China To Curb Foreign MMOs?
I just spotted this over on Massively: Chinese policy is set to make it easy for local developers to hamper foreign competition. The article explains:
Unfortunately for developers in the U.S., Korea, and elsewhere looking to cash in on this burgeoning market, recent regulations imposed by the Chinese government will allow domestic Chinese gaming companies to effectively postpone the release of foreign-developed games indefinitely by submitting a complaint to GAPP, China's censorship agency. Curious that they'd run a protectionist racket on an industry that they recently likened to "spiritual opium," but the Communist government didn't take power in order to be a bedrock of consistency.
Also related, this post on how China's online gaming community will pass 59 million players in 2008. I hope for their sake that the Chinese MMO developers manage to come up with something more nourishing than more Lineage clones. PC gaming: swelling up like a hungry termite colony in 2008.