{"id":549310,"date":"2006-06-26T11:05:42","date_gmt":"2006-06-26T11:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/549310-vietnam-cracks-down-on-internet-gaming-craze.html"},"modified":"2006-06-26T11:05:42","modified_gmt":"2006-06-26T11:05:42","slug":"vietnam-cracks-down-on-internet-gaming-craze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/549310-vietnam-cracks-down-on-internet-gaming-craze.html","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam cracks down on Internet gaming craze"},"content":{"rendered":"

The new state enemies may be virtual creations from the Chinese Internet game ‘Vo Lam Truyen Ky’ (Swordsman Online), but this hasn’t stopped authorities from taking some very real steps against the magical kung fu warriors. <\/font><\/p>\n

Worried about the Internet gaming craze that has swept Asia since the 1990s and hit Vietnam about a year ago, Hanoi this month unveiled an ordinance to restrict the hours per day fans can spend in the make-believe world. <\/font><\/p>\n

Vo Lam and other versions of what is known as ‘multiple massive online role playing games’ (MMORPG) in the jargon of the booming\u00a0 industry have taken Vietnam by storm since June 2005. <\/font><\/p>\n

Cyber cafes have mushroomed and filled with school children who immerse themselves for hours a day in the interactive games, assuming characters that fight, chat with, and even marry each other. <\/font><\/p>\n

"Now I have friends all over the country," 15-year-old Truong\u00a0 Khanh Hoang, school bag slung across his back, said during one of\u00a0 his daily three-hour gaming sessions. "At school, it’s the first\u00a0 thing we talk about." It’s not just kids who have gone mad over Vo Lam. <\/font><\/p>\n

"What I love is becoming somebody else — sometimes a hero,\u00a0 sometimes a traitor. I can even try to kill my wife," said a 37-year-old man, asking not be named for fear of marital reprisals. Another self-confessed gameaholic, 29-year-old dentist Tran Khanh Long, said Vo Lam, a world of medieval castles and marauding\u00a0 warrior tribes, is hugely successful because "Vietnamese people love Chinese martial arts stories". <\/font><\/p>\n

"We grew up reading these graphic novels, and in this game we\u00a0 find the same kind of atmosphere." Vietnam’s leaders aren’t impressed about their youths diving\u00a0 into this homework-free parallel universe.\u00a0 They worry about "pathological players" who spend real money on\u00a0 virtual weapons and sometimes continue online fights in real life. Under the new ordinance, due to take effect in mid-June, online game shops will have to locate at least 200 metres (yards) away from\u00a0 schools and shut their doors from 11 pm to 6 am. <\/font><\/p>\n

hildren under 14\u00a0 will have to be accompanied by adults. Hitting gamers where it hurts, the state has also ordered the\u00a0 game operator to introduce a new scoring system that discourages\u00a0 non-stop playing by deducting points after a three-hour time limit. <\/font><\/p>\n

Nguyen Thai Linh, a 22-year-old student at Ho Chi Minh City’s Polytechnic University, is devastated. "I usually play 12 hours on Saturdays and Sundays," he said. "I don’t have time during the week, so I really need to get my fill of gaming on weekends." <\/font><\/p>\n

The Culture and Information Ministry, also in charge of censoring movies, books and cartoons, may see the new craze as a\u00a0 threat – but the industry is excited by the potential in the youthful country of 83 million people. In the Asia Pacific, the world’s largest gaming market, the\u00a0 number of online player is expected to grow from 17 million last\u00a0 year to 75 millions in 2009, according to US consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. <\/font><\/p>\n

In Vietnam, the sector exploded from nowhere to two million\u00a0 online gamers now – and industry watchers say the proportion of\u00a0 players beats that anywhere else in the region. "The leading game in China, ‘Legend of Mir’, reaches 700,000\u00a0 concurrent users (CCU) at most, and the Chinese population is 1.3\u00a0 billion," said Le Hong Minh, chairman of VinaGame, Vo Lam’s local\u00a0 distributor. <\/font><\/p>\n

"But in Vietnam, with only 83 million people, ‘Vo Lam Truyen Ky’\u00a0 has 140,000 CCUs and will probably have 200,000 by the end of the\u00a0 year." Part of the allure for entertainment-starved Vietnamese\u00a0 youngsters is that online gaming is relatively cheap, with 100 play\u00a0 hours of Vo Lam costing about four dollars, when a ticket for a\u00a0 feature-length movie costs three dollars. <\/font><\/p>\n

The number of Internet users has grown from 500,000 in late 2000\u00a0 to 12.5 million early this year. Online gaming will be an 80 million\u00a0 dollar (64 million euro) industry in three years, predicts the\u00a0 Vietnam Software Association. <\/font><\/p>\n

VinaGame now dominates the sector, but the state-owned Vietnam Software and Media Company and FPT Telecom are muscling in, with FPT\u00a0 recently paying 2.9 million dollars for the licence of South Korean firm Webzen’s game ‘MU Online.’ "Unlike the Korean market, which is somewhat saturated, the\u00a0 Vietnamese market is only at an infant stage," said Webzen’s Asia\u00a0 Pacific chief Andrew Yeom. "It’s a real window of opportunity." <\/font><\/p>\n

INet-Bridge<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

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Communist Vietnam is cracking down on a new social evil, medieval swordsmen with supernatural powers who have cast a spell over the nation’s youth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-549310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}