Still a disappointment that my meandering MMO musings didn’t somehow mysteriously anger the Beijing overlords, though!

No offense, but what the fuck are you smoking?
Greetings from Guilin. Accessed your blog just fine from Beijing, too.

I can only go by what people tell me! Maybe since Obama was elected I was deemed socialist enough to de-firewall.

Wrong read on the situation — online gaming is huge in China (Hell, even the auntie at the tiny bodega down the street from me has an old rig going where WoW’s running while she sells soft drinks and ice cream. I couldn’t tell at a glance if it was gold farming on American servers or playing legit). World of Warcraft is a major player, but it’s not a market-expanding magnet for people new to the genre like it is in the West. WoW being shut out really would be a net gain for the rest of the industry. It’s not completely zero sum, but it’s definitely toward that direction.

Blizzard has a problem to fix, and if they fail (which I highly doubt they will), they wouldn’t even have the consolation of “But you’re all totally missing out!” to fall back on.

Sigh, no. And yes. Sort of. The two branches are sort of fighting over who gets to control this turf (and thus its revenue). Blizzard picked what will undoubtedly be the winning side (Ministry of Culture are the proverbial Heavy Hitters, GAPP is the Tito Jackson to their Michael), but in doing so (for the release of TBC) they did an end-run around GAPP in such a blunt way that it didn’t allow them to save face. This is GAPP slapping them back.

The ground rules for doing business in China aren’t that hard to understand — it’s like any major American city in a neighborhood where the police aren’t the only power brokers and you have to play nice. If you’re going to pat someone on the head and say “Run along, you don’t matter”, as Blizzard did to GAPP when making payouts to allow the TBC release, you’d better be sure you don’t need them for anything later on. Whaddaya know? They’re still making expansion packs, they’ve still got to make payouts to get them into the market, and they’ve made themselves enemies. This is going to cost them far more to handle than if they included GAPP in the initial round of payouts and built up a relationship. Not only will GAPP get their pound of flesh in the end, the Ministry of Culture will expect Blizzard to cough up more protection money as they temporarily fix Blizzard’s problems…

Of course, this should make you wonder a bit — Even if Blizzard is this pants-on-head stupid when it comes to doing business in China, treating it just like doing business in Europe or America, why are their Chinese partners, who at least in theory have the know-how to avoid these problems, standing for this?

Well, here’s merely an educated guess — As of April 2009, Blizzard switched from The9 to NetEase, complicating their life immensely. NetEase is a major player too, but it’s sort of like telling the gang you pay your protection money to that yeah, it’s been great and all, but I’m going to go with that *other* gang now.

It could be that. It could be something else. But the bottom line is, Blizzard hasn’t displayed savvy in the Chinese marketplace. And as anyone who’s done business there can tell you, their prevailing mindset is, “If you’re not savvy and you get screwed, you deserved it.”

If you find that unfair, well, there are plenty of other countries for you to promote your product in.

I’ve known for a while that this blog is blocked in China (and has been for years). “”

Scott…

No offense, but what the fuck are you smoking?

Greetings from Guilin. Accessed your blog just fine from Beijing, too. Living in a Chinese household where I’m the only foreigner, standard Chinese internet, nothing fancy.

If the USA pulled the same stunt I bet China would be up in arms.

I’m not sure anyone in the USA would notice if Perfect World was banned.

If the USA pulled the same stunt I bet China would be up in arms.

Will play any game with a Chinese server that allows players to acquire a Llama Dolly.