An online game ban will be instituted in South Korea according to the Korea Herald. The new policies “will attempt to block underage access to online computer games after midnight in light of the rising problem of video game addiction among youth,” according to the report.

One of the policies will affect popular online games such as Barameui Nara, Maple Story, Mabinogi and 16 others by cutting off access to underage users at 12am sharp. Another policy is “the slowdown policy” where gamers will find their Internet speed dropping to 56k levels if they play for too long.

There was no mention of regular Internet connections cutting off, just online access to those games. So, the underaged gamers in question will stop playing any one of these 19 games at 12am, then either a) load up a new game, b) find a way around the block, or c) surf for porn.

Then what happens when Star Craft II releases? The original Star Craft still draws millions of South Korean gamers online, in LAN parties, and at professional Star Craft competitions and tournaments across the nation. Good luck stopping people from playing that. Its practically a national sport.

As reports of this new online game ban circulate, the example of gamer depravity and addiction that keeps getting mentioned is the story of the death of a South Korean newborn through starvation. It has been claimed that the parents’ addiction to online gaming led to their neglect of the child.

A horrible story indeed, but will this new online game ban save millions of babies of underaged parents from a similar fate? Considering the parents in the story mentioned above are 41 and 25 years old, this new ban stands to only truly aggravate and generally hack off millions of (tech savvy) South Korean teenagers, force new games into the limelight, and drive porn profits instead of curbing online game addiction or saving babies.

When Modern Warfare 2, the successor to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare was announced and demoed at E3, the focus was primarily on the single player game. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, as CoD 4 sported one of the most engrossing and well-written storylines to ever grace an FPS game. However, to discount the sizable multiplayer audience of the game, who were no doubt salivating for some new info, seems like a bad idea. There may be a method behind the madness, however, as it appears that Activision may have some new ideas for Call of Duty multiplayer.

The good news? There’ll probably be more features. The bad news? You may have to pay for them. Apparently, a survey has been floating around the gaming community with Activision gathering data on how best to proceed. Would you be willing to pay a small fee to have early or exclusive access to game maps, special modes, and advanced tracking tools? That seems to be what they are banking on. According to the survey, this would be optional content added as a paid service to those interested – you wouldn’t have to pay to just play Call of Duty multiplayer.

The question is, does that mean that if you don’t pay, you don’t get supported? Will there be no new downloadable content for those who don’t buy in?

But more surprisingly, is the rumor of a MMO element that is going to be added into COD4. This might be reality soon since Activision’s Bobby Kotick hinted at the possibility of a Call of Duty MMO awhile back with this quote from Morgan Stanley Technical Conference.

“What would be the natural evolution of a property like Call of Duty into a massively-multiplayer environment and how do you monetize that?”

“While a Call of Duty MMO may be a long way off, if it ever gets off the ground, it’s starting to sound like Activision execs may be giving it serious thought and we’d expect it to be a big focus for the publisher’s ad revenue model.”

Also, Kotick pointed out that he is very interested in implementing in-game advertising, which the model of it will most likely resemble Starcraft ladder tournament style. It could be a risky move on Activision’s part to put in this so called “online shell”, but let’s be real… we all saw this sort of move coming. Who wouldn’t enjoy a MMOFPS anyway huh? What do you guys think?

I personally think this could go either very well for the CoD series if it is done correctly. After recently participating in the Huxley Closed Beta I feel that a MMOFPS can be done, there is just a very fine line that has to be walked to either do it right or have it become a huge failure. We shall have to wait and see!

One of the latest Screen Digest reports (via mcvuk) shows that last year, Europeans and North Americans have spent around $1.4 billion for MMO subscriptions in total. That is a 22% market growth difference from year 2007 and experts at Screen digest say that despite the increased growth of the Asian online games market model where players instead of paying monthly fees buy items for money, the sector still has five more years to grow. In the report done by Screen digest, here are the basic topics covered:

• Addressable market forecast: broadband households, online active consoles
• Subscription MMOG Market Overview and Updated Forecasts
• Regional Analysis and Forecasts
• North American Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• European Territory Analysis and Forecasts
• Title Market Share Analysis
• Company Market Share Analysis
• Content trends
• The Year Ahead

A comment from Screen digest’s senior analyst and head of games Piers Harding-Rolls: “Industry commentators have for some time been using the example of the Asian online games market to proclaim the death of subscription business models in the West, praising the accessibility and flexibility of free-to-access games that generate revenue by encouraging players to make micro-transactions as part of the gaming experience.”

For now it would seem that the MMO subscription route is the way to go as the more popular games such as World of Warcraft and Warhammer Online have millions of paying players which renew their subscriptions on a monthly basis. With these games and other like them having such a great success I can’t see them going away anytime soon. While the market could move towards more free based MMOs, I just can’t see it happening anytime soon.

And just recently a few MMOs have tried to enter the pro gaming scene with World of Warcraft leading the way. Even though there have been some bugs along the way they are trying hard to make it an even playing field for the players which is already starting to spark more interest in the competitive gaming scene. This will only lead to more people playing these games to try and get good so they can also compete, which is just bringing in more and more cash for the game.

While I am not a big fan of MMOs, I can recognize that they must be doing something right to be able to bring in that type of money from their players. Only time will tell if these business models of the subscriptions will continue to become more and more popular as they get older and newer games come out that are free to play.