Online game in China: Not 'shoot-em-up' but 'help-em-across-the-street'

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2006

BEIJING (AFP) — Help old people across the street, or gently dissuade strangers from swearing and spitting, and you may have a chance of seeing Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Square and even get his autograph.

That is the concept of a new online game commissioned by the government and developed by Shanda Interactive Entertainment, a NASDAQ-listed Chinese software company, state media said Thursday.

In a drastic departure from the "shoot-'em-up, kill-'em-all" philosophy permeating many successful online games, Shanda's product encourages thrift and polite manners, Xinhua news agency reported.

The new game is called "Learning from Comrade Lei Feng," after a legendary and possibly fictitious soldier who assumed iconic status during the height of Maoist fervor in the...