Singapore will be the only stop in Asia for the Cyberathelete Professional League (CPL) World Tour 2005. The tournament will to be held at the Padang ( I was there for a Linkin Park concert last summer) from October 14 to 16; and Keystone Law Corporation is the offical law firm for the tournament. The champion in each stop (host country) will receive US$ 15,000, while the winner of the grand final enjoys a $150,000 bounty. The sport of professional gaming has entered the mainstream without a hiss. Perhaps this is the beauty of a free world where anything is possible. Compare to the new regulations on gaming in China, gamers around the world seem to enjoy a type of freedom that they do not know it could be lost.
According to the General Administration of Press and Publication in China, Chinese online gaming market generated RMB 3 billion (US$304m) in sales revenue last year, and the forecast for 2005 is RMB 11billion (US$1.4bn). On August 23, new regulations were promulgated by China’s Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Information Industry to prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from playing online games involving killing others. This might not have disappointed most gamers, but the new regulations further targeted the players of massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) such as World of WarCraft and Legend of MIR II. by requiring online game operators to install timing mechanism to automatically log players off of online games once they have exceeded a set number of hours of continuous play. For example, gamers’ in-game characters will be severely limited as well as the value of their virtual goods if continuous play time exceed five hours. There are situations where gamers will be forced to take a three-hour break before they can login again.
The saying, “do everything in moderation” is applicable in most things we do in life. Parents of teenage gamers in South Korea and Japan maybe overjoyed if their governments will impose limit on continuous playing time. So, what is the role of the government in regulating the “freedom to play”? Is China over-regulating the gaming industry? Should the government play a parental role? If not, will gamers have the discipline to protect their well-being? What a fine line to draw and who can draw it well?
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