China Restricts Excessive Gaming

So, you think it™s a hassle that people (parents, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend, teachers and politicians) are always trying to limit your gaming time? This situation may seem inconvenient, but not as inconvenient for gamers over in China. In January of this year, China™s General Administration of Press and Publications, (GAPP) announced that it would enforce an experimental online game fatigue system which would discourage excessive online gaming time, according to internet news services and Chinese game industry watchdog, Pacific Epoch. The system was enacted by the government in response to the recent rash of gamer deaths related to marathon-length gaming sessions. The fatigue restriction program cuts the experience points of a gamer by half, after three hours of being online. No experience points are accrued after five hours. In the real world, a time period of three to five hours is a relatively long period of time, but to an online gaming fan, this time flashes by in the blink of an eye. The trial program enacted by the GAPP was installed on specific game servers and did not affect all online games. However, the servers which had the experimental fatigue system installed had vast numbers of gamers leaving them in favor of servers that did not incorporate the government software. The Shanghai Daily reported that the fatigue system may be modified to only include gamers that are under the age of eighteen and thus, will not apply to adults. Although this is a bit of good news to the estimated 26 million online gamers in China, the downside is that they will have to register through the government with real name identification. For those who have a tendency to be slightly on the paranoid side of things, perhaps the idea of not turning in all those ubiquitous registration cards with every game isn™t such a bad idea after all.