Follow up:

Governments intervening to solve the growing (online) game addiction is only happening in East Asia and the countries leading this move are China, Korea, Vietnam and Thailand. All these harsh actions started out because of the reports that gamers are dying because of continues and/or non-stop gaming in many public terminals, commonly called Cafe, iCafe, or PC Bang.

In the Philippines for example, it is also a concern of the teachers and professors of many Elementary, High School and College/Universities, as students get more addicted their grades also are affected. Though here in the Philippines, the government is still not intervening for a reason. Such regulations or laws (if passed as a law) may help curb (online) game addiction but at the same time will help kill a country’s growing industry, not only the industry, but the iCafe businesses which are very common especially in South-East Asia.

Vietnam’s new restriction limits gamers to a five-hour session. A gamer who is playing online games like World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Ragnarok Online to name a few will have a hard time adjusting to the 5-hour limit, these type of games can’t just be played within that limitation. In my opinion, what they should do is to limit these gamers’ “playing days”.