14 DAY TRIAL // The China Central Television media conglomerate, which is controlled by the Communist Party, has aired a two-part series show called “Confession of a Murderer,” during which reporters went inside a juvenile prison in Beijing and interviewed one guy who was said to have been condemned to life in jail because of crimes he had committed in order to obtain virtual gear for an online game.
The television program claimed “He himself killed five people, and the reason he took the path to crime was addiction to violent online games.” The creators also claimed that 80% of those imprisoned were there because of online videogames made them turn towards violence. An online dancing title called Audition has been outed as the cause of an increase in one-night stands in China.
Drugs are said to be widely used by gamers in an effort to keep their stamina up as they play all through the night, while smoking was picked up by most gamers because of the cafes where they tend to hang out. There seem to be no mortal sins not directly caused or at least encouraged by online videogames.
This television program seems to be the most recent element in a strategy developed by the government aiming to limit the appeal of online games, which have more than 210 million players engaged in titles ranging from World of Warcraft to the more casual social titles like Audition.
Recently, some MMOs have had problems with their Chinese licenses and some are speculating that the conuntry is interested in restricting the market share of Western-made online titles in order to give indigenous developers a chance to capture the huge market that is developing and could be worth more than 10 billion dollars in a few years.