War of Internet Addiction (Machinima)

[Rii]

War of Internet Addiction is a Chinese WoW machinima piece released a few days back. It's a dramatisation of the ongoing saga that is the operation of World of WarCraft in China, and more broadly of online gaming in China. Corporate dealings, media hysteria, government censorship and bureaucracy, disaffected youth and homages to Terminator; it's all there, fact blended with fiction in an engaging and often amusing piece.

It's in Chinese with subtitles, the script is occasionally rather juvenile, and it runs for a little over an hour, but it's well produced and I'd recommend it to anyone with an even vague interest in the subject matter.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHjg65mQJkw&feature=related[/yt]

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it has apparently been banned from most major Chinese video sharing sites.

 

[Rii]

Wall Street Journal (yes, you read that right) has some thoughts on the machinima and its role in the broader debate on censorship in the country.

The movie's plot centers on gamers' frustration with an actual bureaucratic battle over regulation of the Chinese edition of the game, but its subtext is a broad, biting allegory of the fight against government Internet controls, peppered with allusions to a list of real-world conflicts in China over the past year.