Politics

Back in August, I wrote that World of Warcraft had returned in China, but featured content changes such as skeletons given fleshy bodies and piles of bones replaced with sandbags. Well, the game was only back in the sense that China allowed a closed beta with game operator NetEase to test the waters. Most Chinese gamers still could not access the game and NetEase could not charge any subscription fees.

Well, after much patience and behind-the-scenes controversy, WoW appears to be back on track.

Here are some business statistics that will make your head spin. According to Gamasutra, NetEase spent $146,455.77 per day to maintain its servers. Keep in mind the company was forbidden from charging any subscription fees at this time and the closed beta lasted from July 30 to September 14. $146,455.77 multiplied by 47 days comes out to $6,883,421.19 USD. $6.8 million dollars is a lot of money to be hemorrhaging while waiting on government regulators to stamp a seal of approval.

In a somewhat surprising turn of events, Australia’s Office of Film and Literature refused classification for Valve’s zombie shooter sequel Left 4 Dead 2 citing:

The game contains realistic, frenetic and unrelenting violence which is inflicted upon “the Infected” who are living humans infected with a rabies-like virus that causes them to act violently… it is the use of the “melee” weapons such as the crowbar, axe, chainsaw and Samurai sword which inflict the most damage. These close in attacks cause copious amounts of blood spray and splatter, decapitations and limb dismemberment as well as locational damage where contact is made to the enemy which may reveal skeletal bits and gore. Projectile shots to infected humans can cause abdominal wounds which can reveal innards or even cause intestines to spill from the wounds.

In Australia, the highest rating possible for games is MA 15+, which doesn’t allow for the gory bits described above. Since the game remains unrated, it can’t be sold in Australia. In other words, it’s essentially banned.

Valve’s VP of marketing, Doug Lombardi reacted to the news and told Shacknews that they were “surprised” and “pretty bummed.” However, he offered no hnits as to whether the game’s violence would be toned down to a level acceptable for Australia’s sensitive, sensitive people.

If not, how will Australians be properly trained and equipped when a real zombie outbreak occurs? Mark my words, it’ll happen one of these days. *shifts eyes*

[UPDATE 10/7/09: Well, that was a quick reversal.]

In case you haven’t heard, Company of Heroes is being launched in China as a persistent MMO campaign called Company of Heroes Online. Unfortunately, a couple of changes had to be made to the game in order to make it compliant with regulations in that country.

The biggest change is that the game no longer includes Germans. That’s right. This will be a World War II game with no Germans.

*cough*

In its place will be a new faction called ‘The Federation.’ The Iron Crosses in the game have also been removed but it’s unclear at this point what they will be replaced with. No news either on whether dead bodies will be replaced by sandbags.

Certainly, censorship laws can sometimes be wacky and China is stricter than most in this department. However, the original game already omitted all references to the Nazi party so as to make the game playable in Germany. Also, the Iron Cross has no historical baggage and is still used today on German tanks. So somebody on the review board must really dislike Germans.

After weeks of being down, World of Warcraft is back in China. Finally, Chinese players can go back to their own servers instead of crowding the ones in Taiwan.

The game had recently changed publishers and issues arose with server transfers and licenses. The specifics I won’t get into. But from talking to people in the industry, there were apparently very shady things going on behind the scenes between the operating companies.

Anyway, the recently resurrected World of Warcraft, now operated by NetEase, is much like the old World of Warcraft. That is, all the skeletons are still censored. Kotaku has an article about this which shows before and after images (from MMOsite). You’ll notice that undead characters have been given more flesh so they appear to be mutants, blood has been removed or recolored, and most hilarious of all, piles of bones on the ground have been replaced with sandbags.

Seems kind of silly, doesn’t it? As for the reason why skeletons are considered ’subversive content,’ I’ve heard conflicting reports.

One theory I’ve heard is that it’s cultural. Because Chinese people are all about filial piety and respecting the dead, animated bones are a big taboo. But as somebody who grew up in a pretty traditional Chinese household, I think that’s a load of crap. I’ve also seen mainland cinema depicting bones.

Another theory is that China disapproves of undead content because it presupposes an afterlife. China is officially an atheist country, so the inclusion of undead elements in games subverts their government’s official stance on the way the world works. This sounds slightly more reasonable than the previous theory. But it still doesn’t make logical sense because by technically, lots of things presuppose an afterlife.

The last theory suggests there’s nothing wrong with skeletons at all. The Chinese government simply has an incentive to promote homegrown MMOs to prevent capital from flowing away to foreign countries like the United States. So it creates arbitrary restrictions to make Western companies’ lives difficult as they seek to establish themselves. This is why US search engines are arbitrarily blocked in China or have all their traffic redirected to Baidu (a Chinese company) without warning. It’s also why American MMOs seem to always run into problems regarding servers and regulations when trying to operate in China and often have to resort to bribery. Whenever Blizzard has to modify skeletons, it creates a bad user experience. And the brunt of the backlash goes against Blizzard, causing dissatisfied users to play Chinese games that don’t have these delays.

I imagine this post will cause my blog to be banned in China. Personally, I think the last theory makes the most logical sense. What do you think?