Governement Intervention: the case for MMORPG

In August last year, China introduced a system to prevent gamers to play MMORPG for more than three consecutive hours. As a shareholder of Shanda, a Chinese gaming company in the gaming business, I know how much such policy hurts the profitability of the whole sector of industry.

There have already been numerous debates in the gaming community whether such policy is justifiable. Coming from a political view of the west, it seems that China is once again exercising its right to control its citizen. And the general sentiment is that a free country should not do such a thing.

Well, is exercising control a bad thing? Think about it, such policy hurts the Chinese economy. Does the government have no right to protect its citizen? We have all hurted that some Korean guy died after playing online games for 50 hours. The US and Canadian government do ban illegal drugs. In order for us to be fully consistent, either country should take on a non-efforcement policy like the Netherlands, or we should approve a government to design policy on behalf of its citizens.

Of course, this post is really in the arena of political views. Do a quick test here to see your political view (don't get fooled though, the site is run by libertarians). For a more comprehensive test, try political compass.