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Kotaku East
Chinese TV Catches Weatherman Playing Online Game
You know that scene in the Avengers? That scene where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) starts talking about the faults of everyone on board and then he points out that this one technician was playing Galaga instead of operating the super flying aircraft carrier? Well it sorta happened in China this week when a weatherman…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Litterbug Frightens Net Cafe Attendant With Fake Gun
Guns are a rarity in China. The only places you’d find guns are in military bases, State-run buildings with People’s Liberation Army guards, the military police, or the occasional “country club” with a shooting range. The gun situation in China is almost exactly like it was explained in last year’s Sleeping Dogs; hard to come…
By Eric Jou -
I’d Rather Play Fire Emblem Than Play This Clone
I’m a huge fan of Nintendo’s strategy RPG series Fire Emblem. In fact, I’m just a fan of well done SRPGs (strategy role-playing games). Unfortunately not many get translated to English; just look at the Super Robot Wars series. The lack of new SRPGs and the fact that I had to wait a month for…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Grown Man Refuses To Eat Until Parents Allow Him to Play Video Games
Tantrums involving video games are nothing new, particularly when they involve children losing their gaming privileges. However, when the tantrum is thrown by a young adult, it becomes something that’s, well… sad. That’s exactly what happened to the Yang family in Chongqing last week as reported by the Chongqing Times. Yang Yang (pseudonym) was at…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Beijing’s Smog – It’s Like Living in Silent Hill All the Time
If you’ve read any international news regarding China recently, you’ll definitely have read about the environmental disaster that is Beijing’s air. Over the weekend and heading into the week, Beijing’s been covered in a terrible haze of “smog”, causing issues with traffic, air travel, and most importantly health. The Air Quality Index, an index used…
By Eric Jou -
Chinese Copycat Shooters May Have Met Their Match; Call of Duty Online Goes Into Testing in China. [UPDATE]
Chinese online games have been able to get away with imitations for a long time because there was no other option. Poor intellectual property rights and stringent barriers to entry have long kept popular international titles at bay, but now it seems the grace period for poor Chinese imitations may be gone and it starts…
By Eric Jou -
Culture
Pepsi Marinated Chicken Wings? We’ve got Cheesy Lobster in China too.
Sitting in what’s often called a trashy cafe in Beijing’s Wudaokou district, a friend of mine asked me a question, “你知道为什么中国网游那么简单吗？” (Do you know why Chinese online games are so simple?) Confused and halfway through a soggy “homemade” microwave potato chip I asked, “Why?” My buddy smiled at me and said, “Because they’re designed to…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Crackdown On Multiple Game Accounts Leaves Some Honest Gamers Locked Out
Ma Hong (a pseudonym) spent at least 10 hours every day over the last 5 years playing the same old MMORPG. She put a lot of care and effort into each of her characters, so much so that they were considered well equipped by many of the top gamers in the game. Late last week,…
By Eric Jou -
How To Make a Chinese MMO Worse: Put It on Mobile Phones
Chinese massively multiplayer online games are usually nothing to write home about; they have the pretty much the same tropes, similar artwork, and in the end they are just plain boring grind fests. So what happens when you take a generic Chinese MMO and move it onto a mobile device? It gets a lot worse.…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Corrupt Chinese Officials Gamble with Taxpayers’ Money in Arcades
Arcades in China have an unfortunate association with gambling parlors, due to the fact that gambling in all forms is technically illegal in China proper, sans Macao. Normally, arcade gambling dens are deemed low class establishments where locals gamble away their money in backrooms, however one business executive for a Chinese State-owned enterprise ended up…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Fake Online Romance Leads To Real-Life Manhunt
Online games in China are a big business—so much so that every now and then a company will put out lavish rewards to get gamers to either register for a game, or to play a game for a certain period. These gifts range from limited items to use in-game to sometimes pretty good real world…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Father Hires In-Game “Hitmen” To Deter Son From Playing
Sick and tired of his son playing video games and not listening to him, a father in China decided to take matters into his own hands… well, sort of. Instead of sending his son off to addiction camp or stripping him of internet and gaming rights, Mr. Feng (冯先生) chose to hire an online “hitman”…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
A Chinese Toy Company That Specializes In Making American Soldiers
Toys coming out of China have long had a bad rap. There’s often talk of lead paint, dangerous and sometimes exploding parts, but the overall argument against Chinese toys is that they’re boring and low quality (not Western branded toys made in China). Despite all it had going against it, a small Chinese toy company…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Villagers Accidentally Beat Up Mobile Gamer
Lots of people play mobile games in China. The mobile game market has exploded in the last two years into a multimillion dollar industry. According to iResearch, in 2012, mobile games raked in a profit of $197 million in China, so it’s almost baffling to hear something like a young man playing on a mobile…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Chinese Man Fooled By Infomercial
China has infomercials, a heck of a lot of them at that too, covering everything from breast enlargements to helping Chinese parents make their kids taller. Every now and again, in between the snake oil remedies, an ad will run selling electronics such as tablet computers and cell phones. If you are in China don’t…
By Eric Jou -
Young Chinese Man Turns To Grave Robbing To Fund His Gaming
A young man in Fujian province is in deep trouble this week after going on a rampage through a mausoleum looking for buried treasure. The young man, nicknamed Xiao Hai(海）until trial, just turned 22 years old and, according to those that knew him, was “addicted” to video games. He had problems distinguishing reality from fiction.…
By Eric Jou -
Pepsi and China: Things Get Weird
Last week on Kotaku we talked about China’s Pepsi-cooked chicken wing potato chips coming out of China as a weird but delightful snack. Well, being the resident China hand, I can say without a doubt that Pepsi in its 30 years of history in China has been anything but conventional in terms of its products…
By Eric Jou -
Man Outs Arcade As Gambling Den, Receives Death Threats
A young man in Xi’an, a city in North Central China’s Shaanxi province, anonymously tipped off police about illegal activity happening in an internet cafe. After police arrived and apprehended eight men into custody, the informant began receiving death threats. The informant, lets call him Mr. Guo, is confused as to why he’s receiving death…
By Eric Jou -
10-Year-Old Girl Steals Over $1,600 to Play Video Games
No one ever suspected a child when about $1600 went missing from a cellphone shop until after security cameras caught the little scamp crawling on the floor behind the counter. Now in Quangang, Fujian province, a 10 year-old girl is in hot water after being caught stealing money, quite a lot of money at that,…
By Eric Jou -
Rumor: Hey Americans! Foxconn Is Apparently Building Factories In LA And Detroit
The Taiwanese tech manufacturing giant, Foxconn Electronics, is rumored to be starting up manufacturing plants in the US next year, moving away from its long time “home” base of mainland China. According to rumors floating around the internet, mostly courtesy of the Taiwanese Digitimes, Foxconn is planning to start up factories in either Los Angeles…
By Eric Jou
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