Chinese Couple Sells All Three Kids to Play Online Games

A young Chinese couple has sold all three of their children in exchange for money to play online Nick jr games at Internet cafes, reports a southern Chinese newspaper.
According to Sanxiang City News, the couple met in an Internet cafe back in 2007 and bonded over their obsession with online video games.  A year later, the parents — who are both under 21 — welcomed their first child, a son.  Days after his birth, they left him home alone while they went to play online agame at an Internet cafe 30 km away.
In 2009, Li Lin and Li Juan welcomed their second child, a baby girl, and came up with the idea to sell her for money to fund their online game obsession.  They did so, receiving RMB 3,000 (less than $500), which they spent entirely shortly after.  The couple then proceeded to sell their first child and got 10 times as much for him — RMB 30,000, or about $4600.
Upon having their third child — another boy — the parents followed in their previous footsteps and also got RMB 30,000 for him.
They were finally turned into authorities when Li Lin’s mother found out what her son and his girlfriend had done.
When asked if they missed their children, the parents answered, “We don’t want to raise them, we just want to sell them for some money.”
Sanxiang City Newsreports the couple didn’t know they were breaking the law.

Nick Jr., MTVN expand in Asia

Rugrats and music fans in Singapore and Malaysia will be able to tune in to “Dora the Explorer” and 24-hour music videos, docus and concerts with the launch of Viacom’s Nick Jr. and MTVN HD in the territories in coming weeks.
Nick Jr Games. will bow on Singapore’s Starhub from May 18, while MTVN HD will air on Telekom Malaysia Berhad’s HyppTV in Malaysia from June 1.
Nick Jr. will be available on the StarHub TV’s Kids Basic Upsize Group, while MTVNHD will be available to existing StarHub TV’s Entertainment Basic Group customers who are subscribed to the Basic HD Upsize group.
TM will offer the two channels a la carte to its subscribers on HyppTV, Malaysia’s newest pay TV service.
The services will roll out to the rest of the region at a date to be announced.

Good Is The New Bad

So there have been some minor uproars over game review scores lately that have gotten enough attention to rise above the usual internet static. First was Hydrophobia's developer pitching a fit over it receiving some less than glowing evaluations. Then the developer of the new Castlevania: Lords of Shadow title took issue with IGN delivering it a score of 7.5, which equates to "good" on their rating scale.

Since I personally reviewed one of these games, and I'm tentatively slated to review the other, it got me thinking about review scores in general as a sliding scale. It seems as of late, things have gone a bit awry.

Remember when you were in elementary school and the class was divided up by groups according to their reading skill? Each group had a specific color to go along with their workbooks. Children in the "Advanced" group set the gold-standard, readers in the "Average" group were told that they were "good", but were secretly spurned and tracked for being sub-par readers which translated to "good enough". Kids in the "Remedial" group had parents that were related to one another.

The video game industry appears to have reached a point where it is so cut-throat and competitive, that less than stellar review scores for games now equate to a title being forgettable or outright bad. This is only reinforced by the above incidents where developers speak out against a score that is considered in the upper echelon of the sites review scale, but not the very top.

It would be easy to just blame developers and PR people for "not delivering on promises", but the gaming journalism industry is largely at fault too. We (yes I'm lumping myself in there) sit and hype games based on pure speculation, creating a buzz months before there is even a tangible product to evaluate. This in turn creates a readership with very high expectations. I'm not telling anyone they should have to settle. Don't ever settle. Stay hungry, like Twisted Sister told you to. However, I think this behavior from us actually creates an almost self-destructive environment.

In a world where only the top scores mean something is worthwhile, a few docked points garner a title being widely ignored, and a low score yielding a possible phone call or email from an angry company, a new precedent is set. Reviewers most likely give much higher scores simply because their frame of reference is skewed, or because they don't want to deal with the backlash from the occasional low score. So then what's even the point of having numbers below 4 or 8 on the scale at all?

I think as the holiday game season comes upon us we will only see more of this as the top titles compete among cash strapped consumers. There are always winners and losers in a competitive industry, but a combination of the journalist hype machine, and impertinent developers reacting to imperfect scores for their works are creating a culture where we can't separate "median" from "mediocre".

Chinese Couple Sells All Three Kids to Play Online Games

A young Chinese couple has sold all three of their children in exchange for money to play online Nick jr games at Internet cafes, reports a southern Chinese newspaper.

According to Sanxiang City News, the couple met in an Internet cafe back in 2007 and bonded over their obsession with online video games.  A year later, the parents — who are both under 21 — welcomed their first child, a son.  Days after his birth, they left him home alone while they went to play online agame at an Internet cafe 30 km away.

In 2009, Li Lin and Li Juan welcomed their second child, a baby girl, and came up with the idea to sell her for money to fund their online game obsession.  They did so, receiving RMB 3,000 (less than $500), which they spent entirely shortly after.  The couple then proceeded to sell their first child and got 10 times as much for him — RMB 30,000, or about $4600.

Upon having their third child — another boy — the parents followed in their previous footsteps and also got RMB 30,000 for him.

They were finally turned into authorities when Li Lin’s mother found out what her son and his girlfriend had done.

When asked if they missed their children, the parents answered, “We don’t want to raise them, we just want to sell them for some money.”

Sanxiang City Newsreports the couple didn’t know they were breaking the law.

Chinese Couple Sells All Three Kids to Play Online Games

A young Chinese couple has sold all three of their children in exchange for money to play online Nick jr games at Internet cafes, reports a southern Chinese newspaper.

According to Sanxiang City News, the couple met in an Internet cafe back in 2007 and bonded over their obsession with online video games.  A year later, the parents — who are both under 21 — welcomed their first child, a son.  Days after his birth, they left him home alone while they went to play online agame at an Internet cafe 30 km away.

In 2009, Li Lin and Li Juan welcomed their second child, a baby girl, and came up with the idea to sell her for money to fund their online game obsession.  They did so, receiving RMB 3,000 (less than $500), which they spent entirely shortly after.  The couple then proceeded to sell their first child and got 10 times as much for him — RMB 30,000, or about $4600.

Upon having their third child — another boy — the parents followed in their previous footsteps and also got RMB 30,000 for him.

They were finally turned into authorities when Li Lin’s mother found out what her son and his girlfriend had done.

When asked if they missed their children, the parents answered, “We don’t want to raise them, we just want to sell them for some money.”

Sanxiang City Newsreports the couple didn’t know they were breaking the law.