In this seminar, the main topic is the fast-growing Chinese on-line computer game market. One of its main catalysts is the rapid increase in Internet users in China, thanks to the efforts of China Telecom.. Major Chinese web sites, such as sina.com, shanda.com, and 163.com, together with foreign on-line game providers, quickly occupy this huge market. Countless young people play the on-line games day and night. Thus, on-line game has quickly caused intense disputations in educational field of China.
Although this seminar does not go this far, I would still like to say something about this situation in China. It seems that everything has changed suddenly. When I first came to Singapore in 1998, very few people in China knew the phase “on-line game”, I think. But now, if, say, you are a Chinese young man and you do not even know what “on-line game” is, others will probably ask you: “Did you just come from Mars?” (it means you really know too little about Earth!) Last year, I went back to China for holiday, and had a party with my former high school classmates, who were now also having their undergraduate studies. I was very shocked that while I understood every word they spoke, I could not figure out the content. At the end, they told me that they were discussing about a very popular on-line game in China.
I admit that computer game is my major free-time activity. Clearly I am not trying to prove my greatness by fooling the AI, but I finally find out that reading story books and watching action movies are quite a waste of time. Why not join in and determine the story by yourself, and direct it by your will? Sometimes it appears to me that, by means of human wisdom, solid concentration and perfect brain-hand cooperation, accomplishing the missions impossible is simply an art, though someone may not agree with that. But when I saw my friends playing those on-line games, I started to doubt whether they qualify for “computer games”? Most of the time, they were just staying at a place, clicking the mousse madly to kill somebody, and it seemed that there was no end of it. Even a trained monkey can do this job as well as them!
Later, I found out what, actually, “on-line game” is. Instead of what I call “games”, on-line game is simply a virtual society, as real as our world. There are all kinds of people there, and you can make friend or fight with anyone you want, without paying for any consequence. You can even form a guild and fight with other guilds. But is this world really that attractive, such that many people deny the real world and join in? One of my good friends has already reached this stage. To me, he has abandoned this world, by cutting off relationship with all his friends. No one know what he is thinking about, and he can very hardly be seen, all his activities, other than going to school, is sleeping till 12am, getting up then, and migrating to his virtual world, as a well-known guild leader.
Certainly, all the above comments are my personal thoughts, and not point to any individuals or groups. Maybe you cannot agree with my negative feeling towards on-line games, believing that on-line games have many advantages to the youth. But I still want to end my words with this quotation from China Daily, 7th June, 2004: “Regardless, online games are the means to enter a world that seems entirely real, but is actually a complete escape from reality.”
The URL of the whole article mentioned: “What have online games done to us?” http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-06/07/content_337200.htm
