Letters to the Editor

• Jumping ship and Burning Man

  [Read the article: Filtering the China filters]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Sorry about calling you a he. Reading comprehension 4theWin!

  I guess something I was thinking about when I wrote the post is that a lot of discussions about globalization focus on describing the negative impact, without talking about the benefits, or alternatives. Or even looking at the complexities of the issues. For example, what can be done to stop tech job loss in the short term? Our government can’t tell companies to not go overseas. If we tax them more for going overseas, that just becomes a tariff. Then other countries retaliate. I’m not an economist, so my logic here may seem very simple and be wrong. But even this simple cause and effect is not what is discussed. To me, its either all about American’s losing their jobs, or its about some ecological / cultural rape being done to a place / people by local power elites, on behalf of multi-national corporations. Focusing only on these stories becomes ideological. At least, that is how I define ideological…focusing in on the simplified ideas instead of broadening your vision to see the bigger interconnections. And ideology blinds. For example (and I think Mr. Leonard mentioned this in an article), why do so many protesters get into such a rage at the WTO? The WTO is mostly a powerless, ineffectual organization used as a negotiations forum. And it seems most of the WTO staff are extremely interested in helping the world’s poor nations. Yet protesters make it out to be this big evil powerful tool of the multinationals. Its sort of crazy.

  BTW, can you describe “Burning Man flavor to a neo-con analysis of globalization”? I don’t understand this term.

  “I suspect that a large majority of Salon's readers have not jumped ship to China, but are imprisoned in this domestic labor market, like it or not. Why ignore their concerns?”

  I REALLY don’t like to think I “jumped ship”. I studied Chinese and became fluent in this language way before it was popular…way before I knew what I was doing. And my wife studied it too (that’s how we met). So it’s natural that we try to use this skill to find some extra money here. And it is like the Wild West still here…there is opportunity in the air. Which is really nice after coming from Silicon Valley where so many friends went out-of-work and depressed.

  Anyway…

  I think that people are imprisoned in a global labor market…that’s the beauty and tragedy of globalization. People can move though. ESPECIALLY software people could move to China (no language skill necessary). Or move out of the Bay Area. But people ideally should not have to be forced to move.

  Permalink Thursday, January 12, 2006 09:22 AM

• Fate

  [Read the article: World of Chinese Warcraft]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  I think you may be my long lost brother. Or my adversary from an alternate universe.

  I went to Xiamen in 1995 and lived there for 5 months. Gulangyu is great! No cars, old French buildings with peasants living in them, good food (not on the island though), quite walks along the sea…

  I am also a WOW player. In China, on Chinese servers. I’ll admit it…knowing that my friends and family are not going to read this. I’m actually in a guild (but that was because they sent me a random guild invite and at the time my reading comprehension was even worse than it is today). My guildmates think I am a large breast, blond American girl who likes to use her credit card at Starbucks, have lots of casual sex, and kill Iraqis.

  And…I used to dream of being a video game producer or own a video game company. Sadly it will never will happen because I’m not a programmer and have no “in” in that industry besides my efforts. But I used to read Gamasutra so that I can talk the talk.

  Question/Comment #1 Why do you read Gamasutra? Lets hear it!

  Question / Comment #2 Although Salon readership may be somewhat more enlightened, most probably will not know what WOW is. The PC game community in the US maybe has a 6 million player base. The intersection with Salon’s readership is not guaranteed. And they may not know about its popularity in China.

  Question / Comment #3 Someone is going to ask what this has to do with globalization. Not me. But someone will ask it.

  Question / Comment #4 I’m pretty sure Shanda is publicly traded on a market somewhere. And I’m pretty sure that even several years ago some analyst were pointing out that this company is all hype.

  Question / Comment #5 The too biggest games in China (Lineage 2 and WOW) were only localized in China. Not only the design and artwork, but importantly, the server-side implementation, were developed and fire-tested in Korea and the US. The infrastructure that The9City (Blizzard’s Chinese localization partner for WOW) uses is not as good as what Blizzard manages in the US. At least that’s what Chinese players say anyway.

  Question / Comment # 6 That being said, I think China is probably a good place to develop MMOs because they are popular and explicit development costs are less than in the US. Investing in cell-phone manufacturers here is stupid and everyone knows that now…there has to be consolidation there.

  Question / Comment #7 And finally…there was this plan to place restrictions on MMOs so that after playing for 2 hours straight, people would have to log off or else they would get only ½ experience. This has not been implemented yet. It was funny how all the game companies said publicly this would be a good idea, even though they and everyone else thinks it’s a horrible idea. Actually, I think it would be good to implement. Gamers of the World Unite!

  Permalink Tuesday, January 17, 2006 05:24 PM

• oh and...

  [Read the article: World of Chinese Warcraft]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  If I think an interesting topic to research and write about would be trade unions in China. If only seperate villages in GuangDong could organize...

  Permalink Tuesday, January 17, 2006 05:26 PM