The Chinese Socialist MMOG 200
GP writes "How different is China? In the online game version of the idealized Socialist state, you gain experience points by 'doing good deeds' and 'thwarting spys'. You can even meet Chairman Mao!" From a great writeup by Scott Jennings on the game: "And now we have the online MMO version, 'Learn From Lei Feng Online', which allows you to... mend socks. Again - not making any of this up. To quote from the original Xinhua story 'For beginners, sewing and mending socks is the only way to increase experience and to upgrade,' said Jiao Jian, a six-grade pupil in Yuexiu District, quoted by the newspaper. He then continues. 'Every time you are promoted to a higher level, your clothes will become more average,' he said. I'm pretty sure this isn't a translation screw up. The longer you grind, the more you look like everyone else. I guess new users wear designer pastels or something."
A good fit (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, not only is the gameplay of multi-player online games ideologically communist, but the mechanics of game economies are explicitly communist. They are planned economies. Gold farming and black markets are exactly the same phenomenon. The Chinese Socialist online game will be interesting to watch for observers due to this inevitablity. How will they deal with external and internal black markets? Will it be possible to distinguish countermeasures gameplay from reality as ingame countermeasures are taken?
Re:Hey mods!!! That's not off topic (Score:4, Interesting)
Infanticide does not happen "all the time" in China. Your MSN reference noted two phenomena: sex determination via selective abortion and infanticide. One is much more pervasive in China and I can assure you it's not infanticide, which was more common before the advent of Communism in China.
Speaking of Communism, you're also way off base blaming "Communism" for this phenomenon. China has a one-child policy which most experts feel is a necessary thing. It's because of their population size, not ideology. The preference for sons has its origins in China's agrarian/Confucian roots. It's an unfortunate thing that when you combine the "good" one-child policy with the "bad" preference for sons, you end up with trouble on a large scale.
In fact, if it hadn't been for China's best-known "Communist" leader, i.e., Mao Zedong, the population problem might not be so extreme, but unfortunately Mao held that China's greatest exploitable resource was manpower and thus more babies was more power, so he ignored calls for population control and urged baby-making instead. So in a sense the situation is opposite of how you portray it.
Re:Hey mods!!! That's not off topic (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to see something really disturbing, look at the 15-65 age group for mid-east countries such as Kuwait and Qatar: 63.8% and 69.5% respectively.. ~2:1.
Seriously, I want to try this! (Score:5, Interesting)
Doesn't anyone see how this could be fun? Yeah, mending socks doesn't sound like a thrill, but what do you do for XPs when you're weak in a commercial fantasy game? Endlessly stab chickens? How is that more fun? No, I think mending socks in a sweatshop that more of a feel of honest labor.
I think my talent would be in being a newspaper reporter for the government. I'd try my best to sound like this North Korean paper [kcna.co.jp]. Really, it would be a blast! And I bet there would be all sorts of neat quests, like stopping burglars, helping fishermen, getting a village to quit smoking... the sort of stuff that would be really refreshing after months of "deliver this scroll to Naldemor and you shall receive this +2 sword and lots of XP!" Yes, it would take a lot of creativity to make this game fun, but I guess I am one of these people who still appreciates creativity.
Re:Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
I know two girls who are only around today because the doctor misread the ultrasound and thought they were a boy. Let me tell you, this doesn't lead to good relations with your parents later in life.
And sure, it's illegal. Whatever. What the doctor does is smile if it's a boy, frown if it's a girl. Then without anything obvious at all being said, the parents spontaneously decide to abort or not.
Regardless of if you are for or against abortion, selective abortion is a heinous crime against humanity. The Chinese can easily think us uncivilized because we don't know Chinese manners (which are actually pretty hard to learn), but we can think they uncivilized because of practices like these and others. It drives some of my Chinese (living in China native Chinese) friends crazy when I say that China has a barbaric civilization. =)
You mean Bartle's player types, perchance? (Score:3, Interesting)
- socializers: basically the people who are there to chat, make friends, organize a guild, organize a player town/community/whatever, and generally be social about it
- achievers: people who want to have the highest score, a level 60 character, the biggest player house or the full epic suit for their class, etc.
- explorers: people who like discovering stuff. It can be finding a new quest, a new piece of the story, a new area, seeing a new instance, or finding out some cool new trick using the tools the game gives them. E.g., that you can get some cool effect by using two spells as a combination. (A lot of people who "just like to play the game" actually fall in this category: they like constantly being given new stuff to do or new pieces of the story. Then again, some don't fall in this category.)
- killers: these are the people whose fun is to annoy, harrass, humiliate, and whose greatest achievement is if they can get someone to leave the game completely, effectively perma-killing them from the game. A.k.a., "griefers". (Note that unlike what the term "killer" might imply, this isn't equivalent to "pvp players". Not all pvp players are killers, and not all killers are into pvp. Indeed a lot find more effective ways to harrass their victims.)
Basically while your distinction does have merit, and indeed is made by Bartle himself too, you seem to be sorta lumping the achievers and killers in one large category, and the socializers and explorers in the other. The distinction does exist in Bartle's paper too, as one of the divisions of his set: people who "play with" something/someone, versus people who "act upon" something or someone.
But it's only half the story. Dividing it again, gives some important distinctions too. For example while both might grind to level 60, an "achiever" may do it just for achievement sake, while a "killer" might do it to better gank or humiliate others.
And yes, you're right in another aspect: it's one of the major reason for social frictions among players. Many of those falling mostly in one category can't possibly understand what those in another category find fun in that. Maybe they're immature? Or whatever.
Re:Hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you telling me you lack the basic ability to make moral judgements? In other words you could sit by and let someone kill a child because it was culturally exceptable for them? Rationalize it away because of your twisted moral relativism? Beat women and hang teenagers for sexual activity? I want to call you stupid but I am not sure that is appropriate. If you really believe that is right, you aren't only dumb, you are evil.