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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

China's online gaming crackdown

The Globe and Mail has this story of a new Chinese Government campaign to limit the number of hours teenagers spend online playing games. The government requires Internet gaming companies to install a program that requires users to enter their ID card numbers. Players under 18 years of age are prompted to stop and "do suitable physical exercise." after 3 hours of gaming, if they ignore the directive they will lose half of their accumulated game points, and after 5 hours all of the their points are lost. I had to chuckle a little bit when I read this article having just watched a Simpsons re-run where Marge's sister (Selma, I think) is attempting to adopt a child from China, the government liaison assigned to her case had some great lines that sounded a lot like these quotes:

"promote civilized Internet use,", "measured gaming is good for the brain, but gaming addiction hurts the body." and my favorite "will develop in a healthy, harmonious direction".

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