Future Now
The IFTF Blog
China takes a crack at gaming addiction
Beginning 10/1 Chinese online gamers will face new regulations that restrict them to 5 hours of play within any 24 hour period. The new rules are an attempt to curb what is seen as a growing problem with Internet addiction by Chinese youth--who are supposed to be spending their time studying for arduous high school and college exams, not playing games.
Gamers I talked to expressed dichotomous opinions about the effects of the new rules -- opposite ends of a typical response to regulation. The first: ?????????. (roughly, "the top has its policies and the bottom has its counterpolicies"). There's no way they can possible regulate all of the Internet cafes and all of the gamers. Most people will find a way around and it won't have much effect.
The second: the new regulations will be enforced at the server level via Internet cafes (where most gaming happens) and will have a chilling effect on MMOs such as World of Warcraft. Much of the high-level gameplay in WoW, for instance, takes place in remote areas of the virtual world that take an hour to even reach; 5 hour limits mean that players won't be able to complete what they need to do to advance. One Internet cafe owner predicted a downturn in business for gaming companies, Internet cafes, and sales of computers with higher-end graphic cards.
It's difficult to know what to do with these polar responses until we see what actually plays out on the ground...and it will doubtless vary tremendously around China. Thus the larger problem of forecasting the effects of ANY type of announced Chinese media regulations--no-one quite knows which will be enforced, by whom, and what the timeframe will be.
www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,68081,00.html