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August 04, 2004

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Forget food, there's something much worse

Everyone likes to blame fast food and movies for corrupting the youth of today. Beijing's found an even more insidious evil. Xinhua reports:

A three-month action plan focusing on the Beijing market has already discovered up to 56 kinds of illegal or unhealthy computer games--and this is even before the nationwide campaign officially gets cracking..."To protect youngsters from the influence of violent computer games and to safeguard copyright, we took action during April and June in Beijing," said Kou Xiaowei, a senior official with the State Administration of Press and Publications.

Kou said it had achieved "satisfying results."

If a Chinese official has a satifsying result, it's time to worry or get the Kleenex. The article says some of the banned games "hurt national dignity and interests". For example, 'Project IGI2: Covert Strike' has Chinese soldiers being attacked and "smears'' the Chinese army's image. Like the PLA doesn't do that itself. The other example is "Hearts of Iron", which calls for Tibetan independence and includes Taiwan Province in the territory of Japan. The horror.

I'd like to see more realistic games. One that springs to mind is where you are President of China and General-Secretary of the Communist Party and you have to run the country. There's no instruction manual because none of the controls work anyway. The game thoughtfully provides an opponent in the head of the Military Commission, who also happens to be the ex-President. Throughout the game various "crises" occur, like trouble with Taiwan, trouble with Tibet, trouble with the US, trouble with Japan and trouble with North Korea. If you go to the hardest level they include an economy factor, again over which you have little control.

Nah, it'd never sell.

 posted by Simon on 08.04.04 at 05:07 PM in the




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