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Chinese Consumers Can Now Buy Formerly Banned Consoles, Nationwide
PC Magazine reports that China has entered a new phase in its liberalization of game console sales. Restrictions amounting to a nationwide ban were loosened recently, so that manufacturers which produced (and sold) consoles in Shanghai's free trade zone were allowed to also sell their wares elsewhere in China. The newest change is to remove that geographic requirement, so Chinese buyers are expected to be able to buy whatever consoles they'd like. Games to play on those consoles, though, are a different story.
Did you see the restrictions on game content? It's broad enough to mean "anything we don't want to allow is banned."
* Gambling-related content or game features
* Anything that violates China’s constitution
* Anything that threatens China’s national unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity.
* Anything that harms the nation’s reputation, security, or interests.
* Anything that instigates racial/ethnic hatred, or harms ethnic traditions and cultures.
* Anything that violates China’s policy on religion by promoting cults or superstitions.
* Anything that promotes or incites obscenity, drug use, violence, or gambling.
* Anything that harms public ethics or China’s culture and traditions.
* Anything that insults, slanders, or violates the rights of others.
* Other content that violates the law
The old men that run the government still believe that console games are meant exclusively for children - or at least adults who need to be "protected from dangerous ideas" as though they were children. This is no different than what many of our own legislatures and citizen activists wished to impose on us... "for the children", of course, but fortunately, saner heads prevailed.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Modern Warfare and Command & Conquer: Red Alert will probably not be approved for sale in China.
I was going to add Sleeping Dogs to the list, but I hold out hope that "Why don't you have a pork bun in your hand?" will someday become as important a cultural touchstone in China as it has become in the West.
You are welcome on my lawn.
These look like laws not made specifically for games. You can disagree with their laws (and they can ignore your opinion), but it makes sense that game developers have to follow the law like everyone else.
Yeah, but the Chinese are great at pirating software. Hardware was the real hurdle.
the Chinese are great at pirating software. Hardware was the real hurdle.
If you know what a "Famiclone" is, you might see why it's not too much of a hurdle.
Yipppppeeeeee!!!!!!!
"We have to respect their laws while selling our products on their territory? HOW DARE THEY?"
We're talking about consoles that can't be easily emulated. Are you a moron?
and their software will follow.
That is probably all they're going to need to get most games available now as digital titles.
If you know what an emulator is, you might see why that console isn't much of a hurdle.
I remember behind the iron curtain, our software and even some hardware were copies, and no one cared because western companies had no presence at all. But once they were let in, they demanded to fight against piracy and fake products.
There's a solution to that. Big AAA game will start to be censored for China once the Chinese become a major consumers of console games. That may mean in some circumstances the rest of the world will get censored versions as well. It may also mean we get a more interesting variety of games as not every AAA game will need to be a power fantasy for white 20 somethings.
The Famicom couldn't be emulated back when it was released, personal computer were running at around 20MHz back then.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
We'rte talking about right now, not 20+ years ago.
I wish the US government would stand up to the people and tell them "NO!" when something is clearly bad for them, instead of pandering and vote-grabbing. A lot of people in this world think China's curated system is better. The people in their government are educated scientists and engineers, and they can concentrate on doing the right thing instead of constantly running for office.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
A Famiclone is a Famicom clone and the Famicom is a 29 years-old system.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The people in their government are politicians and bureaucrats, just like anywhere else, and corruption is rampant throughout all levels of their government.
"Curated system" is a really cute way of saying "your betters will decide the important things for you". No thanks. I don't need a little red book or my "betters" telling me how to think.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Again, what is your point?
The Famicom is old and is easily emulated. Getting it now is pointless.
If you're saying it was easy to get in the past, who cares? That was then, this is now. It's harder to get the new consoles in China now then it used to be.
At the GameSpot article basically every comment is someone jabbering "All games are banned!", but that doesn't seem to be true at all. Most of these restrictions are not relevant to most games. The stuff about China's reputation affects all the war games where China is the enemy; this has already caused a lot of games and movies to be altered (ie in Homefront the enemy was changed from China to North Korea, moving the plot from very implausible plot to totally absurd). That sucks, it probably means a ban on all Fallout games (already banned in India for calling cows "Brahmin"!), and it's a very insidious form of censorship because of its political nature and international reach, but it won't affect most games.
The only rule here that's going to block a large share of games is the one on violence. Now that is going to ban a ton of games. Probably anything rated Mature in the US and a lot of the Teen games too. But the reason it's going to block a ton of games is because the US and European game market is absolutely littered with games about shooting people. Now I play shooters sometimes but quite honestly I'm getting sick of them. There's a zillion games about running around shooting people, they're mostly all the same, and I don't actually *like* shooting people (not a kid anymore, not too into violence). And it bugs me that the market is so dominated by shooters, and particularly really violent, unrealistic shooters where you're just gunning down people by the dozen. I feel like it crowds everything else out of the action game market, so that it's not possible to find action games that aren't focused on killing people.
So that's mainly it. Shooters will be banned. Sex is already not very prevalent in Western games because the US censors are super prudish about sex too. Lots of skimpy outfits, not much sex. Maybe the Chinese will demand edits to make the outfits less skimpy, probably not, and if they do big whoop. The games that do have sex tend to have lots of violence too so they'll be banned anyway. Gambling? Not that big a deal. Tons of RPGs have a gambling minigame but you can cut that out with no big loss. Drugs aren't very common, usually already removed or changed to "stims" because of US rules anyway. Restrictions on obscenity will affect some games. That just means in the Chinese translation they'll take out the obscenity. And yet again, the games with lots of obscenity tend to have lots of shooting anyway.
Really once you cut out the six million first person shooters most games comply with these rules or would comply with small edits. Everything Nintendo has ever made complies. Starfox is violent but it's cartoon violence, no problemo in the US and probably not in China either. Racing games and sports games comply. Probably they'll allow boxing and wrestling games because they're formal sports. Hell they might even allow Shenmue--all the violence is martial arts, very respectable! RPGs (where you kill dudes with swords) will probably come down to regulator's discretion and involve a lot of haggling.
....when something is clearly bad for them...
Who gets to decide what's bad and what's not? You? Someone else? The anointed elite that is guaranteed(hah!) to be altruistic and meritocratic?
The worst-case of democracy sucks. Except it sucks less than the average-case of all other systems.
The worst-case of democracy sucks. Except it sucks less than the average-case of all other systems.
Repeating it a million times won't make it true.
The reality of gaming in China is this:
The domestic version of the consoles is restrictive, actually, especially for foreigners in China in many cases. The domestic version of the PS4, for example, will only work with a Chinese playstation store ID - so you can't log in to your overseas-created ID from the Chinese console.
That being said, in China - now, as before, as always, you can very easily purchase whichever console you choose from graymarket shops. By gray market I mean fully legally functioning and not hiding anything shops (in Chengdu typically found on the 4th floor of the 'computer city' malls), often legally imported (illegally only if they were brought in without paying import taxes), from a variety of countries. In China, typically it means HK or Japanese models of the consoles and associated games. The shop I get my games from often has US versions of the games also, which I by far prefer because it lets me use the bonus content with my Canadian account.
Consoles and games were only really 'banned' from legitimate channels of mass market entry - never illegal in the sense they weren't allowed to be sold or owned or played, that's a notion that many people overseas simply don't understand when they read articles like this, which are a little bit misleading.
Oh, also, the piracy aspect of all consoles is equally gray market - each of those shops will mod any console they sell and let you transfer games from their game library upon purchase, or bring your HD in for a bunch of transfers, at the cost of about $1usd/game....banned, pfft.
Well then, wow us with a wonderful counterexample.
This is a story about china. Do you really think they don't employ (or force inmates) by the thousands to astroturf?
The only console that makes any sense is the Nintendo products.
The PS4 and the XboxOne are just limited PCs. There's no reason to own one besides caving to corporate hostage taking techniques and ignorance.
http://static1.gamespot.com/up...
http://i.imgur.com/7ezaq7w.png
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"Yeah, but the Chinese are great at pirating software."
Is that what you were told to believe?
Next time you are on bittorrent, take a look at the peers and see what country they are from (hint, most are not china).
" and corruption is rampant throughout all levels of their government."
Totally not like your form of government.
Bribery (oops, i mean lobbying) is rampant and only large corps get the laws they want.
You say that as if you think the US government is any less corrupt.
Actually from all the censorship rules, you're not going to get a heck of a lot of room for a "variety of games". Certainly all the FPS for the power fantasies will be out. But there's not going to be a heck of a lot to replace it. Pretty much every RPG is going to be belly up, depending on how far they take the violence censorship, every platformer is gone. Shooting games are naturally out. And the list will go on.
You'll have some puzzle games and most sports games. (Some hockey games might be out due to the fighting. :p)
Of course this assumes they'll bring the full force of the restrictions down all the time. Rather than removing the most obvious content, then selectively enforcing it on the rest to apply pressure on any developer that becomes popular.
You won't get a wider variety for gamers world wide out of this. If China becomes a big enough market, they'll get edited versions for themselves, or will get a base game without all the DLC. In fact this might be a reason used in the future for the big publishers to cut even MORE content out of games to sell as DLC. (while still selling it at 60-80 dollars of course.)
Famiclones appeared prior to 1997 when NESticle became usable.
The laws never really stopped them in the past from playing, so nothing's really going to stop them now... I'm more interested in how these laws will affect the black market.