China Playing Too many MMOs

[Biohazard]

Shanghai. August 23. INTERFAX-CHINA - The Chinese Government unveiled a new system Tuesday to prevent individuals from playing online games for more than three consecutive hours, which must be installed for every online game in the country.

"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.

Sad. Very. No more seeing China gold farmers on WoW for 12 hours straight. =(

 

[MentaL]

they can just code a macro to do it every 2 hours and 40mins, its simple to do. just bug hunts r ****ed now.

 

[Biohazard]

Yeaaaaaah.....well I don't care what they do.....it's just sad what their government is doing.

 

[MrSam]

Actually - the Chinese farmers play the European/US games, so they're not effected.

 

[Grim]

Farming is just as big in China as it is here, more so infact when you consider that just about everyone who plays will use the services they provide. It's not as looked down upon as it is here.

 

[MiloFoxburr]

well that sucks :/ Means if the offical chinese mir2 or woool files are leaked or whatnot that this system will be in it, Better be turnoffable lol

 

[konnichiwa]

well that sucks :/ Means if the offical chinese mir2 or woool files are leaked or whatnot that this system will be in it, Better be turnoffable lol

most prob will be

RestrictionCutoff = 180

change to

RestrictionCutoff = 9999999999!!

 

[Far]

that wld hella annoy me if they brought that here. wldnt be much point paying for an mmo if you cant play it as much as you want. 3 hours is nothing.

 

[Biohazard]

Yeah, kind of pointless charging by the month. I think someone told me that their going to start charging by the hour or something. :S

 

[anto]

The chinese would find someway around it.

 

[Atomicide]

3 cheers for communism

 

[Hero]

Along the same lines, i read today that there tryin to stop under 18's from playing online games which have a pvp element to them.

"Minors should not be allowed to play online games that have PK content, that allow players to increase the power of their own online game characters by killing other players," Liu Shifa, head of the Ministry Of Culture's Internet Culture Division, which drafts policies governing the online gaming market, told Interfax. "Online games that have PK content usually also contain acts of violence and lead to players spending too much time trying to increase the power of their characters. They are harmful to young people."



Full article - http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature/196

 

[Blaminator]

so make a post about it.

 

[kud125]

i tell you what the old people take away what the young people enjoy, so lets do vice versa!

we shall take away there false teeth, therefore they cannot talk to even state the new MMO LAWS!!! LETS BOMB THE FALSE TEETH FACTORY:dunce:

 

[Atomicide]

As soon as these restrictions are placed on the chineese servers, there will be an insane tirade onto every European, American, or whatever else server they can get onto.

Someone will probably launch a lawsuit (games companies acting in players intrests) OR they just have to move their server centres out of China, plonk em into a neighbouring country, and u get an instant competition boost becuase you maintain fast speeds while allowing the chineese to carry on playing the same server.

The only people i reckon this will really affect are the lower budget games who may suffer a few setbacks but nothing more than that. In Short the Chineese government wont win.

 

[Atomicide]

As soon as these restrictions are placed on the chineese servers, there will be an insane tirade onto every European, American, or whatever else server they can get onto.

Someone will probably launch a lawsuit (games companies acting in players intrests) OR they just have to move their server centres out of China, plonk em into a neighbouring country, and u get an instant competition boost becuase you maintain fast speeds while allowing the chineese to carry on playing the same server.

The only people i reckon this will really affect are the lower budget games who may suffer a few setbacks but nothing more than that. In Short the Chineese government wont win.

 

[Wittin]

Thie population is far too big to ensure that sure restrictions are met by both the companies and the players. I'm also sure that the chinese wont take no for an answer, this could cause many of the MMO players to turn to private servers or attempt to exploit the system.

 

[Atomicide]

well with millions of gamers, tons of gaming companies, both opposed to the restrictions, gamers becuase they want to play, and companies cos they will lose profit, theres going to be a spanner in the works somewhere.

It'll be a case of watching and waiting to see what happens, least were safe from **** like this.

 

[Biohazard]

1) America isn't communist, so there will be no restrictions.
2) If somehow there are restrictions, no one would play games. Kind of pointless to play for only 3-4 hours.

 

[Grim]

Thie population is far too big to ensure that sure restrictions are met by both the companies and the players. I'm also sure that the chinese wont take no for an answer, this could cause many of the MMO players to turn to private servers or attempt to exploit the system.

I don't see how the population of the country has anything to do with either of the restrictions being in place. Firstly, the time limit has to be implemented by the game's service provider meaning it will be server side and nothing to do with the player. Of course, the player could keep playing but their character will be extremely gimped and if they continue to play past 5 hours their character will be made so useless that all they could do is stand around and chat. Secondly, the age restriction means that players have to input their citizen ID card number to prove their age. If the details kept on record do not match up with the details that the user has input then they won't be able to play.

As you rightly say, it probably will lead to alot of players migrating to private servers where they don't have these restrictions but, as we're all aware, running a private server in China has much more risk involved than it does here and if the Chinese government has these restrictions in place then you can be sure that they'll impose far more severe punishments on those found operating private servers.