new development, China and WoW

[Tare]

After repeated fatalities, the Chinese Government is finally taking measures into its own hands and Tuesday it unveiled a new system to prevent individuals from playing online games for more than three consecutive hours. The system has to be installed for every online game in the country, and if you exceed the 3 hour limit your character will degrade and eventually be reduced to starting level.



"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.

The new system, developed under the guidance of the GAPP, stops individuals from playing online games for more than three hours by cutting the abilities of game characters. The new system cuts the ability level of a player's online game character by half after he or she has played for more than three consecutive hours. Once a player has played for more than five consecutive hours, the system cuts the ability level of that player's character to the lowest level allowed by the game.

The system also lowers the ability of players to find treasures or prizes available in an online game after they have played for more than three consecutive hours.

Furthermore, the system keeps track of hours of play. Individuals who immediately log back onto a game after three hours of consecutive play will continue to have the ability of their game character lowered by the system. Players must be logged off for a minimum of five hours before the system resets.

The GAPP has defined the playing of online games for less than three consecutive hours as "healthy," playing three to five consecutive hours as "tiring," and playing for more than five consecutive hours as "unhealthy."

In addition, seven of China's largest online gaming firms pledged Tuesday to "sacrifice short-term revenues" to create a "healthy" environment for young internet users. Companies signing onto the "Beijing Accord" were Shanda, NetEase, The9, Optisp, Kingsoft, SINA, and Sohu. These seven companies also pledged to deploy the system when development is completed.

Development of the system is scheduled for completion at the end of September 2005. Internal testing is scheduled to begin in October of 2005. After internal testing, trial operations of the system will be held using the games "The Legend of Mir II" and "The World of Legend" operated by Shanda, "Westward Journey Online" and "Fantasy Westward Journey Online" operated by NetEase, "World of Warcraft" and "MU" operated by The9, "JX Online" and "First Myth Online" operated by Kingsoft, "The Legend of Mir 3G" operated by Optisp, "Lineage II" operated by SINA, and "Blade Online" operated by Sohu.

Compulsory deployment of the new system is expected to begin for all massive multiplayer online role-playing games and casual games in China in late 2005 or early 2006.

Quite surprised that big games as World of Warcraft and Lineage 2 support this idea, it's quite drastic. Of course the Chinese experience MMOgames different than we do. Your opinion? Justified or nazi behaviour?

[Killder]

What's the betting that some bright spark will write a 'playdar' proggie to circumvent this?

[OohhoO]

I guess I can see the reasoning behind it, but as it reduces the freedom of choice of the individual all I can say is I'm glad I don't live in a country like China =/

I would still be ML0 if this was applied to Switzerland as almost all the ML raids I've taken part in took longer than 3 hours, & most took longer than 5 hours too. Imagine getting to .10 of one of the later MLs only to find that the entire BGs abilities had suddenly been reduced to L1 as the time limit had been exceeded.

[Ankh Morpork]

Justified or nazi behaviour?

Quite often people call it nazi behaviour...but imo it could be any dictatorship and not just the nazis..

But Yes, it's wrong to have this as people deserve to have the freedom to do what ever they want to do.

/Ankh

[Tare]

Well yes I know it could be any dictatorship, but if u say Nazi behaviour everyone knows what you're talking about, a very very evil form of governing your people

[Thandruil]

Wish they had something like this at work, if u work more than 3 hours u need to get a day holliday. If u work 5 hours, u need to take a 2 day holliday.... <actually just dreaming here >

But anyway the idea is just stupid, they'll figurte that out soon enough i guess, but do they care? Do they care??

[Cernos]

Probably one of the lesser human rights abuses going on in that part of the world really.

Not really surprised that certain major titles are willing to concede to such restrictions in order to sell to the Chinese market, it's an enormous market afterall. Besides, if you charge a monthly fee but people are restricted from getting the full use out of it, that's more money for less server stress.

[Xest]

Quite surprised that big games as World of Warcraft and Lineage 2 support this idea, it's quite drastic. Of course the Chinese experience MMOgames different than we do. Your opinion? Justified or nazi behaviour?

This is a dream come true for the companies, being able to receive full subscription costs whilst only having to pay bandwidth costs for them playing the game 3 hours a day and without worry of losing customers to competition because their games are also equally limited?

[Compton]

It's a fact the Chinese try to deal with upcoming problems before they are a problem. Computer addictions will most likely become quite a problem in the future (they are now already in certain cases: take by example daoc away from certain people and they will start to show all symptoms of kicking off).

Their solution of course looks radical, but in fact (that is my opinion) is quite a good one: the developers will have to keep the 3h limit in mind and won't develop ml stuff like in daoc. This will have a good influence:
1) games can't take over one's life
2) it will take quite some strain from people around the gamer
3) the game experience in an indirect way due to no 5+h raids, wich will benefit the player itself!

This doesn't mean I don't agree with what you guys already told about freedom, but face it, computer addicted people on a wealth fare *can be*(is?) a problem. And waiting till the problem is too big is quite near sighted. This on a sidenote

I don't agree at all with this Chinese measurements as they take away the basic freedom, but I don't agree with totally dumping the proposition because the idea behind it is quite strong. And we don't know yet what will happen with the development of addicted teens, so should be careful.


All in all, if the Chinese take this through: the result could be
1) their society won't be hindered by extra addicts, nor will there be efficiency loss due to non-addicts putting more than 3h per day in something non-productive (this is how the Chinese government thinks, and leads to the most efficient (inhuman?) country there is)
2) game developers could be keeping this 3h limit in mind for developing, wich could lead to "better?" game experience in the unlimited western society
3) as Xest said, everywhere the 3h limit and companies making more money due to more accounts being sold

[HappyG]

Hehe, I think this right is one of the less important when talking about civil rights in China
AFAIK Google was censored in China for a long time, and god knows what Google discussed with China government behind the scenes to get back on track.

All in all, its the step in direction western governments will have to take aswell eventualy... Alcohol and tobacco is heavily taxed, and so will eventualy be playtime in MMOs

And TBH, if DAoC would have a server with 3h limited playtime, many casual people would move there