While the Chinese government has been fairly successful at reigning in blogs, bulletin boards and news sites, the CPC is finding it difficult to thwart on-line game ‘addiction.‘:

Xinhua just published a report on a survey (not sure how scientific) they did to judge the effects of the fatigue system after the first month of implementation. The results are no surprise: it does not appear to have much of a effect in solving the government’s and parents’ concerns. Players are either:

1. Playing the same game but switching between accounts and/or servers every 3 hours;

2. Playing the same game but on private servers;

3. Playing more than one game.

I draw two conclusions at first glance. First, it is very difficult to regulate gamer behavior, and given the dearth of other entertainment outlets, these kids are going to keep playing games as long as they can, and the game companies are happy to oblige as long as they can find loopholes in the government policy.

Second, this is the third game addiction article from Xinhua in 4 days (the other 2 are the Blizzard lawsuit and class action against game companies articles). Xinhua represents the government, and these articles do not appear by coincidence. Most likely this is a topic the editors have been told to cover, probably because the government has already recognized that this system is not having the desired effect. This government does actually care about public opinion, and most parents hate these games (as they do in most countries).

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia