Category: Games and Politics (Page 6 of 9)

You can take my civil rights, you can take my freedoms, you can take my privacy, but take my ability to take part in an 8 hour raid on Molten Core, and it’sTiananmen all over again!

As of August 29, more than 1,000 Chinese gamers had signed the petition opposing implementation of the new time limits. Chinese authorities said last week they planned to implement a new system that would deduct from the ability levels of online game characters after an individual had played a game for more than three consecutive hours. The system was designed to prevent online game addiction. The online petition is currently on http://bbs.wowchina.com.

Yeah, we’ve discussed this before, and it’s probably too optimistic to hope that our future history books will have to acknowledge MMO addiction as the tipping point that brought down the last communist superpower, but there were a couple parts of the article I found interesting. First was this:

“The new system has real potential to adversely impact online games in China, because the system will probably reduce total playing time, which is directly proportional to income for operators,” Huang said.

Interesting. This seems to directly contradict this:

In addition to the petition, gamers have also begun discussing counter measures to circumvent the impact of the new time limits. The most popular countermeasure suggested has been to open several accounts, so when the new timing system kicks-in for one account, players can then switch to another account and continue play. In fact, such a tactic would be beneficial for online game operators, an official with a leading Chinese online gaming firm, who asked to remain anonymous, told Interfax.

Based on how we play here in the states, at least, that second scenario seems a lot more likely. Of course, what’s interesting to me as a game designer is how these limitations will actually end up affecting gameplay. Huge WoW raids can take a lot longer than 3 hours to complete (which is, of course, certainly not unique to their game), and you can spend an enormous amount of your time waiting in queue to get into battlegrounds. Given how much money WoW gets from China, the interesting question is whether or not Blizzard makes changes to accomodate these new restrictions, and ultimately, whether or not other markets will get to benefit from them as well.

The other half of online gaming oversight from the Chinese government came today. Soon, leading games in China (including WoW) will institute measures designed to dissuade players from playing constant hours, in order to combat “sloth, truancy and even murder”. The exact measures are, at this point, a tad hazy, as each source I’ve found on the topic gives a slightly different account of what’s going on. One description is as follows.

The anti-addiction system cuts in-game benefits to players after three hours. For most games this will mean awarding fewer “experience points” to fantasy characters and reducing the value of virtual goods such as magic weapons that they acquire.

After five hours online, players will be subjected every 15 minutes to the warning: “You have entered unhealthy game time, please go offline immediately to rest. If you do not your health will be damaged and the benefits you can win will be cut to zero.“

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