Slashdot Mirror
China Bans Games That "Glorify Gangsters' Lives"
As we discussed in June, China has been working on plans to impose further restrictions on the games that can be sold or publicized within its borders. The Chinese government has now begun implementing those plans, starting with games that involve gangs, saying, "These games encourage people to deceive, loot and kill, and glorify gangsters' lives. It has a bad influence on youngsters." According to a Xinhua news agency, "The ministry ordered its law enforcement bodies to step up oversight and harshly punish those sites that continue to run such games."
I guess it's better than just saying games are not ok and letting everyone buy them... Like with cigarettes. Yeah, smoking kills you. Smoking kills other people. Cigarettes are genocide machines. So why the fuck do you allow people to sell them in the first place?!
Every harsh word you utter has the right address. It only sounds harsh because the one on the envelope is the wrong one.
I've never understood why people think being 'gangsta' is cool. Being 'gangsta' is being willfully ignorant and talking like you're retarded.
Get off of my fucking lawn.
Apparently WoW will not reopen in China any time soon...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
If by first you mean fourth.... Yeah I guess you are first ;-S
This gives them another excuse to ban many websites (even if they already do, now they have another reason to).... facebook, myspace, etc. all have applications that are mob/mafia/gangster based. They could probably ban a large portion of flash game websites.
Consider Africans (and African-Americans). They murder and rape at a much higher rate than either Europeans or Japanese. Most Africans in Africa cannot even afford video games, yet they rape and kill with wild abandon.
Look at the crime statistics of South Africa. After the Africans seized control from the Whites, the rate of violence skyrocketed.
Thus just proves the old saying: you can take the African out of the jungle, but you cannot take the jungle out of the African.
Save your mod points: I admit that this is -1 Offtopic. Anyway.
It's been a few years since I last read Slashdot regularly, and the troll count has increased something like 5-fold. Was this a sudden increase, or something gradual? Anyone have an explanation for this?
I'm pretty sure this will be downmodded by Chinese nationalist trolls, but what the heck -- I'd complain about the injustice of this, but given that China is run by an unelected, authoritarian government, I'd say they have bigger problems there. I realize how China's history of fragmentation and turmoil makes many Chinese believe that authoritarian rule is best for China, but the fact remains that other parts of this planet managed to escape turmoil *and* develop without authoritarianism. I can only hope that some day the Chinese people will see the light.
So, the Chinese government has just stated to the world that they are not confident that their people are capable of discerning the difference between things that are real, and things that are not real?
I never knew the Chinese thought so very little of themselves.
Maybe, if the government bans enough stuff, the Chinese people will get fed up and construct a proper democracy. A long shot, I know, but one can hope.
Save your mod points: I admit that this is -1 Offtopic. Anyway.
It's been a few years since I last read Slashdot regularly, and the troll count has increased something like 5-fold. Was this a sudden increase, or something gradual? Anyone have an explanation for this?
We've suckered TPTB at work into believing that this sight is a reasonable IT research site, but haven't been able to provide a good business case for 4chan yet.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
This law possibly shows that while China isn't a representative democracy, it is being overly influenced by the will of the older generation as a result of the one-child policy. In all societies, those in power (whether that's economical, political and/or other) makes the rules. And these particular laws are possibly meant to appease the older generation, less familiar with computer games (or adversely affected by these laws).
But not only does the older generation have the status/power/money in China (as in most countries), they also make up a larger proportion of the population than comparable Western countries, as a direct result of the one-child policy. In particular, it'd be interesting to see the societal effects of the one-child policy both now and as it ends and compare it with the rise of the baby boomer generation post-WII.
*sigh* Gorram governments.
When I was a kid, politics was this big boring thing that all the grown ups with moustaches and beards went on and on about.
Now that I'm older, it's a hell of a lot more like a pissing contest, with each country trying to introduce more asinine laws and control each and every moment of their citizens lives. Hell, it's almost like a black comedy.
I'd laugh at the whole thing, but some of the shit that the governments of the world do in our name really scare me. Eventually enough people are going to come to their senses and fight back.
That's it for my rant. Mod me up, mod me down, ignore me, but I felt I had to get my 2c in.
I am, and that is sufficient.
The Chinese government's thinking can be summarized as, suppress any expression of ideas which shows anyone opposing the views and rules of the people in power.
Gangsters oppose the law and the law is a set of rules decreed by the government that everyone must follow. In other words, the government is afraid of anyone showing any sign or even view glorifying people opposing the rules laid down by the people in power. They wish to maintain absolute power and fear anyone else taking power from them.
Ironically exactly the same thinking as every political party in every country, its just some countries leaders struggle to impose their will as much as China's government is able to do. Because the political systems in some countries (usually) prevents most political leaders gaining such absolute power.
All political moves are ultimately aimed at a battle for gaining and maintaining power over people. Its their core thinking regardless of which party or country they are in. They are all ultimately seeking power over everyone else.
The question then becomes why are some people so deeply driven to seek and gain power over others for so much of their lives and why are they so fearful of loosing power? ... something is deeply driving them psychologically to behave this way. The answer to that question is the one thing they would never admit and would always attempt to use any excuse to cover up their real reason for behaving this way. The answer why they need power is they fear being powerless like they were when they were young. They fear anyone ever having power over them like they suffered when they were young. Its a fear of an injustice that is burned into them and drives them on, resulting in them behaving in a self-centered narcissistic personality disordered way. Which is exactly why they show so little empathy to others. A behavior that is very common to *high up* politicians in every country simply because narcissistic behavior provides a competitive advantage in highly competitive environments like the political battle for power, so they narcissistic people tend to fight to the top in power.
When you can have the government think for you? Oh, wait, you don't want me to type that in? You don't want me to type this in either? Then what should I type in?
Hmmm, I wonder why a repressive government would have a problem with glorifying organized groups of troublemakers?
This is terrible news for the upcoming Gangsta Skeleton: Democracy City MMORPG.
There goes Facebook & Myspace then, since both host an application called Mafia Wars which is quite popular according to its wiki article - over 2.5mil players.
"Mafia Wars is available on Facebook, Myspace, Tagged, and Yahoo"
... which has proven to be quite a criminal gang during history...
In related news, Xinhua news agency reported that games involving corruption were being added to educational curriculum.
Second-hand smoke is a massive myth.
Actually, last I've seen an actual study of healthcare costs, the smokers and the obese actually pay for everyone else's healthcare. Yeah, they get sick earlier, but that's actually the point. They die quicker than they'd get to use their contribution to healthcare, and in many cases to the pension fund too.
Smokers get some cancer, get some chemotherapy or radiotherapy for months or a couple of years tops, then they die. End of expense, and it wasn't even the most expensive medication to start with.
They and the obese, occasionally get a heart attack or stroke, a lot just die right there. End of story, no medical expenses.
Etc.
And an obese smoker, now that's someone who really gets shafted out of their contribution to that universal healthcare and is paying a pension contribution for nothing.
The ones who actually cost healthcare a lot more money than they contributed, are those who live until 90 years old, and were on expensive anti-Alzheimer's medication or the like ever since they were 65.
So please spare me the BS pretense that you somehow subsidize those. They're the ones who subsidize you. And it already is a non-existent moral ground to complain about society's money going to them, when really nobody else actually gives them a buck. But it's already surrealistic to complain about paying money for them, when actually it's them paying your medical cares. Have a bit of decency, will ya?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The Production Code enumerated three "General Principles" as follows:
if they consume entertainment that glorifies gansters, e.g. this quote from the 1949 Jimmy Cagney Movie White Heat:
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
a game that glorifies acts of vigilante justice and lynch mobs against these fucking retards. I never understood why walking with a fake limp and having a biscuit-lipped mouth full of gold teeth was considered cool by some folks. Try doing some inner-city volunteer work, people, and you'll quickly get tired of the "gimmie" and the "gangster" mentalities, and you'll tell these people that their failure at life is due to their own poor choices. Should've been taking advantage of that free public education instead of acting like a little bitch and making your teacher's life hell. I just can't even begin to tell you how many times I personally witnessed a fat welfare queen dumping her kids on us volunteers while she locks herself in her government-provided house to smoke weed and fuck the latest deadbeat nigger to cross her doorway (without a condom, no doubt). You won't hear Obama blaming THOSE folks for America's problems, primarily because they are the inhuman product of the Great Society and are his largest voting block. Really folks, when do we say enough is enough and cut off the gravy train to these losers? BOO FUCKING HOO!!!
As an aside, why is it that all of Obama's arguments rely on an appeal to emotion? Didn't he learn about logical fallacies in his first semester at Harvard Law? Oh right, he was an affirmative action product and didn't belong there in the first place. Gee, America is sooo racist, giving away these six-figure Ivy League educations to anybody who's not a white male...
Thugs banning games about gangsters?
It's to my credit then that I choose not to partake of videogames that glorify criminality. I'm glad I live in a country that has no such wholesale banning of such material, and would hope that people would--of their own free will--avoid such influences on their own. It is a weak mind that has to depend on brutality for entertainment, but I'd rather that the weak minds have that option than to have it mandated otherwise. In a way by banning it, the people themselves never get to build the character to avoid such indulgent and gratuitous diversions. Of course with that said, it's a sad thing to note just how popular some of these titles are in our "free world". While I don't think such should be banned, I do wish a few more conscientious adults would stand up and say, "This stuff is garbage" and set an example of avoiding them. If such games were not nearly as popular as they are, perhaps the issue would never even be necessary. I've often wondered why choosing activities that uplift and edify seems to be less thrilling (when we all know it's right) than the alternatives.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
So, your father is a doctor and somehow he's a bigger authority than those actually paying for those treatments?
The link has already been provided by an AC above, but for whoever can't be arsed to copy and paste into the browser, here it is as actual link http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748884.html?_r=1
To recap, from the article itself:
And that's just the costs. The smokers and the obese are simply cheaper. Even without the other factors, repeat after me, an obese smoker costs less than a thin and healthy person.
It doesn't even yet include the pension contributions (which someone who dies earlier will benefit less from), money given to the government in tobacco taxes and VAT (without smokers, to get the same services from the government you might have to pay more in taxes), etc.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Tommorrow's headline: "Gangsters Ban Games That Glorify Oppressive Totalitarian Regimes."
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Various studies have been done over the years. It's just not politically correct to say so.
;).
In countries where there's a significant health care system (either the NHS style or subsidies), smokers cost less than healthy people (especially when you factor in the tobacco taxes).
The facts are a healthy person WILL eventually die. Go look at the pie chart showing what people die of. You can only adjust the size of the slices in the pie, you cannot avoid the death.
If people live a healthy lifestyle, it's far less likely for them to die of heart disease.
So guess what they _eventually_ die of? Either they die of cancer, or they eventually rot away slowly in a nursing home suffering from dementia. Or worse, they get a stroke and linger on for years paralyzed.
All these are expensive - unless you say "OK we're not going to pay for that", but you could also say that to the smokers.
And these healthy folks might be so healthy that they have a few expensive but successful treatments first before they die.
Whereas the smokers and the obese are probably going to kick the bucket at the first medical crisis that happens soon after their most productive years.
I'm not a smoker and not obese, and I find it ridiculous that people keep demonizing smokers and making their lives difficult (don't allow them to smoke in pubs etc) and at the same time they worry about "aging population". That's amazingly stupid and contradictory.
Just make it illegal for minors to smoke (or to be encouraged to smoke, sold tobacco etc), and inform everyone that smoking is bad for health and will kill them earlier. Then slap on enough taxes, and they pay for their costs and other people as well.
Maybe we could also give posthumous awards to the top contributing smokers who die early after making immense contributions to society - something like the Purple Heart. Call it the Black Lung or something
Damn,
Does that mean that if I have Chinese version of the game Civilization that I can't develop 'Communism' and build a police station to improve my citizen's additudes? Isn't Communism a form of gangsterism?
I guess China is afraid of the competition.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
The real problem is that nobody can make an offer to China that they can't refuse...they'll just steal your offer and sell the knockoffs for half price.
They do have elections in China. Yes they effectively only have one party, but at the lower levels there can be multiple candidates that citizens can vote to be their representatives.
See: http://www.chinaelections.net/about-us.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
I doubt most of the Chinese people really care that there's only one Party.
Maybe after a while the Chinese voters would be voting for two different factions in the One Party, and most American voters who bother to vote will still keep on voting for one of the Two Parties. Then the two systems will start to look very similar :).
BTW, I've seen election regulations in the USA that give special treatment/advantages to the Two Parties that are not given to other parties. I find that rather strange.
p.s. unlike in the USA, in China prisoners who have not committed categories of crimes are still eligible to vote or even be candidates (in theory anyway ;) ).
I mentally compared the character Claude from GTA 3, with Carl Johnson from San Andreas.
To me, Carl wasn't fundamentally a bad guy, but was someone in a number of very bad situations, and was also a product of his environment. He doesn't do anywhere near as many cold-blooded or anonymous assassination missions, and when he is sent on a few, it begins to push him towards a nervous breakdown, because he has a conscience. He is also depicted as one of the only characters in the game who is strongly anti-drugs. Carl is also involved in turf wars, but he doesn't willingly fraternise with the mob, for the most part. As a white person, for me San Andreas also had some value from an anthropological point of view, as well.
Claude on the other hand was the proverbial silent psychopath. A lot of the missions he gets sent on are anonymous hits where he kills people who are complete strangers to him, in entirely cold blood. His story basically centres around his ascension within the heirarchies of a few different criminal organisations as well; the Italian Mafia, and the Yakuza.
With the GTA games, Rockstar were basically giving the public what they knew said public wanted, and what would sell. However, that doesn't mean that the content of the games is positive; for the most part it really isn't. San Andreas has some redeeming elements, but for the most part it is still exceedingly nihilistic and negative. GTA 3 doesn't really have any redeeming elements at all; it's a cross between an interactive version of Scarface, and a larger version of a high school playground with guns, cars, and explosions.
Anyone who thinks glorification of the Italian/Sicilian Mafia in particular is cool, needs to remember what said Mafia is and was. It was essentially a group of men who made money from committing crimes of various kinds on the one hand, and intermittently murdered people on the other. There's nothing positive there at all, and to me, there actually isn't really even anything romantic like there was with the pirate meme, either. They were just criminals and murderers; that's all.
Stop slamming the Chinese government as thugs and criminals, you hypocrites, when in other articles you turn around and rabidly support Richard Stallman on the other.
You can't have it both ways; Communism either is a bad thing, or it isn't.
> The Chinese government has now begun implementing those plans,
> starting with games that involve gangs.
Let's play Pick-Ur-Punchline!
A. So much for City of Villains
B. I presume this outlaws all simulations of the Chinese government itself.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Gangsters are dangerous, whether they belong to the crips, bloods, hell's angels, goldman sachs, the white house or a lobbying group.
.
Of course, in the USA, we have the right of free association and free speech. I'm honestly conflicted on this one. I favor these rights at a gut level.
But these rights are killing us too. Slowly. What to do?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Maybe the Chinese government should have a game created for the children that shows how the Chinese government helps the children? And also that by ignoring help from evil capitalists that china can truly prosper? Now THAT would be a hell of a game!
I love seeing people getting worked up over stuff like this. Comments about totalitarian governments and censorship get tossed around and righteous anger runs hot. Well, someone please explain to me how this is any different from the shitstorm in the US over Janet Jackson's tit being shown at the Superbowl. In both cases we the government stepping in and doing something to "protect the children." The FCC came down hard and renewed their fight against "indecency." So while the banning of ganster games seems crazy to people outside of China, there are many people in other countries who think that banning female breasts is just as absurd.
Please note, I'm not saying I agree with the actions of these governments, I'm just pointing out that every group of people seems to have their cultural taboos.
-------
"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
I disagree with calling this issue irrelevant in two ways.
First, once upon a time, a certain nation struggling under overprotective rule got really, really unhappy about the price of tea. I doubt that anything like the American Revolution will happen in China in the next 20 years (take that however you want). Nevertheless, with skyrocketing numbers of literate, educated, and Internet-consuming people within its borders, the authoritarian regime may find itself having to relent on some of its paternalistic and intrusive policies in the face of growing internal pressure. If I'm right that such pressures exist (their presence, and more importantly, their quantity are uncertain to me) and that they will continue to increase (actually somewhat likely IF the pressures exist in any quantity now), then almost any issue could conceivably be the "last straw" that sets in motion a strong movement for greater individual autonomy.
Second, look at it from the protectionist viewpoint. China's taken the step of blocking out "Gangsta" games now, but let's not forget, they've been filtering various games containing skeletons or any perceived slights to the Chinese government/army/way of life for some time. Sure, it smacks of intrusive social engineering, but it also blocks many blockbuster titles released by American companies from being sold legitimately, or at least holds them up through their very important initial hype period. With this, it gives Chinese publishers an advantage on the world -- first access to the lucrative and growing Chinese gaming demographic. Given the high rates of piracy in Asia, it's unlikely that a ban like this actually stops a determined person from acquiring the game they want -- at most, it's a matter of asking somebody that knows somebody and paying a grey-market premium, like getting marijuana in the USA. Nevertheless, the publisher doesn't capitalize on these pirated games; the money stays closer to home. If this is China's plan -- to whine about morality in order to enact a de facto embargo on US products to shelter its fledgling game industry -- it IS news about stuff that matters for nerds in the game design field.