“网瘾战争 War of Internet Addiction” — Are World of Warcraft’s Travails In China Much More Interesting Than Google’s?

• Posted by bbishop
• on January 24th, 2010

Google’s recent moves in China have captured global attention about censorship and Internet controls in China, eliciting protests from inside and outside China.

But there is a much more entertaining protest about China’s web controls circulating on the Internet–”网瘾战争 War of Internet Addiction”.  It is an hour long video, “shot” almost entirely with in-game video from World of Warcraft, satirizing the government’s attempt to “harmonize” China’s Internet with forced installations of “Green Dam Youth Escort”  and the travails of Chinese World of Warcraft players over the last several months. It is quite brilliant.

You can watch the original Chinese on Tudou here or an English subtitled version on Youtube: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 (part 6 starting around minute 7 has the most obvious speech against Internet controls) Part 7

The background material, including the script, is available here (in Chinese). UPDATE: the background material on Google Docs now includes English annotations for all the references at the end of the document. The team has been busy adding to this living project.

The film tracks the fight between The9 ($NCTY) and Netease ($NTES) over the renewal rights to Activision Blizzard’s ($ATVI) World of Warcraft, the requirement that skulls be removed from World of Warcraft (hence the Skull Party), the bureaucratic battles between GAPP and the Ministry of Culture over the re-approval of WoW in China, the money-obsessed Uncle Yang and his Internet addiction camps and electro-shock therapy (see this forthcoming Feb 2010 Wired article on China’s Internet addiction camps), and the attempts to impose “Green Dam Youth Escort” software on Chinese web users. The movie concludes with an impassioned speech calling for Chinese World of Warcraft players to end their silence and raise their hands in protest to fight attempts to harmonize China’s Internet and keep them away from World of Warcraft, followed by an agreement between the warring bureaucracies-GAPP and MOC–to put aside their dispute and go after Netease for more money.

I think this more effectively challenges and potentially undermines the powers behind Internet controls than anything Google has done; many more Chinese likely care about censorship that affects WoW and other online games than care whether or not Google.cn stays online in China.

I doubt this video is good for Netease and its ongoing issues with GAPP over World of Warcraft. The company that may end up laughing the hardest is The9, in spite of the cutting portrayals of its Chairman Zhu Jun and CEO Chen Xiaowei.

“War of Internet Addiction” is a great look into the push and pull between Internet regulators and netizens in China, and the very legitimate cynicism so many Chinese embrace.

UPDATE: Rose Lu of Phoenix TV has an interview (Chinese only) with the filmmaker, known as 性感玉米 SexyCorn ( @CorndogCN on twitter). A couple of highlights:

He made the film with 100 volunteers and they spent no money other than WoW fees.

He no longer plays on the China WoW servers, in spite of the discrimination against Chinese players overseas and the lack of rights he has playing on WoW servers outside his own region.

He makes the point that even though the film takes place in WoW it is about much more than just a game:

这个影片，让不懂游戏的人流泪，是因为大家的互联网处境都一样-The film makes people who dont understand games shed tears because all of us on China’s Internet are in the same boat.

“War of Internet Addiction” is a much more eloquent, and likely impactful, protest against Internet censorship in China than Google’s moves.

What do you think? Please let me know in the comments.

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