you.
World of Warcraft, CYBERSPACE -- thousands of gamers riot in-game as the economy collapses.
If you think that's ghetto, you should see the code.
how about a game where you push suicidal people off bridges?
Every time /. has a thread about regulation of video games or porn, I see that several different arguments get blended together as if they are interchangeable:
1. What is the proper role of government, vs. families, individuals and other institutions.
2. Can indulging cruel appetites in virtual reality be harmful, when the victims aren't real?
3. Given that we already have cruel appetites, can indulging them in a relatively harmless way be less bad than suppression or acting out in worse ways?
Obviously most Chinese people have different ideas about the role of government than most Americans or most Europeans. There are valid points to be on both sides, and existing culture has to be taken into account when deciding what policy is best at the present. As an off-topic example to illustrate, almost everyone acts like the Chinese government's persecution of the Falun Gong is unambiguously bad. But Chinese history shows that religious cults can get very, very, disasterously out of control, for example with the Taiping Rebellion. So I think its not so clear cut.
The idea that what you do in video games or what images you look at doesn't affect your appetites or how you think about other people is just ridiculous. For example, can a formerly decent and empathetic person play a rape video game without it at all affecting their perceptions of women that they interact with in real life? Really? Yeah, skeletons aren't that big of a deal to most of us, but its still true that the images you experience do affect you, skeletons included.
The last question has no simple answer, which is why I am mostly libertarian about these things. My main point is to distinguish it from the second question, since there has been a lot of BS about this on /. in relation to porn, pedophilia, and violent video games.
Ugh. It's pretty simple to understand the Chinese government actually.
You all know of the story of that grandma who doesn't understand computers at all, and ask "What does this button do?" and "Can I delete these files? *points to system files*"
Now imagine people with that level of computer literacy in charge of China. That's Exactly what's going on.
You have a bunch of 60+ years-old (apparently, 50 years-old is Young by Chinese government standards) computer illiterate people who've gone through most their lives without computers, and who even now barely know how to use email (I live here, I can say that middle-aged Chinese, even the bosses of big companies, are so bad at computers that it makes me want to hit my head repeatedly against a wall. How do they manage? They don't, they have secretaries do the work for them).
So suddenly there's this thing called "internet" that pops up, and they barely have a clue what it's all about apart from the fact that they don't know how to use it, and they've gone through most of their lives without it. So on the one hand they figure, "what harm can come from a little banning?"
Then stuff happens, and you can guess the results.
And this is news exactly why?
Its just that the Chinese have a thing about death. Its not discussed in polite company. They avoid the number 4 because the way it is spoken it sounds like death.
You're thinking of the japanese language - "shi" means "four" or "death" depending on the character used to spell it.
It also sounds like 'to die' in Chinese.
'Si' (Pronounced Like The Si in 'Sir') in the four sense.
'Si' (Pronounced Like The Si in 'Sir?' The difference in pronumciation is the tone with this one going down in the middle and ending up like a question, and the Si in four just going down in tone like a statement.) in the death sense.
Here is a list of all the things Si can mean.
Numbers in Chinese often sound like words, here's a wikipedia entry on it.
If China ever had a state religion, (and it did back in the Imperial days) it would be ancestor worship. The Chinese have a strong belief in the power of the dead. A skeleton shows disrespect of the dead as obviously this body was unburied and now the spirit is angry and in the world. It's sort of like consigning the person to an eternal hell. Proper burials are a big thing. It is indeed a cultural taboo, maybe like how witchcraft and wicca is taboo in large portions of America. The Chinese government, up to the Last Emperor in the early 1900's, seriously believed in the Mandate of Heaven and superstition. Supernatural evidence such as ominous dreams and the testimony of ghosts was used in court cases as late as the 1890's. The Dowager Empress' support of the Boxers during the Boxer rebellion, was based on her belief that they literally posessed magical kung fu powers- that they could deflect bullets, and defeat the colonial powers in the country. The government may have rejected superstition, but as we in America know, just because the government rejects religion, doesn't mean the whole country is not tainted by it. Replace ALL of our Christian influenced stuff with Ancestor Worship/Taoist/Buddhist synchrotism influenced stuff, and you get China. The Chinese government has long been the protector of cultural sensibilities, it's one role that the Chinese government takes on today. Cultural control is a key part of Confuscian society, not just government. Even Democratic Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea promote 'social repression and lack of individual expression' as it were, through strict educational regimes based on memorization, and encouraging a highly disciplined and hierarchal family structure. To the CCP's credit, they've done much more for women's rights and the equal rights of minority in China (societally) than the above mentioned Asian democratic countries. The above countries harshly disapprove of things like interracial marriage and women acting outside of or neglecting 'the traditional role', and never had anything like the Civil Rights movement to change old perceptions on race/eugenics. That doesn't justify censorship of course. If they could just get with the program and institute some kind of genuine elections and government respect for human rights, then mainland China would be one of the most open and free countries in Asia.
Battle Zone. With the "add students" cheat turned on. Fuckers.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
I wish someone would ban undesireable games in North America. Would have stopped me from suffering through Battlecruiser 3000 AD and Daikatana back in the day.
Life needs more saving throws.
Wow, a quote from an article over a year old, a link to a /. post from 4 years ago, and the stupid skeleton thing from March. Slow "news" day I guess...
Don't worry about the mule, just load the wagon.
online games are regarded by many as a sort of spiritual opium..
Yeah sure whatever you say, China. Nevermind that your "governance" is regarded by MOST OF THE WORLD as a "spiritual depressant".
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
How about an MMORPG featuring Kou Xiaowei as the boss skeleton in the tutorial at the beginning; you have to blow his head off 4 times a-la Frontal Assault, at which point he morphs into a flaming skeleton hurling rotten bowels at you. You combine a Free Tibet rune with a Falun Gong scroll to create the Staff of Tienamin Vengeance and use it to explode him into nothingness. The entire thing is subtitled with randomly generated Chinese characters, just because Chinese characters look cool. The clients can also operate as servers, so anyone can fire up a host, it'll be designed to work great through proxies, and it'll use UDP port 53 for everything, so you have to block DNS to shut it down. Suck it down, Chinese government!
Ok this one I will definitely go with.
After living in Beijing for three years and becoming a Call Of Duty 4 freak (a nasty opium like habit that some Chinese friends gave me)I have seen that their net cafe's are _sketchy_.
The smaller ones will sell you pornography. EVERYONE is smoking like a chimney (I know I was lighting up between rounds) and in general they are just dark, seedy, places that I wouldnt want my kid within 100 yards of.
I know its easy to say 'think of the children!' but in this case ill actually go along.
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