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Kotaku East
Can China’s Monster Hunter Clone Slay…Monster Hunter?
China’s Monster Hunter styled MMO, Hunter Blade, looks, plays, and feels exactly like Monster Hunter—well, almost. Despite adding some much needed gameplay elements to MH, Hunter Blade is a flawed monster hack and slash. Developed by Joy China, Hunter Blade, takes all the elements of MH and turns it into an MMO. Joy China didn’t…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Rumors of an iPad Mini Swirl in China
The Chinese rumor mill has hit full blast today claiming to have details about the imminent release of an iPad mini. Chinese net portal, NetEase, has a story on a rumored new mini Apple tablet. NetEase claimed that the device will be released around the third quarter of this year to “counter attack” the upcoming…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Bad Chinese People, Stop Effing with the Robot Policemen!
Japan’s Nikkan Spa recently posted images of a Chinese robot cop “patrolling” the streets. Despite looking humanoid, the “RoboCop” in question was far from a robotic police officer. They also look nothing like RoboCop. RoboCop will shoot you in the face. These will not. Standing at attention, the near two meter tall sentries are not…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Young Chinese Women in Trouble for Writing Dirty Website
Founded in early 2011, homoerotic fantasy website “Boys Love Novels Online” (“耽美小说网”) recently went offline. The government charged its founder with spreading pornographic materials. The websites writers however, weren’t men. They were women. The website supposedly spread over 1,200 articles of gay erotic fiction during the time that it was active. While the site was…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Bootleg Chinese Arcades Sure Can Make Popular Video Games Boring
The original Plants versus Zombies is a classic in China. Even before the Chinese version came out, the game was a success. My girlfriend, who is Chinese, had a PvZ phase. During that time, she would playPvZ everywhere she went— be it on my smartphone, tablet or on the PC at home. One time a…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Chinese Netizens Totally Heart the American Ambassador
The American ambassador to China has usually been an enigmatic figure to the Chinese people. Sure John Huntsman “speaks” Chinese (he really does just not often in public), and has Chinese daughters, he remained a mystery to the Chinese public during his tenure as ambassador. Gary Locke on the other hand, has captivated the attention…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Ancient Chinese Graveyard Ritual Goes Online
Tomb-sweeping is usually a very somber affair, usually. Now in a surge to promote eco-friendly “burials” and body disposals, China has gamified the tradition. Due to growing concerns about property ownership (you can only own land for 70 years in China) to the cost of funeral plots, China has been urging its people to conduct…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Chinese Farmers Become Gigolos To Pay for Online Gaming Addiction
Online gaming addiction is a serious thing, and in China where they limit gaming time and access, it’s no laughing matter. But what happens when you’re addicted to gaming but you don’t have the money? Tecent recently reported a disturbing trend happening to China’s “Second Generation Farmers (农二代)” and their addiction to online gaming. “Second…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Taiwanese Weather Girls Ripped Off By Chinese Weather Girls
Last December, Guangdong Satellite TV Station introduced a change to their regular weather broadcasts. Instead of stuffy meteorologists or on-air reporters reporting the changes in the weather, they hired a group of undergraduate Chinese girls. The group, called Pin-Ko Pie, is made up of nine college girls who have “modeling” experience. These nine girls take…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Let’s Check Out China’s Team Fortress 2 Clone, Final Combat
Whenever I visit an internet cafe in China, be it Shanghai, Beijing or wherever, it always surprises me how many of the games available are MMO’s or bad rip-offs of western games. Normally I would scroll past the Chinese fare and move onto something a little more domestic like Call of Duty or Ages of…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
In China, Hire Your Online Fans and Internet Defenders—Cheap!
I listen to This American Life a lot, and for the longest time at the end of each show Ira Glass would say, “This episode of This American Life is bought to you by Reputation.com.” For long have I pondered what exactly what it is that Reputation.com does. Do they Google-bomb Google or do they…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Thieves Had No Place To Run, Except for an Internet Cafe
Two young men in Yueqing, Zhejiang Province China, were taken in by police earlier last week for pick-pocketing. The two young men in question, Xiao Pan and Xiao Bing, are only 17 and 14 years-old respectively. Xiao Pan had ran away from home and had been living on the streets for a while, surviving by…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Why Come to China? One Foreign Game Developer Responds.
Game development in China is no longer just a domestic thing. Foreign power houses such as EA, Zynga, and Ubisoft have major studios working on big titles in China. However, many of their best console titles won’t reach Chinese players until either the game is released in PC in Chinese or pirated by Chinese hackers.…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
The Wonderful and Seedy World of Chinese Arcades
Hot, loud, flashy, and incredibly smoky. These are some of the best ways to describe the sensation of walking into an arcade in China. And when walking in during peak hours, the lines to play the latest fighting games usually snake across cabinets. It’s interesting to see that China still has a flourishing arcade industry…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
At This Chinese Video Game Bar, You Drink
There are many arcades in China, some are shopping arcades, others are video game arcades. But Arcade, in Shanghai isn’t an arcade in any sense of the word, it is instead a bar. While there are many video game bars in the US and Japan, there aren’t too many in China. There are arcades that…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Is This the World’s Youngest FPS Player? He’ll Snipe Your Ass. Maybe.
Don’t you hate it when you’re online playing a first-person shooter and the person on the other end that kills you is a young kid. Well, in China, that player could be younger than you’d ever imagine. In a video posted last December, an unnamed 2-and-a-half year-old, is shown playing a Counter Strike clone, Mercenary…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Will Apple’s iPad Trademark Become China’s?
Just last week, Apple announced a new iPad. It’s already become an object of desire in China. But, unfortunately for Chinese Apple fans, Apple has not announced a launch date for the Mainland market. Even if Apple does announce a Mainland launch date, its on going legal troubles with Chinese tech company Proview might hinder…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Pouring Booze on an Ice Logo
ChinaJoy, China’s largest video game and gaming culture expo, is set to get bigger this year as it prepares for its tenth outing. In a press conference in Beijing on Friday, the organizers of ChinaJoy, the General Administration of Press and Publication, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Industrial and Information Technology,…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Elderly Communist Lady Wants to Kill the Internet
For many who live in Beijing, the first week of March is hell. Traffic is at its worst: random roads are cleared for black Audis with police escorts. This is all done for the National People’s Congress (NPC) and National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) sessions—commonly known as the two sessions.…
By Eric Jou -
Kotaku East
Japanese Adult Video Stars Teaching China about Sex
Sexual education in China is quite interesting. Sex and anything related has long been a “taboo” topic, but things have been loosening up over the last decade. And now, Japanese adult video stars are now teaching sex-ed on public television. Progress! Former Japanese adult video actress Akane Hotaru, perhaps best known for her work in…
By Eric Jou
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