Posts Tagged ‘game’

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Game Culture Advisory Group Established

February 28th, 2012

Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism(MCST) has established Game Culture Advisory Group(GCAG) yesterday.

The GCAG, comprised of parents, civil organization, counsellors, teachers, and so on, is to have a monthly meeting to advise on governmental policies and report game addiction and its reality to the MCST.

Moreover it would play a role of council services for healthy game culture by proposing problems and improvements based on actual user experience of online/console games and analyzing causes of game addiction.

“Games have become a life culture which not only teenagers but also broader ages are enjoying today. Therefore I believe our homework is to make game culture healthy. I hope the GCAG contribute to the healthy game culture  through pointing out pros and cons of the games by playing them personally,” said YoungJin Kwak the vice minister of the MCST.

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Triple Regulation Coming True After All

February 7th, 2012

The Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology(MEST) proclaimed that games are one of causes of school violence yesterday, introducing a Cooling-off system and a private fund raised by the game industry.

The Cooling-off system is a system that would automatically kick those who play the game for two hours out of the game and permit them only one more re-login per a day after 10 minutes of rest. So the minors are permitted playing the games for only four hours a day at the most.

The MEST also asked complement in game rating system so as to strengthen the rating for minors, demanding stricter rating standards on the games and more experts in education and youth in the rating committee. In cooperation with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family(MGEF), it would also quarterly implement investigations over the games in order to reflect the result to later deliberation. In other words, it is even planning a post-censorship.

Here’s more. The MEST is considering a policy similar to the 1% game tax of the MGEF, giving the industry an opportunity to take social responsibility on the game addiction by expanding and legalizing the private fund. “We must protect the minors from the harmful factors such as the game and internet addiction. In an educational point of view, we had not put our effort enough to control the rating, regulation, and harmful causes. Therefore we will improve the system and redouble the preventive, healing actions in order to deter the school violence and harming mental health due to the cruelty of the game and internet,” said the MEST.

The Cooling-off system would not be enforced immediately for now, but the game industry is resisting against the system strongly as the triple regulation-the forcible Shutdown system, the selective Shutdown system, and the Cooling-off system, seems to be coming true.

They are pointing out that the government is proposing the system without giving any reasonable or scientific ground that the games are a root of the school violence.

The most controversial one is the expansion and legalization of the private fund raised by the game industry. The industry views it as the ministry’s plot to impose its short of budget on the industry.

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MEST Tries to Precensor Games Privately

February 1st, 2012

The Ministry of Education,, Science, and Technology(MEST) seems to found an organization called ‘Healthy Game Review Committee(HGRC)’ which would be in charge of precensorship over games as a means to root out school bully.

The HGRC, which would be comprised of a group of non-gaming industry officials including school teachers and parents, seems to be in charge of reviewing Everyone, Teen(12+), and Mature(15+) games in order to once again classify them according to violence, nudity, etc. Yet whether its result would restrict the actual game release is not known. Full details on the committee will be introduced on February 6.

The ministry’s such action, however, collides with the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism(MCST)’s will to transfer the deliberation to a private organization which is scheduled to be launched this July. If they push forward with it, an unprecedented double rating would come true following the triple regulation.

“The MEST is messing up the effort of the MCST’s transfer of the game rating system to the private. I have no idea why the government is so obsessed with suppressing the game industry with the double censorship and the triple regulation in such situation that most of precensorship over the cultural content have gradually been removed today,” said an unnamed industry official. “There is a rumor that the MEST is also plotting a measure to set up a fund from the game industry. If the regulation and the precensorship from the MEST are for the future fund, they are definitely unacceptable.”

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Hacking Ignited Unintended Clamor against Low Probability

January 6th, 2012

A player of a baseball management game <Pro Baseball Manager> has been banned forever because he has purportedly purchased enormous amount of in-game items through hacking.

Funnily, the players of the game are lifting their voice against Ntreev instead of the illegal player because the probability of the baseball player cards became known extremely lower than ever thought.

 

A message that the account is banned untill December 31, 9999

The hacker argued that even 1 trillion PT(in-game currency) cannot get you what you want and posted a screenshot of his permanent suspension until December 31, 9999.

Then Ntreev said “The exact money the player created by the hacking was 97 million PT. And we are currently working on whether he used all the money to buy the cards.”

The cards grant additional ability to the players’ teams if certain conditions meet such as collecting whole cards of a favorite team of the same year. And as better cards are obviously rarer, the players have shelled out for better and better cards in order to make their teams the best.

 

Need 39,000 PT to draw a card.

So let’s calculate. You need 39,000 PT to get a chance to draw a card out of diverse levels. According to Ntreev’s report, he generated 97M PT. So he could gamble at least 2487 times. But he insists that he has failed to get a single superb card out of 2487 chances.

Then other players are complaining about the extremely low probability with explosive amount of posts for a day.

“We have acknowledged the complaint of the probability of the cards. But the system is not malicious at all,” said an official from Ntreev. “We have further enhanced our protection because there was another trial of hacking. The trial did not penetrate our server this time. We are going to review what to do against the malicious players.”

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Government Defines Jackpot Probability to Stop Speculation

October 13th, 2011

Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism(MCST) is working on an administrative guideline to regulate speculative game items. The detail of the guideline will be introduced in November at latest.

KiJung Lee the director of Game Content Industry of MCST explained “So far we have let the industry manage the issue autonomously. While some have followed the self-rule some have not. Therefore we need to define a certain official guideline based on feedback from the companies, even if it would be still the same, for them to follow otherwise the autonomous rule will be fizzled out as time passes or new companies would not recognize the rule at all.”

Define the Probability Range of the Jackpot Items

MCST first asked the game industry to suggest the guideline in favor of them by this October. If MCST does not like the offer it will work on it directly.

“The guideline for the probability is needed. The jackpot item is getting popular among the industry and its range of probability is sometimes up to 100 times which encourages speculation badly,” said Lee. “The jackpot item must feature whatever that increases the probability with one’s effort. Simple draw for miracle is defenately speculative.”

GRB Will Use the Guideline

If the administrative guideline comes out, it could affect rating review of Game Rating Board(GRB) because GRB would use it as a criterion for the speculative aspect.

GRB normally review all the modified contents of games, simply patches or updates, in order to see if they are appropriate for the current rating. If not appropriate, it proceeds re-review of the game.

Hand In the Data

In order to clearly judge if the company follows the guideline, GRB needs to see the exact data of the probability of the jackpot item. However the industry has refused to file the data for reason of business confidence. So MCST is trying to make them hand in the data to GRB.

At the game law enforced last July, GRB added a few lines to its goal of foundation to embrace the role of preventing possible speculation induction or encouragement and have right to request any required data.

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