[photopress:neurogame_title_small_1_2.jpg,full,alignright]China is still trying to get a grip of its booming online game industry. According to a state news agency it now requires distributors to closely monitor game contents. According to a state news agency this came after some were found to include forbidden religious or political material. Sorting out the baddies will be no easy task.
The announcement adds to government efforts to tighten controls over Chinese newspapers, television and other media.
The Xinhua News Agency said that distributors must obtain approval to release new games and submit monthly monitoring reports confirming that the games do not contain forbidden content. For authoritiy it cited a notice by the Press and Publication Administration.
In truth, it cannot be done.
Take Xinhua’s figures. There are 23 million games player in China and games come and go with the seasons, only faster. They earn about RMB7 billion ($850 million) a year.
Games go into fashions faster than Paris trends and each game contains millions of line of code. As well, to get to certain areas of the game you have to show dexterity and perserverance at other levels.
Even though I play games on the computer there is simply no way I can guarantee that there is no offensive imagery on the game.
I guess it will be possible to build up a black list of games which are too pornographic or too violent. But when you refer to ‘a rash of problems with imported online games, some of which contain sensitive religious material or refer to territorial disputes’ then you have problems. It is not just like reading a book. You have to play the damn thing to make sure it follows the rules and that can take days.
The report gave no details about the religious and territorial issues, but the government is sensitive to references to Islam and Taiwan. Xinhua reported that regulators said distributors concealed the content of the games when applying for approval, and operators sometimes upgraded games with improper content. In this the regulators are probably wrong. The stuff was there in the first place. The snazzy illustration from the top comes from one of the games I have always enjoyed. Despite the striking modern artwork it was, in fact, written in 1988.
Sources: Xinhua