Sevarus James
Minmatar
Meridian Dynamics
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Posted - 2006.09.16 08:19:00 -
[1]
Here is an interesting article regarding some of the stuff that is going on in China and gaming currently:
Blog
More pertinent to this discussion is the following from this article:
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Regulating Game Play
In mid-2005, the national government took a much more forceful stance on video game regulation, as part of a general tightening of entertainment media policy. The government's regulations included a "fatigue system" designed to limit the amount of continuous time that players could spend within game worlds. Initially, the regulations applied to all citizens but were later revised to apply only to players under the age of 16. Moreover, new Internet cafTs were banned from 200m radius of schools and apartment buildings; registration of new internet cafes was suspended for time being; cafT curfews for under 18s introduced in July 2006
The government justified its video game regulations by citing concerns about youth addiction, corruption, and health issues related to games. Games, according to an official statement, "break the constitution, threaten national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity will be banned. Anything which threatens state security, damaging the nation's glory, disturbing social order and infringing on other's legitimate rights will also be banned." This formalized a stance that had already banned games for politically contentious content. An example of a problematic issue would be the representation of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Tibet as independent nations
Those familiar with long-term Chinese regulation of internet access saw the policies also as a back door effort to restrict youth access and participation in cyberspace more generally. In the all night cybercafes described earlier, especially those which are not legally registered, youth would spend the night playing games, chatting with friends, reading ****, and consuming forbidden news sites. Setting limits on the amount of time that could be spent playing games would, in effect, limit these all night policies.
Players initially sought to get around such restrictions by adopting multiple accounts and using multiple aliases but the government responded in June 2006 by requiring that all online game accounts be registered with real names and ID card numbers.
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