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China Enforces Even Stricter Regulation On Games
eldavojohn writes "Chinese gamers have a pretty hard life. From crackdowns on 'undesirable' games to bans on gangster games to delayed World of Warcraft expansions, they suffer. The worst part is that in order to qualify for operating in China, you face a maze of conflicting bureaucracy and regulation. Well, it just got a little worse. Now, if you want to operate, you need to hire a 'specialist' to oversee content, and you need to 'enhance socialist values' in your game. They also want to limit in-game marriages and how many player-versus-player combat sessions one can engage in. The circular issued from China's Ministry of Culture contained all the vague verbiage giving them easier reign over who operates and who doesn't. It's a large market, but is it worth the gamble to game developers?"
What? Why not? They don't like their people being competitive?
Just wait until MW3 is made about China...
I heard they are banning all Wii games with the word "Party" in the title.
There are plenty of game developers that would love to capture part of the Chinese market. It's mainly developers that operate a bit too close to prohibited levels of hedonism and a few other touchy subjects that will have problems, and it's not like Chinese need games tailored to them - people taking the effort to make a game could go worldwide if their game won't work in China.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
It's a large market, but is it worth the gamble to game developers?
Are you nuts? It's a market that in a few years will be 5-10 times larger than the US market, taking into account that asian cultures are more open to gaming in general (see Korea for example). If there is any single market in the world that's worth it, it's China.
Other industry has been there, done that. Car manufacturers all knew after the initial surprises that if they open a factory in China, their blueprints will be copied and another chinese factory somewhere else will produce the same cars for a cheaper price. Some stayed out of China for that reason. Until the chinese began to buy cars. Then, they had no choice but to do it, because they couldn't sell on the chinese market without having a chinese factory. They did it knowing full well the damage they'd sustain.
Frankly, ten years from now, game developers will probably wonder whether it's worth the trouble anymore translating their games for the US market.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
How about I develop a game that caters EXACTLY what the Chinese government would like, and then they use their overpowered censorship and propoganda to promote it and only it...
Question Marks
Profit?
These new rules sound like the are all about setting up the bureaucracy to ensure the state, and various officials, are getting their cut of your success.
It seems like trouble taking video games to market is the least of the Chinese people's worries regarding use of technology.
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Hypertext isn't what it's marked up to be
let them go to hell. fuckwads.
There is a software market in China? I mean one that generatess actual money, and doesn't just pirate everything?
I guess 2% of a billion is a pretty big number.
...none of those regulations apply to their goldfarming services targeted to large First World markets.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If enough companies/games don't attempt to penetrate the Chinese market due to the ridiculous red tape and censoring, maybe the people will get upset enough to do something about it!
Damn, not only do I have to get past the App Store but I have to get past Chinese censors. Just isn't worth it.
By "take games seriously" are you referring to the people in their 20s that still spend all their spare time playing games? They need to grow up?
Or do you mean the people that think games have are extremely influential on people... you think they need to grow up?
Whether or not PvP is good or bad is one argument, but arguing that games don't really influence people is ridiculous. If nothing else, it consumes their time, for better or worse. Games - and all entertainment - is not a neutral activity, just as reading a book isn't. Movies, games, and books (and TV, radio, etc) all influence people; game creators, movie producers, and authors can push behaviors, points, agendas, etc. It's not the medium that makes something "neutral" or non-influential.
1. If you are playing the Call of Duty campaign and you pick up an ammo pack, you only get 1/10 of the ammo and the rest go to your NPC squadmates. If you point out that they are idiotic clowns that never pick up ammo to give to you in return, it's "Game Over" as you are sent to a reeducation camp to rid you of your bourgeoiseity.
2. In Resident Evil, all the money you collect to buy items will instead be melted down to produce a golden plow. Instead, which weapons you get in the store depends on how badly you have played before. If you want that rocket launcher, you had better get shot up quite a bit before you visit. Make sure you drop those health packs behind a corner.
3. In Betrayal at Krondor, if you haggle too much with a merchant, you are seeking to exploit your position of privilege to subdue to rights of the worker, and the labour union of every store on the world map will make their merchants refuse to sell to you.
4. In Super Mario Bros., there's no point in playing, because the princess gets her just dessert after gorging on the paltry meals of the people. The revised edition has Bowser wear a top hat, and you are saving a revolutionary songwriter.
5. In Zelda, you can only play the game once a year. This is because everyone in the game must take a turn in being allowed to use the sword, which is the only sword in existence. It is bourgeoise to claim that just because your parents were such-and-such, and you found a sword that someone else left in the forest, you should be allowed to keep it away from being shared with the people.
6. In Harvest Moon, the amount of money you get allocated will be lower the more you produce. This is because everyone should give according to ability and receive according to need, and since you obviously dig like a freaking maniac while nobody else in the village does, you have just proved that you are able to dig like a freaking maniac which nobody else has. Since you were a capitalist before, it should be expected that you conceal part of the produce.
. If there is any single market in the world that's worth it, it's the United States of America.
FIFY.
Other industry has been there, done that. Car manufacturers all knew after the initial surprises that if they open a factory in China, their blueprints will be copied and another chinese factory somewhere else will produce the same cars for a cheaper price. Some stayed out of China for that reason.
Good reason to stay out of a Second(Russia) World or Third World country(China/India/Brazil) and manufacture in a First World(US/UK/Pre-Expansion EU) one.
Besides, you're selling largely to party bosses anyway. The rest are just junk-grade copies.
Frankly, ten years from now, game developers will probably wonder whether it's worth the trouble anymore translating their games for the US market.
They will translate for the US and it won't be a second-rate job. End of story.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
You could make a video game of getting guy developing and publishing a video game in China.
Oh the Onion'y of it all.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
Anyone but me recognize this as an EXCELLENT opportunity for these "specialists" to get paid? This IS China we are talking about.
Any respectable company should boycott the Chinese market over this. It isn't a gamble to sell games to china that meet their criteria, however it does mean that you sold out your conscience for more profits. Personally I'd refuse to make changes from a piece of artwork to appease the establishment.
The funny thing is, by reading Slashdot, one gets the impression that the CCP (and thus the gummint) has clamped down on everything.
Yet, I know people who travel there regularly and they state, you can get anything you want as long as you know where to go or who to talk to. Much is readily available in stores which is supposedly banned.
China may pass laws, but the enforcement is a whole different matter.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Now, if we can only get Jack Thompson to learn Chinese and move to Beijing, we could finally get him out of our hair and inflict him on someone else. It would be a career move in keeping with his past "crusades". Of course, the Chinese may consider such a move an act of war.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
They want you to be in violation of something. With all the legislation, it is impossible to comply with every single law without driving yourself out of business. Everyone knows it, and the Chinese government (at central, provincial, city, and district levels, which are all different and have little relation with each other) knows it too. They like knowing that they can shut you down at any time, but are usually content to let things go as long as you play ball. This kind of ball-play can be laissez faire for years or it can be an "I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it further" kind of situation. You really have no way of knowing how it will turn out, and the government likes it like that. This is why it's so important to have buddies in government who can warn you of upcoming problems or give you some lamb's blood to mark yourself so the inspectors pass you over. I had one high muckety-muck vice-director of the municipal propaganda ministry hold my product in his hand as if he were weighing it, and said it was about 80% legal. I couldn't puzzle it out, either it's legal or illegal, how can legality be a percentage, and a guess at that! Later I got it...I felt pretty dumb. It was obvious, only my cultural blinders kept me from seeing it.
And to those of you who are already hitting "reply" to say "durr, just like my country only my country is much worse", do you have a ministry of culture whose job it is to enhance socialist values? With lawyers and truncheons if necessary? You can joke all you like about capitalism taking over but there are plenty of true-believer Mao-worshipping socialists in the government.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Its called a dogmatic National Interest. Welcom to international super power politics and self interest. Its how we all feel indignantly justified in our ethnocentric human nature. If the media is from a "foreign" undesirable culture then please feel free to steal it since we won't let you buy it, and you are a criminal anyway. But the legitimate stuff that they sell, first and foremost. America just can't seem to wrap their minds around the fact that China, the most populous nation by far, is not a democracy. If it we're, they'd out vote us every time. Which is exactly how they handle us anyway. Its like trying to push a sleepy grumpy Yak up a mountain with a twig. Moooooo.
The gaming rules make the games part of the communism enforcement machine. This is different than car manufacturing or tupperware. Saying you have to have communism party values in the game enforces this oppressive behavior. Then the developer becomes part of the problem. Don't let $$$ be a motivation for oppression.
If I was a U.S. game shop I probably wouldn't even consider releasing in China. Does China really generate that much revenue to make it worthwhile?
"China's going to be a HUGE market!" is the China fallacy, which operates with the assumption that consumers in China are like consumers elsewhere, and that as soon as they get money they will become a gold mine.
That is a fallacy that's been going on for three to four hundred plus years, and contributed directly to the downfall of the Qing Emperor, the Open Door policy, and all the other problems that China's been trying to recover from for the last hundred years. See, China's culture is very nationalistic and one of their flaws is that they believe they are the center of the Earth. In the mercantile age, that meant that China always exported its goods but would only accept silver from the West because western goods were always seen as 'inferior'. It almost bankrupted the British Empire, and did significant economic damage to the other Western countries, so they retaliated by basically taking over China's ports (and the whole country) to boot.
To assume that once THIS happens then China will open up to the West is wrong. China will continue what it's doing right now with the currency, and with it's trade policies: accepting money (in the form of Treasury debt and other convertibles) and exporting its goods without buying our goods, because they do not want to be 'dependent' on us. This is at the heart of the Chinese currency manipulation problem - that China is doing exactly what it did 200+ years ago - hoarding monetary assets while not accepting imports from us and slowly bankrupting us. They're not doing it out of spite, they're doing it because to them, all other countries and cultures are 'inferior' to a degree and they want to be the center of the world - and the center never accepts help from the edges.
That's why the best route for developers is to ignore China. Don't buy into the fallacy, because then you force China to accept your goods, and in doing so, you fix the imbalance.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Funny how the USA has to deal with similar issues... but China-- they were supposed to be communist! They couldn't even keep the capitalist flame under control for a generation and its a wild fire already. The USA managed to go longer; but we in many ways are in the same boat anyhow... (for the religious zealots; surely you can now acknowledge a simple fire == capitalism analogy after the recent banking/credit/insurance mess. )
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
actually, in providing the game even neutered, the Chinese will probably be forced to change over time. They will never really be able to keep a lid on cultural control and anyone that plays the actual game will be pissed that they are not allowed to play the good version.
If you are an American and truly believe that our basic freedoms should be universal, then you are no less than a traitor to your own people if you agree to work under these guidelines. If a popular game like WoW was to make this stand you would have millions of people demanding change.
Any respectable company...
We'll let you know if we see any.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
MW3 has been out for a while and I don't remember House Liao being mentioned.
Hmmmm, sounds like they took a page out of Apple's playbook.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I saw this free game play ad on the right of the article, "Neverland"
Oh it's so perfect. "Neverland" the place where Chinese never play games.
Sometimes, the answer is to just destroy it all.
Have 20 million Chinese WoW addicts have their game taken away.
...I log onto WoW and make sure my ore supplier is still there.
He is.
I think the question is it ethical to do so? Yes, this, like the fucked up Google results are one of those cases where you could suggest that the people of China are better served by a government manipulated service than no service at all, but what about us? What does it say about us?
I would refuse to work for a company that made such compromises on freedom at all, I mean what do these guys tell their friends/family/kids?
- What you do you do daddy?
- Well I make sure the young population of china never gets a feeling of independence or self worth outside remaining subservient to the state honey.
But... the future refused to change.
...All they are doing is making a market for imported, pirated and bootlegged games. Want to be the cool kid at school, then pick you have the uncensored version of a game. A usb drive in your pocket, an SD card hidden inside a birthday card would be easy ways to slip games and other content into china.
I was really hoping that my Chinese-only shareware adventure game Holy Falun Gong Great Taiwan Super Tibetan Independence Skeleton Bash would make me rich, but it's not looking so good now. Maybe they'll let me sell it in China if I add a registration screen and transmit all player's names and IP addresses to the National Party Loyalty Enforcement Authority. Works for HP and Google!
China Enforces Even Stricter Regulation On Games
By "enforce" they mean "beat you to death if you fail to comply."
Sounds almost exactly how the mafia operates.
How about the game developers learn enough Chinese to say "Fook Yoo" to China.
Another important reason why the government is posing more restrictions on gaming in China is due to game itself is becoming an important medium in China, which you can effectively reach the youth group in China [as well as the last US election]. Probably the only channel the government left in the wild without censorship for the past decade. Young people in China really don't have much option to choose a hobby, the only thing that is cheap and people can have fun is online gaming, that is why internet cafes are still filled with young people and underage children [gov require to be 18 to enter internet cafes in china during schools which is poorly enforced].
So in other words, in order for the thugocrats who run the Chinese prison state to make nice, you have to create games that lie?
Communism is evil.
Socialism is just a euphemism for Communism.
The thugocrats in who run China have a profound understanding of Communism. It is a tool by which the ruthless few can gain and keep power over the helpless many.
The thugocrats don't really BELIEVE in communism. What they do believe is that they should have power over their fellow man and that communism provides a way to do this.
They hate democracy precisely because it would take power away from them spread it far and wide.
I would not want to create content that justifies the rule of these thugs.
But like someone else has already mentioned, in a corrupt society like China, it all comes down to who you bribe and how generous your offer is.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
So what you suggest is that since South Koreans like Starcraft, the Chinese will bend over backwards to buy every game out there? What does South Korea have to do with China? Oh right, they're all "asian cultures". Cuz you know, there is this one monolithic cultural identity spanning the entirety of a quarter of the world's population with no variability whatsoever.
Blame the poor,ignorant,gullable, or colored people for the whole problem. You need to find better sources for your education on the subject.
Government didn't create the problem; the market did and the market has had working control of the important issues for at least a generation. WE WERE the government- to say government can't work is to say democracy doesn't work; WE are the failure, etc. The reality is that we (the people) no longer have the majority share of influence on a range of issues. WORKING CONTROL means they don't get everything, just most of what they want. I'll not even get into how the few relatively powerless regulators have been often corrupted as well.
Government used to handle low income housing loans (thank FDR) until it was PRIVATIZED and industry influence ruled since (they made it private.) LOTS OF MONEY WAS MADE from these bad loans; some of us never drank the coolaid. Now you've been conned, you blame the dead and want more coolaid. Fine; go ahead, drink up.
BTW, DEREGULATION caused it. From modern Nixon/Regan derivatives to the FRAUD of "financial products" AAA rated when they were junk. The real cause wasn't the junk mortgages but the FRAUD in trading the debts and the BANKS gambling like they did before the great depression. Its actually worse than the great depression! The system is more complex and more fundamentally screwed up. Sometimes I think the complexity is why they can keep propping it up all these years.
Moore's new film might do you some good. Its really basic so it shouldn't go over your head.