Before you think that we have it bad when it comes to privacy, take a look at things like this and think longer. It looks like the Chinese government is going to force gamers in the area to register with their real names. Not bad. But they must also provide their government issued code, think social security number for those in the states. All of this just to prove who you are and so you can play. Now here is the good question, why are they doing this?

Well it looks like this is a way to track how long gamers play their online games. All to battle something that has hit headlines a bunch lately, game addiction. Not just the basic addiction of playing them, but spending 72 hours straight in an online virtual world. Something that has become an issue as of late for sure. This of course is not new news to the citizens over there as it has been in testing since 2006 with selected adults. But this new system will hit everyone over there, or is at least projected too.

What exactly does this system do? Well it will let parents and/or other concerned people to ensure that players will not get lost in their virtual worlds. That they won't forget about the real world. Kind of a constant intervention monitoring system so we don't lose our nearest and dearest to the Horde. It's just kind of weird to have the government step up to do it.

But is this really needed? How long until this type of monitoring moves globally?

Personally, and I am ready for hate email, I think something like this needs to be done on a global scale. Why? Because people today don't understand moderation. By no means do I think that people should game less, but it only takes one bad seed to ruin us all. By bad seed I mean those that give the negative stereotypes justification. On top of that, needing to register with a government issued number will make age verification that much easier to control. No longer will people be able to complain that their 5 year old was killing hookers, because it will be more on the parents to ensure their kids can play these games. Yet something else they were talking about in the above situation.

While I'm not a big fan of people knowing what I am doing and in this case playing, I think that it is a trade off I would be willing to make. It's not like they could really do much other than get your habits, your likes, your dislikes. Wait that sounds kind of like a stalker. All the more fun.

Chime in on your thoughts. We'd love to hear them. Below is the article.