It looks like everyone’s favorite Communist state decided to exert a bit of influence over the personal entertainment industry. Last week the Chinese agency overseeing online gaming announced a system to impose limits on time spent playing online games, in a move to prevent game addiction (think there will be a clinical diagnosis for this anytime soon?). Apparently ready for deployment as early as October, the system will reduce the abilities of game characters after a player passes his/her limit of three consecutive hours of play. Character abilities will apparently be cut by one half after three hours and reach the lowest level possible after five consecutive hours of play. Let’s recap:
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•A South Korean died earlier this month after a 50-hour gaming session in an internet cafe.
•A 4-month-old Korean girl died when her parents left her alone for hours to play World of Warcraft in an internet cafe.
•China opens a game addiction clinic that uses psychotherapy and the tremendously effective electro shock therapy to treat game addicts.
•A Korean dies after an 86-hour gaming marathon devoid of food or sleep (from 2002)
Methinks Korea needs to be enacting one of these laws too. Sheesh!
[Props to GameSpot]
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this i messed up world of warcraft is awesoe but…you cant like prepare some food before you start playing you know…so you don’t die!