South Korea nighttime shutdown videogame curfew policy aimed at stifling MMO-addicted youth

13 April 2010

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Posted by:Josh

South Korea has taken new drastic measures to help curb what it sees as the growing “videogame addiction” problem by youth to online PC MMO games. And to combat against it the “South Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism” has enacted two new policies dubbed the “nighttime shutdown”.

With this new policy, underage online game players (19 and younger) will be required to choose from one of three six-hour blackout periods before they can start playing their favorite MMOs. This would shut the game down and make it impossible for them to continue playing once the threshold has been met.

It’s worth noting that in South Korea, PC gamers of MMO’s (whom typically play in an Internet Cafe in public and not on a home computer) are required to enter the USA equivalent of a Social Security Number (called a KRN, Korean Resident Number) to even sign-up for an MMO, so the government theoretically knows the age of the person playing an MMO. Or at least, “the feds” can find that info out and take steps towards having you blocked if you are underage, according to the new policies.

The Black Outs will be instituted for a number of the most popular MMO’s played by Koreans include MapleStory (which has over 100 million players worldwide, including over 10 million in the USA) and Dungeon Fighter Online.

In addition to the complete blackout, the policy will also drastically reduce the Internet speed of an underage user who has played over a certain specified amount of time (selected before they play like with the BlackOut policy above). This is meant to discourage them from continuing to play after “lengthy sessions” due to how the slow Internet speed will effect their gameplay.

These policies will be put in place during the latter half of the year and the slowdown policy will be set up in over 19 MMO games already confirmed. Those 19 MMO’s already covered make up a whopping 79% of South Korea’s online gaming market!

However there are definitely flaws in this government crackdown. Some companies who will be effected by these new policies, and whose business’ will inevitably be hurt by it, have questioned the government as to why their games are required to follow the policy; while other popular online games (like Lineage 2) have yet to be hit with these new rules (which is obviously unfair).

While some other critics have stated that this unprecedented government intrusion into the daily lives of young people is not a reliable solution to the problem because the youngsters will just find a way around these new policies.

To that end, many critics have pointed out the fact that many youngsters are able to work around this system already by using the KRN numbers of their parents, siblings, extended family or older friends. And thus will be able to bypass these new policies. The use of the KRN numbers of older people by underage online videogame players is already something that is widespread. And, as you can imagine, would be very difficult if not impossible to crackdown on.

Now for my own rant. While I don’t live in South Korea (although I know a gaming friend that IS Korean and visits her family there often, maybe I’ll ask her to comment on this story) I, as an American, must question why the government would see it as their duty to crackdown on this sort of thing.

And while it isn’t necessarily surprising that the government would try this . . . considering how several politicians and legal people have unsuccessfully tried to block the sale of violent videogames to minors via government enforcement here in the United States, it does boggle my mind that “addiction to videogames” would be considered such a bad thing as to have these sorts of draconian means passed by Korean legislators.

The reason I say that is because there are so many worse things that youngsters can and do become addicted to and/or may seek out in replacement of their videogame-playing time (which will now be sucked away).

What about underage drug use, gang activity, addiction to pornography or a number of other arguably worse “addictions” or actions that young people can pursue? You’d think that the youngsters sitting down and playing a videogame while interacting socially in some form or another would be preferred over the many other unsavory activities they could be doing instead.

This is something that I, as part of the videogaming generation here in America, will never understand about the older generation. While crime is of course a problem here as it is everywhere (hooligans exist in all cultures), I have yet to personally know of a single hardcore gamer friend who is involved in bad/illegal activity, and I have to wonder what the chance of them being involved in bad activity would be if they didn’t spend the majority of their time with their videogame hobby.

And despite what older generations will say about gaming being a solo-activity that leads to depression, lack of social interaction/social skills, etc., all of us gamers know full well that that is far from the case. In fact gaming is often a very social activity, whether it’s four-player multiplayer gaming in person with friends all sitting on the same couch, or gamers interacting with others online, it is still social interaction.

And often times the people who interact the most online are shy in person. Instead of remaining shy online, the virtual form of videogames is an encouragement and can help them break out of their shell and ACTUALLY talk to real people who gaming alongside them on the other end.

Whereas if they didn’t have the virtual social interaction, they would just be the bookworm/socially-awkward-wallflower of the previous generation who was (and is still today) publicly ridiculed and outcast by his “cooler” peers. Despite what the older generation and politicians may say or think, MORE social interaction with classmates will not and does not generally break a shy person into being more social and outgoing. As I can attest to myself going through school. So for many shy kids, gaming online and having the ability to interact and be social and outgoing online, is a confidence builder.

And besides, many online relationships will eventually bleed into the non-online world (at least speaking from my own experience), especially in this modern technological age of cell phones, IM, video/voice chat, twitter, and facebook/myspace/social networking where it is easier than ever to interact with people from across the world.

For me personally I don’t know a single older person who has friends in multiple countries, like I do with friends in the Netherlands, Saudia Arabia, India, New Zealand and Canada. Not only that, but many of my real friends were met due to the common interest of videogames.

The good news is that these type of ridiculous laws (even if “videogame addiction” is arguably more of a problem in Korea than other nations, where some people have died from “marathon gaming sessions”, though it’s a small number in the grand scheme) will eventually become a thing of the past as the gaming generation grows older and starts to replace our fathers and grandfathers in areas of power and influence. To the future! *end rant*

Via Joystiq