Thursday, January 10, 2013

Hire a virtual hitman: China's new way to stop online gaming addiction

We all know that computer games can be pretty addictive. I?ve spent hours, actually weeks, on Football Manager winning the Champions League with Colchester United and months on Civilisation trying to make France a world power, I was more successful with the football.

For some, like me, there is a time when you had to make a decision to give up gaming. It was the games or my marriage, I chose the latter, but I really miss gaming.

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How long do we spend playing online games and video games?

In a Ted article regarding gaming statistics, it reports that the global human race spends 3 billion hours a week on online gaming with more than half a billion of us playing computer and video games worldwide for at least an hour a day.

In fact as we get older we are more likely to find ?better? things to do. 99% of boys and 94% of girls under the age of 18 admit to playing games regularly. By the time they are 21, the average person has spent a colossal 10,000 hours gaming.

More extraordinary is the fact that in the US, there are 5million avid gamers who spend more than 40 hours a week gaming.

Chinese Gaming addiction

There have been many chilling stories about gamers who are unable to walk away from their monitor, having starved themselves to a critical condition or even neglected their own children. The whole world is addicted to gaming but it seems that East Asia and particular China rules with the passion for a late night fantasy epic.

Chinese Dad hires an online hitman to kill son

But the latest story to come out of China in the online gaming world is less depressing and more intriguing.

A father, annoyed at his 23 year old son for spending all his time gaming, which affected his grades and job prospects decided to put a stop to it.

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Instead of kicking him out of the house, disconnecting the internet or sabotaging his hardware, he decided to hire a virtual hitman to assassinate his son?s avatar. The hitmen would hunt down the son, Xiao Feng and repeatedly kill him, to make the game not-worth playing.

It was reported that the son responded by saying ?I can play or not play it doesn?t bother me. I just want to take some time to find a job that suits me?. This apparently made the father ?relieved?.

Whether it was successful or not, hiring an online virtual assassin may be a new booming business to get young people off gaming. Plus at the same time it will mean that the experts at Diablo 3 or World of Warcraft could make a bit of spare cash ? and not worry about getting a job. Maybe the son should think about that?

I don?t know how it will stop me from playing scrabble though.

Tags: china internet usage, gaming addiction, online gaming

Source: http://www.intelligentpositioning.com/blog/2013/01/hire-a-virtual-hitman-chinas-new-way-to-stop-online-gaming-addiction/

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