China: Simply Superior At Apparently Everything?

"With all the horrible stuff that comes from and happens in China, I can say China is probably one of the most ungodly places in the world.
Makes me so glad that I live in America"

^ more on this later.

Recent news from the Far East suggests that the Chinese government may be considering relaxing its tight enforcement of a ban on console gaming.

Console gaming banned?
Gaming banned?
Banned?!

It's probably hard to believe considering what we learned about Chinese 'farmers' contributing to Lineage 2, but indeed consoles are banned from sale in China, thanks to a ruthless piece of legislation introduced around the turn of the millennium after seven Chinese ministries (lets be honest, they're all the same) banded together to protect the fragile physical and mental health of the youth, shock-horror!

Game consoles are easy enough to purchase from Hong Kong, and even the Xbox's new motion-sensing Kinect has been seen in Mainland China, albeit reportedly for "medical treatment and education". Suuuuuure.
It's amazing what you can achieve in a dictatorship, our various Ministries can barely take a collective stance on environmental issues plaguing our 100% Pure image.


Interlude: Jack Thompson, anyone?

This was one of the launch articles for Kotaku West a few years ago, and it was quite an eyeopener for me personally as someone who had grown up thinking of the Great Firewall of China (and China as 'the other' har-har).

The blanket ban on domestic gaming console sales has fueled the adoption of online gaming in Mainland China, and forced the Ministry of Culture to clarify its position on classifications. They sound pretty corny, but I'd imagine they're pretty essential in the pristine environment the Party pride themselves on:

• Violating basic principles of the Constitution
• Threatening national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity
• Divulging state secrets
• Threatening state security
• Damaging the nation's glory
• Disturbing social order
• Infringing on others' legitimate rights

Games on the banned list include strategy titles that place China as the aggressor or 'evil' nationstate, and other titles that recognize Taiwan and Tibet, two of the trio of unspoken T-words in Chinese culture.

The fact consoles themselves are banned effectively bans the associated games too. 

China's youth are now suffering in terms of their declining fitness aswell, as two students collapsed and died  during a standard running exam. Dingy web cafes servicing the legions of online gamers are surely contributing to this, and I daresay if non-online titles were introduced there would be a different level of fitness nationwide. With the constantly evolving and update-friendly nature of MMO games (online casual games are popular in China, alongside the usual RPG and FPS offerings) the gamespace never seems to end as a good book or game title would. Even though some recent titles, like the conveniently Hong Kong-based Sleeping Dogs game, feature an insane number of DLC addons (26!), there is a finite lifetime to a video game title. I don't forsee a WoW2 on the near horizon, rather numerous graphical and content updates.

That opening quote is from the comment thread on the Kotatu article, I'd highly recommend reading it to explore how logic and anonymity work together on the internet, or sometimes don't.


- I'm not familiar with Taiwan, I'd rather not stir that wok too, but if anyone has any knowledge about the availability of console gaming or gaming censorship in general, please do chime in.