China bans violent online video games 0_o

Not so much of a ban, considering its just a limit imposed on minors, but its still a sad step. Then again, you do hear of quite a lot of MMO related problems in the East; overly long playing times killing people, distracting people from their babies, murdering their "traitorous" friends, etc..., so I suppose its understandable that measures had to be taken. I guess its also got its benefits in that older players get to play without the whining kids ruining their experience

Is there actually anything to discuss about this anymore? The ball has started to roll and there is very little we can do to stop it.

I already posted my grim vision of the game world of tomorrow on the GU board, and the words "Comics Code" raised it's ugly head couple of times. For those wo don't know what Comics Code is, then I only say this, it is the single worst thing happened to comics ever.

It is basically an authority like ESRB but they don't rate the comics for different age groups, they have very strict guidelines and they approve comics that follow the set guides and don't approve those that don't, and basically what it ment not being approved was, major retailers/distributors didn't sell that particular comic. I'm seeing that something similar might be happening to games. Strict guides and if they are not approved, retailers won't touch them with a forty foot pole, and this causes publishers not to publish those games since they don't make money.

Now you might guess that as a comics enthusiast, I'm not happy with Comics Code, but as for games, it just might be the thing we need right now. I'm tired of all this shit that is going on, I just want to play my BF2 and WoW in peace, and not having to worry about my future game development job (if I'm able to land one) just because the company I'm working for might get sued and we all lose jobs. The situation is just fucked up. And was GTA series worth this all? Well, they were all super games, but my answer to that question is just plain HARDLY!

Slightly draconian, but there we go. At least they're not banning them outright.