CULTURE: Where games and people collide #1

Chinese government makes itself even easier target for jibes -- the Chinese government recently ordered that skeletons in World of WarCraft be removed and replaced with flesh-covered counterparts. They've also announced that bare-boned corpses of dead characters must be buried in graves rather than lying on the ground. Seriously.

The9 - the Chinese company responsible for running WoW in China - has already complied with these orders. Why have bones, of all things, been censored in World of WarCraft? To comply with Chinese president Hu Jintao's mandate of an "harmonious society," apparently. No idea how that works. It seems like the government has started censoring things just for the fun of it.

[Censorship reaches internet skeletons via Kotaku]

Fuzzy virtual pet owners start online rebellion -- On July 3rd a new feature arrived in NeoPets land: the NC Mall, which allows users to pay real world money for the game's virtual currency, Neocash.

According to those rebelling the mall breaks NeoPets' promise that the game will always remain free. Angry users have been calling up NeoPets HQ to complain, changing their avatars to "Bleh!" and bombarding many areas of the site with 'hate', 'causing displeasure' to NeoPets employees and also threatening to take 'more drastic action' if the Mall is not removed.

I always imagined the NeoPets user community to have a median age of 13 and be pretty sensitive all round. Either I was wrong, or 13 year olds these days are pretty intense. Their target? Viacom corporation, which owns Neopets.

Good luck guys.

[Neopets users rebel! via digg]

Product placement: usually annoying, not so much in this case -- astute cinemagoers might have noticed the Xbox 360 robot in the Transformers movie. It all probably has something to do with the fact that there is a Transformers game for the console, but hey, I like it when game consoles appear in movies. Especially when they grow robotic arms and attack people.



[Anyone see the Xbox 360 robot in Transformers? via Engadget]

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