Things Engineers Like: Video Games
China is finally considering lifting their 13 year video game console ban. What is the reason for the ban in the first place? Well, it was the concerns over what video gaming had on children development mentally and physically. (Almost as ridiculous as the US making unlocking phones illegal with a penalty of up to $500,000 and/or fives years in prison for first time offenders and $1,000,000 and/or ten years for repeat offenders. But you can have your cell provider to do it for free.) But 13 years later, China can see how video gaming has affected children development in the rest of the world. China has grown into a world power in those 13 years; will video games slow their economic growth? It's not like they didn't have PC games though. And Hong Kong has been allowed to have console and the Chinese citizens are, of course, able to get their hands on them through illegal means.
But the end of the ban may be exactly what the console industry needed especially with the next generation consoles being already released or soon to be with the future of consoles to be unknown. This also may be what China and Japan needed too as it may ease the tension between them especially with the dispute over the islands in the East China Sea. Maybe they could even play a friendly game of Mario Tennis to settle the dispute! And when the future citizens of both countries become influential, they may actually be fond of each other's countries as a result to the end of the video game console ban.
13 years ago, I was a kid that played hours of N64 everyday. And by that time, I probably had thousands of hours of gaming under my belt and thousands more have been played since then. The majority of the time was spent on trying to win girls' heart (and getting rich) in Harvest Moon or laying the smackdown on others using the People's Elbow in WWF's No Mercy. I have certainly reduced my playing time dramatically since my first year at UConn. But it cannot be completely avoided especially when your friends are engineers. But I'll certainly take on anyone in Mario Kart or Mario Tennis.
It's sad that millions of children in China will have missed out on the best console in the history of gaming, the Nintendo 64.