China seeks to 'limit game hours'

[Steigerwald]

China seeks to 'limit game hours'

The Chinese government has clamped down on the amount of time youngsters can spend playing online games, according to the official news agency Xinhua.

 

Under-18s who play for more than three consecutive hours a day will have limits imposed on the amount of points they can score, the agency reported.

 

Online game companies based in China have been given three months to install the so-called anti-addiction software.

 

It is part of an on-going attempt to limit how long people are online.

 

A recent report from the China National Children's Centre said that 13% of under-18s who used the web were addicted to online gaming.

 

Unhealthy game time

 

I can see gaming companies tailoring games for the Chinese market

Julien Pain, Reporters Without Borders

 

Online gaming is hugely popular in China. Beijing-based analyst firm CCID Consulting estimates that there are 17.8 million fee-paying gamers in China, about 20% of which are under 20 years old. A farther 10% are younger than 16.

 

Chinese gaming firms such as NetEase and Shanda Interactive Entertainment have until 15 July to install software which will halve the number of points gamers can score if they play for more than three hours, said the report.

 

Determined gamers who play for more than five hours will get no points at all and face an on-screen warning that they are entering "unhealthy game time".

 

In order to verify their age, gamers will be required to register for games using their real names and iden!@#$%^&*y card number.

 

This is the latest salvo in an ongoing war against alleged net addiction.

 

Willing to listen

 

Last month, the Chinese authorities banned any new cyber cafes from opening this year in an effort to combat addiction. It has also set up a department, charged with monitoring the content of games.

 

Games which offer a view of history at odds with the official version in China, such as the Swedish game Heart of Iron which shows Tibet as an independent state, have been banned.

 

Boot-camps have been set up to provide military-style training in an effort to wean youngsters away from the net.

 

Julien Pain, of the press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders, said he was unsure of how the Chinese government would impose the new restrictions.

 

"With peer to peer networks gamers can download any version they want," he said.

 

It is unclear whether the Chinese authorities intend to extend the restrictions to games developed in the West.

 

If it did, Mr Pain said gaming firms would be willing to listen.

 

"China is such a big and important market. Companies are ready to make compromises. We have seen it with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and I can see gaming companies tailoring games for the Chinese market," he told the BBC News website .

 

Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/6544759.stm

 

Wow, is all i have to say, wow.

[Aileron]

That's pretty typical for China.

[NBVegita]

I think we need to impliment that over here.

[MillenniumMan]

I think we need to impliment that over here.

 

 

*does anime-style smack the begezus out of you for saying that*

No we don't! The government should never be in the business of telling children that they've had too much game time, that's the parents job. It starts with the games they play and eventualy the children are back into working in sweatshops for next to nothing. (Here, not there) We have less of a problem with that here, but if you take them away from their PCs/Macs/AltOS eventually they'll run loose on the streets taking out their agressions.

 

The parents should enforce such things by taking away privelages, putting up software that they deem neccesary for disciplining their child and enforcing household rules. Game companies should have their own set of rules for online conduct that their customers have.

 

Common sense will tell you that if they have something to do, they'll have less time to do physical damage in our world. At least it's contained to 1s and 0s.

 

Since SS/CONT/3rdspc is free and isn't centralized in any one country, perhaps we should start advertising more in the chinese market. After all, if there are going to be limits on chinese based servers this will be the perfect time to load SS with a fresh quart of blood. After all, this is a free (both in cost and spirit) game.

[NBVegita]

And the unhealthy addiction to video games in the world is so much better. Half the kids in the world don't know how to throw a football without hitting the X button.

 

But I forget there is nothing else to do with your spare time but play video games.

 

Most parents are a joke nowadays. They spend all of their time working, and the time they spend with their kids they spend trying to be their buddy instead of being a parent. If parents had control over their kids we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

[Falcoknight]

+1

 

But I still disagree anything like what's happening in China should happen in the US. Seems like these days the norm is to blame just about everyone EXCEPT the parents.

 

God forbid parents take responsibility for, you know, raising their kids.

[Gravitron]

SubSpace is not a MMORPG so it is exempt from such idiocy.

[NBVegita]

+1

 

But I still disagree anything like what's happening in China should happen in the US. Seems like these days the norm is to blame just about everyone EXCEPT the parents.

 

God forbid parents take responsibility for, you know, raising their kids.

 

Yep. And of course its not the kids fault either. Saying they're wrong, or did something bad might hurt their feelings.

[Slipped]

Yeah, I heard about this a year or so ago. If it's been going around that long and hasn't been implanted, I don't see it happening any time soon.

[PullTripSquid]

yeah and in the future when games become more immersive they will eventually replace life, don’t worry the end of the world is near anyway MUAHAHHAHAAHAHA!

 

Seriously tho, i know too many ppl addicted to mmorpgs...its always the rpgs that do the most damage.... Then theres that game "Second Life"..baad..very bad.

[Chambahs]

Its actually implemented in...hmm Thailand I believe. I remember when I played TPT, we had to scan a photo id card and send it to them with personal information optionally blacked out. We just had to show that we werent from Thailand. Then we got 24 hour server access, instead of our account being kicked at a certain time.

[SeVeR]

lol NBV, were you always such a hard!@#$%^&* conservative?

[NBVegita]

Haha, I'm actually a moderate. I'm conservative about some things, and libral about others. Example I'm 100% pro-choice, and for stem cell research. But I'm also pro-gun, and pro-GIVE US OUR !@#$%^&* CONS!@#$%^&*UTIONAL RIGHTS! (cough...Don Imus...cough)

 

I just feel that kids are really !@#$%^&*ed up nowadays, and parents have no way to control them. And before you say I'm trying to limit kids rights, you don't have full cons!@#$%^&*utional rights until you are 18 in the US, so this wouldn't infringe on your rights any more than not being able to own a gun would.

[Hakaku]

lol, investing SubSpace in the Chinese market is only bound to fail. Continuum barely supports European languages, I doubt it could get anywhere close to popular in China without language support.

[Aileron]

As for the addictiveness of MMORPGs, I'll tell you from first hand experience that they can be worse than alchohol. I have never smoked cigarrets or used any drugs that were illegal, so I can't make further comparison. The nagging feeling that you are going to be attacked when you sleep or go to work, which you carry with you 24/7, can add additional ficitious stress.

 

Worse yet, they are based upon statistics and not willpower, which can be devastating for a type A personality. When a type A finds a problem, there is first an initial decision as whether or not to solve the problem. If the type A decides to solve the problem, they summon forth willpower and try and try and try again to solve the problem with more and more strength and determination each time. For instance, if a type A wants to smash a brick wall down, first they will try a fist, then a hammer, then a vehicle, and then some explosives, until either the wall comes down or they have exhausted their options. In an RPG, the willpower of the player is irrelevant. When a type A finds a problem in an RPG, they do their usual solution, except that their efforts are meaningless leading to eventual exhaustion. In your typical RPG, situations like this can occur fairly frequently, so the type A can run into failure after failure, which can damage their psyche.

 

Finally, there are players with stats so strong that others can't touch them. In reality, such a position is impossible. There are always new challengers willing to take you down, and unless the champion stays committed into holding on to his position, he loses it. If a champion boxer stops practicing, a new challenger will come by and take his !@#$%^&*le. Thus the champion cannot get too !@#$%^&*y. In an RPG however your stats are your stats no matter how little effort you are putting forth into them. This leads to unjustified !@#$%^&*iness as these people have risen in game to god-like status.

 

I have stated in one of the RPG related threads that "If I ever start justifying my in-game actions, please smack me with a getwithit stick." In reality, all action made by strong players is to prevent the weak players from catching up. That is actually HEALTHY behavior. However, when the strong player believes he can assign a justification to such action, that !@#$%^&*ertion must be based upon a statment that somehow the weak player interfered with the natural order of the game, that the champion deserves his position so much so that all challengers are inherently wrong for challenging him.

 

I've seen such weakness over and over. In the last real MMORPG I played, the leading group, which I'll call "The Jimbob Alliance" to protect their iden!@#$%^&*ies, have reached this critical m!@#$%^&* of inflated egos. Then what happened was after some updates, a sort of glitch was overlooked. Suffice to say, a single player who had been playing as a "hitman" (players with no alliance and no stats who for a fee will create stats temporarily to attack a strong target, and then get rid of them so the target can't get revenge), had found this glitch and taken the Jimbobs down a notch. After spending a day whining on the forums, they proceeded to strike out at a bunch of random players, most of which had also been a victim of the aformentioned hitman. They justified their action by saying they "knew" these people hired the hitman. In reality they had no clue and were just making an excuse to themselves to take out some of their rivals. The alliances these rivals were in banded together to take down the Jimbobs, because that's what alliances do. At that point the Jimbobs cried conspiracy, that all of these alliances had conspired together to take them down. In the resulting war, the Jimbobs used about $1000 in donations to the site which gave them the stats to defeat everybody.

 

In real life, their immature at!@#$%^&*ude would have taken them down. However, in an MMORPG at!@#$%^&*ude is irrelevent, you only have stats. Thus, no matter how weak or immature the Jimbobs were, they had the best stats and thus won. However, In my opinion the true winners of the war was the website who recieved quite a bit of real-life money in the process.

 

Suffice to say, they aren't really that fun when you get to know them. If the government decided to ban them outright and gave a good enough reason to override cons!@#$%^&*utional rights, I would support the decision. The state does have an interest in limiting or banning them, because intelligence is only as good as the mental balance of the person who has it. The reason why the state gives out scholarships to students isn't a social program, its because over the long term that student will make the state a lot of money. Similarly, it is in the public's interest that geeks don't play MMOPRGs, because if they don't they will make more money in their professional lives and go farther in their social lives, which means the geeks make more money and make more geek babies.

 

 

 

I still say China is wrong. The reason they are wrong is because they don't grant their citizens the natural inalienable rights. However, given that they do so in the first place, they are making a correct decision, because nothing good will ever come out of an MMORPG.

[SeVeR]

It's a ban on fun for the purpose of improving society. You make a very good argument Aileron and even though i'm a bit of a socialist i still have to disagree. We learn from our mistakes and geeks who spend too many hours playing computer games will see their intelligence going to waste, their bodies getting fat, and their hopes of incredible wealth going down the toilet. It's a lesson some people have to learn. I've never played these games but have played Continuum as much as 12 hours a day sometimes during the summer. It was my choice and i'd have been extremely pissed off if i hadn't been able to play. Fun and happiness are how we unwind, and if i've spent 2 months revising for exams, 2 weeks of constant gaming helps in the recovery process. Even if i was wasting my life away playing games i'd still want the chance to learn that lesson.

 

We learn by experience, not by absorbing rules that we may or may not see the point of.

Edited April 12, 2007 by SeVeR

[Aileron]

Well, its sort of a wierd arguement I'm making. By no means should a government think for its citizens. The citizens should be free to think for themselves.

 

However, if you have a regime like China that already thinks for the citizens in the first place, then they should atleast do it properly.

[Drake7707]

It's a ban on fun for the purpose of improving society. You make a very good argument Aileron and even though i'm a bit of a socialist i still have to disagree. We learn from our mistakes and geeks who spend too many hours playing computer games will see their intelligence going to waste, their bodies getting fat, and their hopes of incredible wealth going down the toilet. It's a lesson some people have to learn. I've never played these games but have played Continuum as much as 12 hours a day sometimes during the summer. It was my choice and i'd have been extremely pissed off if i hadn't been able to play. Fun and happiness are how we unwind, and if i've spent 2 months revising for exams, 2 weeks of constant gaming helps in the recovery process. Even if i was wasting my life away playing games i'd still want the chance to learn that lesson.

 

We learn by experience, not by absorbing rules that we may or may not see the point of.

 

 

Depends how old this person is. If the only hobby of that certain someone is going at bars, getting drunk, and irritating other people by doing so, by all means, let him play games instead. I find this time limit good for pre-teen kids, because they get addicted to stuff much faster. But teens are waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too annoying if they don't have anything else to do, the only thing that should happen is a 18- voice ban in the game itself.. stupid !@#$%^&*y know-it-all brats >.>

[MillenniumMan]

And the unhealthy addiction to video games in the world is so much better. Half the kids in the world don't know how to throw a football without hitting the X button.

 

But I forget there is nothing else to do with your spare time but play video games.

 

Most parents are a joke nowadays. They spend all of their time working, and the time they spend with their kids they spend trying to be their buddy instead of being a parent. If parents had control over their kids we wouldn't have this problem in the first place.

 

*Stares at your 928 board messages vs my 129 and our registration dates*

Who's busy hitting the X button?

 

You're right though, about many parents being a joke. I look at some of the teens I have to contend with, and I have to really hold myself back from smacking some of them because they get out of control. !@#$%^&*, they have to get a full time cop down here at the library where I do most of my online crap just to handle the little ASSS. Ten years ago when I was a teen, there was none of this crap. I remember most of the parents being able to still reign in their little brats.

 

One of them tried to get a hold of me in the parking lot, if it weren't for the camera out there I would most likely be under indictment for !@#$%^&*ult rather than being able to claim self defense when I laid him and his buddies out. Then I dealt with the loser's daddy and told him off about if he weren't such a bad father by letting the little monster run loose he wouldn't have gotten his !@#$%^&* kicked. I then told him if the boy came near me again I would do worse. Lastly went on to saying that if he had only smacked him around a bit when he got too big for his drawers, which by the way it looks like he had no help getting on seeing as how they were drooping down around his !@#$%^&*, then maybe he wouldn't be so out of control. BTW, teach the boy to dress himself, don't let his mommy dress him anymore.

 

The Deputy Deitz laughed.

 

btw, the little !@#$%^&* in question is 19.

 

Things have been falling apart since the sixties, and all the if it feels good do it crap. It may feel good to you but you are going to inevitably screw someone else over, and that would be bad. Shame on you...

[NBVegita]

It's not my fault that I work on a computer all day and get bored

 

My whole point is necessarily saying that this is a good idea, minus the sarcasm, but that something needs to be done with these kids. I mean when video games become so addicting that kids are ruining their futures and lives over them, when grown men leave their wives and kids so they can spend more time on these games, when people start becoming violent over a video game, something has to give.

 

Because with our wonderful country its not just themselves these people are hurting, because if they become losers, I have to foot the bill for what they cannot cover. Not that our federal aid and welfare system aren't abused enough, but I don't want to pay for other people's mistakes.

[SeVeR]

Our lives are our own to ruin.

 

And if they become losers then you'll be more valuable to society than they are, allowing you to make more money.

[NBVegita]

But the point is with our neo-socialistic country, I am the one paying for their mistakes.

[Suicide_Run]

Lol, having that limit doesnt really lower gaming time. It just pushes gamers from online to offline when they cant play online after a few hrs.

[NBVegita]

Yeah but for a lot of those mmorpg's you can't play them online. And these kids don't enjoy so much the game, as beating or being better than others they play against.

[Shlazzer]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but: BEHOLD THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMMUNISM AND DEMOCRACY.