Tag Archives: China

Chinese gamers may be one step closer to using consoles today, as Sony has been awarded the China Compulsory Certificate for its PlayStation 3 in the country.

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Wii U manufacturer Foxconn is being investigated by Nintendo for using child workers in a Chinese factory.

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Activision registered several new domains this week tying the Call of Duty series to China, including the likes of ModernWarfareChina.com and CallofDutyChina.com.

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A study polling 500 people conducted by Niko Partners had found that 64% of China’s 180 million casual and core gamers pay for their pleasure each month, and the country is outpacing other countries in terms of money spent. The age of those playing games each month is up as well, with those ages 40 and up making up 10% of those surveyed, which suggested a rise in causal games, while the firm denoted a decline in core gamers – which consume over 22 hours of game time a week. Thanks, GI International.

Hot on the heels of ESA’s 301 filing to the US government, pleading for help in the international war on pirates, Nintendo’s jumped on board and done the same thing.

This one’s not quite as mad as ESA’s, which called for trade sanctions against Canada, but does include, according that reports, assistance from the US government in performing a “crackdown on corruption in Paraguay”. Just bomb them all. It’s easier.

Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo’s senior director of anti-piracy, said, “The unprecedented momentum enjoyed by Nintendo DS and Wii makes Nintendo an attractive target for counterfeiters.”

Nintendo estimates the lost sales caused by piracy to be around $975 million worldwide.

Very interesting article here, in which MIT professor Henry Jenkins argues that China’s concern over the impact of games centres on addiction as opposed to the western political obsession with morality and violence.

“The Chinese had little interest in the argument that games violence causing real world violence,” he said, speaking from the International Games and Learning Forum in Shanghai. “Rather, the incident was read in terms of concerns about the breakdown of traditional community life and the loss of the moral influence of the extended family in Chinese culture, both of which were seen as a consequence of rapid cultural, technological, and economic changes. The incident was also read partially in relation to a focus on ‘games and internet addiction.’”

Jenkins further argues that the authorities are using the argument that gaming and web “addiction” are damaging traditional life in China as an excuse to censor internet access among the young.

“To some degree, the Chinese government is using a rhetoric of addiction to rationalize their periodic crackdowns on young people’s digital access, knowing that concern about media effects is more likely to be accepted by western governments,” he says. “In that sense, addiction rhetoric does some of the same work that the Firewall does in terms of restricting youth participation in the online world.”

Nice brain fodder for a Sunday afternoon.