Chinese Government to Put a Time Limit on Gaming 117
Flyph writes "The Chinese Government unveiled a new online gaming timer mechanism that will try to prevent gamers from playing online games for more than three hours at a time. From the article: '"This timing mechanism can prevent young people from becoming addicted to online games," Kou Xiaowei, Deputy Director of the Audiovisual and Internet Publication Department of the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), said during a press conference.' Maybe this is a way to prevent the goldfarming that goes on in MMORPGs." Of course, China may just want to avoid a tragedy similar to the recent South Korean man's death covered on Slashdot.
Altruism? I have my suspicions... (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA: Mabye I'm missing something here, but it seems to me that your average gaming young person will simply switch to another chracter in the same game, or failing that, another character in a different game.
Again from the TFA: Seems to me that the members of this "Beijing Accord" aren't as concerned with the welfare of young people as they are with insuring that the average gamer must have accounts on two or three different games to keep playing as much as they'd like.
Multiple publishers (Score:4, Interesting)
probably 99% of the MMORPG players play with a single account, thus the discouraging effect should work on them.
So do you claim that fewer than 1 percent of MMORPG customers play more than one publisher's game? Three hours on EverCrack, three hours on World of WarCrack, three hours on Guild Wars, and you can still feed your addiction. Or are you counting on some government-backed federated identity system to enforce a cumulative limit of three hours per day across all games?
Re:Multiple publishers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Altruism? I have my suspicions... (Score:2)
>single account
Probably because there is usually no need for more than one account. However, that can change with things like this.
Re:Altruism? I have my suspicions... (Score:2, Interesting)
I think it's more likely that the companies are pledging their support because it's not a good idea to argue with the Chinese goverment. Greed is secondary to survival. On the flip side, corruption from either side will enable the existence of loopholes in the laws or implementation where multiple accounts may allow gamers to bypass the time limit with multiple accounts. Just as likely would be (for WoW,at least) where rewards for killing specific NPC's (i.e. The last boss of any
Re:Altruism? I have my suspicions... (Score:2)
Avoiding deaths? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:2, Funny)
Nazis vs. Commies (Score:1)
In fact, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Labour Party opposed communism. Communist states became Teh Enemy only after the transition from World War II (the Allies vs. the Axis) to World War III (the West vs. the Soviet Bloc, fought in such places as Korea and Vietnam, often called the Cold War because it didn't go nuclear as expected, nor was there any armed conflict on USA or USSR soil).
Re:Nazis vs. Commies (Score:1)
So it's kind of misleading to say that Communist states weren't the enemy until after WW2 when in fact there was fighting agains Communism at home and abroad throughout the interwar period.
Re:Nazis vs. Commies (Score:2)
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:1)
Daylight savings [wikipedia.org] could be viewed having a similar goal...maybe we all have planks in our eyes?
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:1)
I am astonished that it was suggested that China is doing this to prevent a death from game addiction
I agree. Even though, communist governments are always being accused of being nanny states, I have to question the rationale behind whether the loss of one person in 48,422,644 (population of S. Korea per cia.gov) justifies any governmental action. Seriously, do they really want to expend any effort ($$$$) on what has got to be a rather rare occurrence?
They have to see it as a palatable justificatio
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:2)
Doesn't WoW have something similar, to a lesser scale, built in with character exhaustion after playing many hours at once?
Despite how unfair I think this is, I would welcome it as a chance to see some of my friends that go
Re:Avoiding deaths? (Score:1)
Not a tragedy (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, China may just want to avoid a tragedy similar to the recent South Korean man's death covered on Slashdot.
That's not a tragedy, it's natural selection at work.
I mean, really... (Score:1)
Re:Not a tragedy (Score:2)
darwin, coming to a death near you.
Re:Not a tragedy (Score:1)
China's priorities.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Polution laws? Maybe next year.
Internet-gaming-related death? We'll get on that right away.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, really. You CANNOT have too much fun. It's forbidden.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:1)
Thanks for that!
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is extremely hypocritical of Europeans and Americans to point a finger at China. Much of the European growth came from the fact that they raped Central America of gold. The US railway system was built on Chinese slave labor.
If you are living in the US or EU, you are reaping the benifits of hundreds of years of human and environmental plunder.
I'm not saying it isn't wrong. I just think that China will see it for what it is and tell us to get stuffed.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:3, Informative)
Furthermore, calling the Chinese slaves is a bald faced lie. It merely demonstrates Bios Hakr's complete lack of knowledge o
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
Watch out. It's become very En Vogue to say that the Civil War had NOTHING to do with slavery. Am I going to propose that it was 100% for blacks'/slaves' rights? Of course not. There were many economical and political reasons. But slavery was a KEY issue, despite many neo-revisionists.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
The cool historians are saying again that the Civil War was about slavery. It's one of those things. Texas buys it's history books enmasse. Guess which argument they want to buy.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." - Abraham Lincoln, 1862
I think that
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:1)
Whatever personal "paramount object" Lincoln had, doesn't change the fact that the war was about slavery.
If the Civil War was really about state's rights, then it's equally logical to say that a burglar killing a homeowner was acting in self-defense.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
slavery and all that (Score:2)
Yes, it was a key issue, but it was a key economic and political issue. Oh, human rights had something to do with it, too, but even raising those issues had only become possible once it had become economically unnecessary and politically expedient for the north. If human labor were still as important for economic success today as it was back then, we'd still have slavery, human rights be damned.
Unp
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Canada was built by grabbing land from the indians. They're still whining about it, I'm sure they consider it a human rights abuse.
Oh, and our railways were also built with Chinese labour, but I don't know how well/poorly they were treated.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:1)
Let's see. Mohawks, Iroquois, Algonquin, Huron, this list goes on.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
We stole their land and tried to supress their culture. That's not nice, but it's still not fucking genocide [dict.org].
cry cry cry (Score:2)
The Normans conquered and ruled my English forebearers.
My Loyalist great-great-great-great-grandparents had their land stolen by the Americans, who then threw them right out of the country.
I've managed to get over it and live my life.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
Would that be the same Switzerland that took Nazi gold? No human rights violations there...
As for the "coolies", they weren't technically slave labor. They were, however, subjected to the most difficult jobs and as soon as thei
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
I don't know why there is such a huge emphasis on video game deaths around the world.
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:1)
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
Polution laws? Maybe next year.
Internet-gaming-related death? We'll get on that right away.
More like:
Human rights? Tricky subject: How much freedom/human decency can you have in a ostensibly Communist nation and still maintain solid control?
Pollution laws? Tricky subject: How much can we look at cutting pollution while still developing our industrial capacity and supporting growth?
Internet-gaming-related death? Easy subject: Put fairly strict rules in place to reduce the time people
Re:China's priorities.... (Score:2)
They better be prepared... (Score:1)
Re:They better be prepared... (Score:2, Funny)
Are you saying they're all going to catch a cold?
Re:They better be prepared... (Score:1)
Re:They better be prepared... (Score:1)
Wow, that's evil.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Example: in WoW, you de-level from 40 to 20. What happens to all your kit that requires level 30 to equip? Conditions like that could make the China WoW code quite a pain in the ass to maintain.
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
Re:You're clueless (Score:2)
Finally, if you're level 40 but still wearing level 30 junk, you need an upgrade badly.
example. Not everyone plays WoW and knows it intimately. I simplified so that people with only a general idea of how WoW works would grasp the key concept. But that eluded you, apparently.
Second, the original article, (which you clearly did not read)specifically said that was how the system was going to work. I just didn't think I needed to quote the entire article to make the point.
So, in conclu
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:1)
I hear the Abuse Department has some ideas. Customer Abuse, that is.
chl
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
Most of the high end content for games like WoW would be impossible to accomplish with this type of restriction. Hell, a lot of it is almost impossible without this restriction!
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
Is your real concern the game, or is it politics?
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
Yes. It would also be the first time it's ever happened in an Enterprise-level network application.
For example, items that require a certain level are merely unequipped, or skills could be unlearned. Simple, really.
But what if the character's bags are full? Send them to a special 'de-leveled' Vault account? Or trash them? And that's just one example. So you may well be a programmer, but I don't think
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
If the game has some method of outside storage that is player-specific, then it would be feasable to store the items there. Another technique that would seem easy to implement would be to simply make an exception for the unquiped items; let t
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
I think it'd be a pain to code.
Anyway, I'd categorise it as a 'non-trivial' fix. Blizzard runs localized servers already so they could apply this patch to just the China servers, but it forks the code even more, which places an additional burden
Re:Wow, that's evil.. (Score:2)
Do the same thing with books (Score:5, Funny)
Note, too, that evil people write books, not computer games. Hitler or Mao, a piece of them will always live on in a book. The people who blow themselves up in the name of Islam in Iraq, Israel and lately London do it because of what they read in a book, not because their character on WoW does it.
China has got it all wrong, again. If they really wanted to do themselves (and us) a favor, they would make sure their population can't read.
Re:Do the same thing with books (Score:3, Insightful)
In related news (Score:1)
Hawaii has decided to cut down all coconut trees to prevent people dying from a coconut blow to the head. (there are more deaths per year by coconut then by sharks and gaming together)
I don't know about you guys (Score:2)
Re:I don't know about you guys (Score:2)
Re:I don't know about you guys (Score:1)
> for a revolution of some sort
They already had that. This is what they ended up with.
Not as Ridiculous As it Sounds (Score:5, Insightful)
- China is host to a lot of conversative thinking. This includes suspicion of videogames, which are strongly associated with 1) Japan, 2)western excess, and 3)isolated youth. Korea and Japan have an obsession with games, which many Chinese find disconcerting.
- Youth, despite being routinely used for hard work, are considered important to the degree that they should stick with the familiy. A cultural gap, as societies (there's more than one in China) modernize, has appeared that includes new elements like pop culture and urbanization. Chinese parents are concerned about this new future for their children. It might also be shameful for a youth to be idle, disassociated with the family, and over-enthusiastic about videogames.
- The PRC has recently been pressed to provide more services and better responsiveness to popular worries. It started with lip service by Jintao and Jaibao, but the presence of strikes and media decentralization has forced the need for good press. This flimsy "service" is a gesture.
- HCI (human computer interaction) is new to many Chinese and the government's help in softening the introduction (including addressing addiction) may be seen as a good-will gesture. We don't like Big-Brother, but it's common for a government to assist in the spread of "new" technology and allay worries of adoption. Control can be comforting.
- Health is a very important concept in China. Often it is linked to a religious/philosophical notion of balance. Obviously, too much of anything like videogames will distort balance. Good familial relations also ties into this concept of balance. Until videogames become cross-generational and respected, they won't neatly harmonize with traditional views.
Re:Not as Ridiculous As it Sounds (Score:1)
Re:Not as Ridiculous As it Sounds (Score:2)
One thing to consider is that China is going to suffer from a self-inflicted "top-heavy" population demographic in coming years (similar to the U.S. baby boom generation, or the rather elderly, on average, population of Japan) because of their baby boom in the 1960s and the subsequent one [wikipedia.org]
Re:Not as Ridiculous As it Sounds (Score:2)
Economy (Score:2)
Re:Economy (Score:2, Insightful)
MMORPGs don't jive too much with socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Plus, heaven forbid, you might meet someone who doesn't toe the party line.
Addiction my ass. They are protecting their addiction to exploiting their own people under the guise of socialism. Some are more equal than others.
Re:MMORPGs don't jive too much with socialism (Score:2)
If it's exploitation, how exactly does the state benefit from such measures?
Re:MMORPGs don't jive too much with socialism (Score:1)
The state being defined as those who are in power.
No more sweatshop gold/weapons farming? (Score:2, Insightful)
See this article, linked to from Slashdot a while ago: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141815 [1up.com]
sweatshop? (Score:1)
OK, slashdot geeks. Calculate this: what is the work expenditure per hour to move your mouse back and forth enough to camp a [high level mob] in [game of your choice] and what is the income relative to said work expenditure. Extra credit for pie charts calculating relative work/income ratios for varios MMORPGs.
I have to say, FFXI is the most expensive one out there, but I still love it.
Re:No more sweatshop gold/weapons farming? (Score:2)
Thus begins the Chinese Revolution (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thus begins the Chinese Revolution (Score:2)
Well, you wont be playing games and you'll need something else to do...
Re:Thus begins the Chinese Revolution (Score:1)
Besides, gorilla != guerilla.
Re:Thus begins the Chinese Revolution (Score:2)
To prevent gold farming? (Score:2)
Re:To prevent gold farming? (Score:1, Insightful)
> That's not gaming. That's business.
If that's true, then it's probably illegal for kids under 16 to play WoW/EQ/UO/etc in the US without a special work permit.
Seriously though: Once the various world governments pick up on the fact that you can make money on a MMORPG, they'll pass laws saying kids can't do it, and they'll also limit the number of hours you can spend per day|week. Count on it. This will happen in our lifetime.
On a much less serious note: Then suddenly it will become a vio
Timer enforcement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Timer enforcement? (Score:2)
But most people are not that determined.
In a similar manner to UK banning the sale of large numbers (20+) asprin tablets per day, people can still go around each chemist and buy 20 from each one. but they generally don't. The people who used to store 100+ asprins now are down to 40ish.
The determined will ALWAYS find a way round things, but the casual players will just accept it.
Just a Thought. (Score:3, Interesting)
Follow me here. Online Gaming is always reduced to the guys who spend 18hrs a day sniping at newbs. Pick any game, its always reduced the same, if you didn't buy it in the first 6mos, by the time you get in you are a serf to a hundred jobless LVL32 (insert Superior Class here). To give everyone a fair shot, maybe developers should limit online time to say 6 "in world" hours a day, Extend other (Under-utilized at present) areas of gaming for the interested. Character development and customization, Economic commerce decisions, etc.. all that stuff that drags us out of the immersive feel of the game. Instead of layering "windows" and text on-top of the 3d world, move it all out of the world. Library, Hospital, Commerce, School, Chat & Socializitation, Story & Quest Info. All these would benefit from being free of 3d paradigm (except Combat school).
Seems like it would go a long way to extend the funlife of the game. The truly addicted will all be off by 6am. Take a lot of work to pull it off well.
Any Takers?
SourceForge is waiting....
Think about it, we already have a captive chinese audience, what is that 1..2.. billion?.
As a parent I wouldn't mind seeing a max hrs listed on the box. As a player, hmmm the extra stuff would have to be done very well, you know with Professional Writers and Artists. What? It could happen.
Terrible idea (Score:1)
Re:Just a Thought. (Score:1)
old BBS RPGs were like that, and they were fun, and you couldn't get addicted because it couldn't take that much time out of your day.
of course, you'll probably want to make turns longer and where you can do more things.
Re:Just a Thought. (Score:1)
And also, TV could only let you watch 8 hours / week.
Cars that don't ever go above 65 m/h.
And McDonalds should stop selling burgers once you've eaten 500 Calories.
When a business decides to explicitly countermand customer requests in the name of "their best intrests", they rapidly cease to have customers at all.
(Under-utilized at present) areas of gaming for the interested.
So not only are they acting against the wishes of th
Any chance... (Score:2, Interesting)
I know it's so very fashionable to b**** about corporate America or the religious right, but the religious right are libertarians compared to the atheist PRC.
MUDS (Score:3, Interesting)
The first line of text I saw on my first mud was (roughly) "YES! 32 Hours nonstop and counting!!"
Re:MUDS (Score:2)
Irony (Score:1)