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Chinese Bureaucrats Duel Over Right To Regulate WoW

Posted by samzenpus on from the great-wall-of-azeroth dept.

upto0013 writes "Chinese bureaucrats are battling each other for the right to regulate World of Warcraft. They hope to gain the political clout and the revenue that comes along with controlling a new industry with potential for explosive growth. 'If you supervise a more dynamic area with a lot of growth potential, you have more budget and more administrative muscle,' said Edward Yu, president of Analysys International, an Internet research firm in Beijing. 'They see this pie is getting bigger and bigger, so it is no wonder different administrations are fighting over pieces of that territory.' It's absurd how orcs and elves (and Moonkin) can affect so many different faraway places."

6 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can we watch? by meerling · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think you mean 'Hidden Nightelf' since they are the ones with Shadowmeld.

    Don't have a problem with the Crouching Tauren thing, since they keep having to duck down to get through most doorways without wedging their horns in the frame... :)

  2. Re:The first line of the story tells you everythin by sopssa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Western reporters in Beijing are total dumbasses. They constantly write stories colored by their own blinders they're not even aware that they're wearing.

    So, pretty much like every reporter and newspaper?

  3. Re:The first line of the story tells you everythin by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The BBC, for one, is renowned for its objectivity and lack of bias.

    --
    Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
  4. It's a sign that China is modernising by Kupfernigk · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Instead of warlords fighting for turf, you have civil servants fighting for budget. Progress. You also have the advantage that, unlike the US and the UK, you already have an overbearing, censorship-obsessed, fascist* slave state, so you don't have the civil servants fighting to get the budget to create one.

    * anyone who thinks China is Communist doesn't understand either (a) the meaning of communism or (b) history.

    --
    From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
  5. I guess... by jipn4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    US bureaucrats are also falling over each other to regulate whatever they can because it gives them power. Bureaucracies work the same the world over, communist or not.

  6. Re:Worse than that... by DigitalSorceress · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hmm if it's truly a cultural issue, then wouldn't it be a self-regulating feedback loop?

    In other words, if you're that offended by the game diong something repugnant to your culture, you won't play... end of problem.

    It seems to me that the whole bones thing may go against certain cultural norms, but that the government is the one who has a problem with it.

    I honestly don't know enough about Chinese cultural norms to know if showing bones is equivelent (to the Chinese) as your hypothetical MMORPG would be to America.

    I keep trying to think about this from an outsider's perspective, but I keep getting back to "dude, it's just bones. if it bothers me, I won't look, but it doesn't so where's the harm?". There are one or two substitutions for the word "bones" that you could add that would make it illegal in the US, and where most members of our culture would even agree that it should be a crime.

    Cultural relativism is a damn minefield.

    I'll just go back to LFM H ToC 25 now and be happy that my culture allows me to waste my evenings and weekends in this manner.

    --

    The Digital Sorceress