Confucius’ Golden Rule teaches us to do to others things that we want to be done to us. The Chinese Government intends to enforce this rule with an iron hand, and it will make sure that the citizens will not break it… not even in video games.
Just this Monday, China’s Ministry of Culture has announced that it will officially close its doors to any video game that they would consider as a “serious threat to the moral standards of society”. Their criteria: those that “promote the glorification of mafia life.”
And they are quite specific about it.
No foul language, no drugs, no vandalism, no theft, no sexual assault, and no other various crimes. It’s like history repeating itself as this Asian giant draws the line for game makers to purge its self of “foreign evils” and preserve “the nation’s fine cultural traditions.” But as specific as their virtual gaming no- no’s are, their planned method on cracking down the “illegal goods” are nothing short of vague.
It is possible, however, that they would start with the World Wide Web using a similar process that they have used in filtering adult websites from search engines: the so-called “great firewall” of China.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg, or for this case, the tail of the dragon slapping the wrist of the gaming community. Chinese authorities have proven to be very keen on putting a lock on the PCs and the consoles. Three years ago, bold and very concrete steps have been taken to regulate the online activity of Chinese massively multiplayer online role playing gamers (MMORPGs). It is because in China, addiction to an online virtual world is already considered a mental disorder.
And they have good reason to believe that, since Asia has already produced severe cases of MMORPG fixation that has purportedly led to deaths because of malnourishment. Their technique is to require the players to register their real names and personal information in the General Administration of Press and Publication’s technology and digital publication department wherein they will receive a government- issued ID card.
The system specially targeted the students who, at an early age, have very disturbing addiction potential. It wouldn’t really affect the gaming experience but this way, the parents would also be notified of how many times their children have missed school just to be inside the virtual world. Kou Xiaowei, vice-director of GAPP’s A/V, Electronics, and Internet Administration Department, had given us the structure of the system:
A “real-name system” has three sub-systems: One, a registration system that discriminates according to ID information; Two, an inquiry system that is open to the community and can allow parents to check whether their children are playing games; Three, a confirmation system that has the cooperation of the PSB to confirm the registered information.
It’s disconcerting enough to see that your mom knows how addicted you are, but the government? What could be next? Maybe civilian field agents with straitjackets to restrain you after you’ve gone past 4 hours? Just playing.
With a country as big as Asia’s “Sleeping Dragon”, and a race that seems to be genetically- bound to hardcore gaming together with the Koreans and the Japanese, completely wiping out the government’s unwanted games would definitely be a daunting and herculean task. But with an administration as relentless as theirs, it may only be a matter of 2 years before Chinese players could kiss Grand Theft Auto, Godfather, Mafia Wars and other similar games “zai jian.” And that takes away almost half the fun in gaming.
Wait a minute… Mario and Luigi are Italian, right? Hmmm…
June 3rd, 2010 at 5:23 am
pop is goin to the houidres