Terra Nova and several other sources are reporting on a story in the Shanghi Youth Daily the Chinese government is about to invest $1.8 billion in on-line game development.
I'm not sure what kinds of virtual worlds those efforts will yield, but if the result are some robust online worlds, and we turn Anshe loose in those worlds as a real estate mogul, how long before she is richer than Bill Gates? And if I opened a Chinese version of the Herald, how long before I got thrown in prison?
Not long, lol.
coco
Posted by: Cocoanut | August 03, 2005 at 04:51 PM
The Chinese have finally learned the truly effective brainwashing technique, turning a population into mindless drones by hooking them to games which they play in every moment of their spare time, and ignore the important things.
Posted by: Athel Richelieu | August 07, 2005 at 11:56 PM
Not so, Athel. They've recently legislated against MMOGs that feature PvP, and have set a legal limit on the amount of time you're allowed to spend in a virtual world. They want the game to kick you off after something like 10 hours a week or something like that. 10 hours? The whole country's going to go into withdrawals!
Posted by: Walker Spaight | August 08, 2005 at 11:09 AM
Apparently the PVP-game ban is only for under 18's. But the general in-game online-time-limit seems to apply to anyone. It doesn't say what the cut-off time will be. 10.9 hours per week is apparently the average amount of time Chinese gamers spend playing online games - which is only about 90 minutes per day.
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=25146
http://www.interfax.cn/showfeature.asp?aid=4211
-- Neal
Posted by: Neal Stewart | August 08, 2005 at 05:41 PM
bah, the under-18s are the ones who *should* PvPing around so that they can learn their lessons now before they get out there into theh *real* world :p
Posted by: Walker Spaight | August 08, 2005 at 10:32 PM
How about raising the children on 'Player Vs Enemy' servers? Instead of banning player-kills, ban kills on certain players. Force citizens to join Chinese W.O.W guilds etc :D
Posted by: Neal Stewart | August 10, 2005 at 07:52 AM
nah PvE (Players vs. Environment) would be coddling the little suckers. They need to learn feel their hearts leap into their throats when they run up to BRD and find some Tauren feckwit camping the entrance and wonder to themselves, do I kill him? Is he too much for me? Will he just let me in? What's the right and moral thing to do here? Ah screw it, the right thing to do is my combo backstab and fireball of teenage wrath!
A PvE server has *nothing* like the excitement of a PvP server. PvE has its merits (like being able to actually complete quests), but the experience is much less 'massively multiplayer' than on a PvP server, where your interactions are orders of magnitude more complex.
Maybe the PRE-teens should be on PvE servers, and then as a rite of passage they have to transfer their characters to PvP. And if they gank a character more than 5 levels below them, they get one day of grounding for every level more than 5 in the gap.
But none of this matters to me anymore, as you would know if you'd read my blog lately.
Posted by: Walker Spaight | August 10, 2005 at 08:46 AM
Im getting nothing but DNS errors when I click that link walker... I hadnt read it in a little over a week, but it worked before.
Posted by: seldon metropolitan | August 10, 2005 at 09:19 AM
sorry, Seldon, that's been a problem. I guess I am going to have to relocate URLs since my hosting service is apparently teh suxxor. check back again in a while, maybe it will work then. or you should be able to get it at: walkering.typepad.com which I guess is what I'll make the official address.
Posted by: Walker Spaight | August 10, 2005 at 10:37 AM
that works fine. It seems like the month for DNS and hosting troubles. everyone I know has gone through something.
Posted by: seldon metropolitan | August 10, 2005 at 11:09 AM