China Goes after WoW players and teens in general!

[Lusipher]

HONG KONG -- The Chinese government has launched a campaign to limit the number of hours teenagers spend online playing games.

Under new rules that took effect Monday, Chinese Internet gaming companies must install a program that requires users to enter their ID card numbers. After three hours, players under 18 are prompted to stop and "do suitable physical exercise."

If they continue, the software slashes by half any points earned in the game. All points are wiped out if players stay on more than five hours.

The program is part of a government campaign to combat Internet gaming addiction, "clean up the Internet environment" and "promote civilized Internet use," according to guidelines issued by China's General Administration of Press and Publication.

About 10 percent of China's more than 30 million Internet gamers were underage as of the end of 2006, according to the Chinese newspaper National Business Daily.

The government guidelines don't flat-out denounce the popular pastime, saying "measured gaming is good for the brain, but gaming addiction hurts the body."

The explanation says the three-hour cutoff is based on the time it takes to play the strategy chess game Go.

Gaming companies Shanghai-based The9 -- which runs the popular "World of Warcraft" online game in China -- and Shenzhen-based Tencent both said Tuesday they have started using the screening software.

The9 spokesman James Zhao said he doesn't expect the new restrictions to affect business because most of The9's users are adults. "World of Warcraft," from Vivendi SA's Blizzard Entertainment Inc., is the world's most popular online game and has more than 3.5 million subscribers in China.

Tencent said in a statement it's too early to tell if the screening will hurt its sales. The South China Morning Post quoted a spokesman as saying youngsters can beat the new screening program by using false identities.

"It's hard to tell online if the player is a teenager or an adult. Many of them can register for the game using someone else's ID or even a fake ID," Song Yang told the newspaper.

Both companies voiced support for the new government measures.

The online gaming industry "will develop in a healthy, harmonious direction" because of the monitoring system, Zhao said.

President Hu Jintao ordered regulators in January to promote a "healthy online culture" to protect the government's stability, according to state media.

Though China's communist government promotes Internet use, it has also set up an extensive surveillance and filtering system to prevent Chinese from accessing material considered obscene or politically subversive.

[Rotku]

Creative.

[Swift]

Interesting, considering reports of this happening were appearing throughout 2006 as well, though back then the limit was 5 hours before things started to deteriorate.

I wonder how it deals with WoW in regards to raiding. You don't get any XP (since your at the level cap) and very little money from raids. The only time you earn any thing is from when you kill a boss and he drops his loot. I wonder if Blizzard themselves are being required to add the system actually into the game to also deteriorate item drop rates.

Even if they do, since it is a per person basis, so long as you ensured the master looter was an adult (or within the 3 hours) someone could be on for 10 hours straight and still benefit from raiding despite the deterioration.

[Veilan]

If now we only could add a system that after an hour of physical exercise, they could get three fresh new hours... .

Who knows, we may see all kind of soccer games, bike races or hockey matches springing up where all the guildmate wow-addicts play their 18:00 to 19:00 "pre raid sports game"...

[paazin]

Why doesn't China do what it usually does? Send the army out and gun them down?

[PensivesWetness]

Why doesn't China do what it usually does? Send the army out and gun them down?

Then we might have the Live-Action version of Serenity Now/Gnomeland Security's famous Funeral Raid (Horrid idea to do that but they were idiots to do it where they did... but that's another flame fart feast...)

And that video still rocks...