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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?"
I heard they are banning all Wii games with the word "Party" in the title.
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
Don't worry, as with all business in China you just have to know who to bribe.
Mod parent up. This law is basically saying "You must hit all of these subjective benchmarks." That's code for "You must pay us enough money to agree that you are hitting all of these subjective benchmarks."
Laws are rarely about what's good for the people. They're usually about what's good for the lawmakers. Occasionally the two coincide.
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!
"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.
"One of the things I have always found troubling about Westerners doing business in emerging market countries is that they sometimes take an almost perverse pride in discussing payoffs to government officials. It is as though their having paid a bribe is a symbol of their international sophistication and insider knowledge. Yet, countless times when I am told of the bribe, I know the very same thing could almost certainly have been accomplished without a bribe." --Source
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!