Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency regulates denies news

Yesterday, I wrote an article of Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency regulates the virtual goods system of Japanese social game. However, according to Ketai Watch(One of the Japanese mobile news sites ), Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency denied this news.

On April 24, Mr.Fukushima, Secretary-General of Consumer Affairs Agency  answered the question about social game of the reporter of the Yomiuri Shimbun. He answered in this way. "Consumer Affairs Agency pays attention and watches movement carefully".

Consumer Affairs Agency says, "We are still stages after starting examination. A cancellation request or the measures order are not decided and do not have such a plan.We do not announce the company name either".

I think that the Yomiuri Shimbun might write a wrong article.

Japanese Government regulates the virtual goods system of Japanese social game

Surprising news ran through Japan yesterday.

Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency regulates "Complete Gacha".

What is "Complete Gacha"? This is one of the mechanism of the virtual goods sale in Japan. Many virtual worlds and social games have a virtual goods vending machine in imitate of a capsule toy vending machine called "Gacha". Items come out of there at random. It may resemble a lottery. Users play Gacha for several hundred yen once. Users must play Gacha many times to get the item which want. "Complete Gacha" is Gacha which must prepare all the items of an appointed kind in Gacha. When users collect all items, they get a rare item in a reward. Consumer Affairs Agency judged this to be illegal. According to them, this corresponds to "prize" prohibited by a Japanese premium notation. However, Complete Gacha is not a born thing recently. There was it for various virtual worlds and online games for several years. Why do they regulate it at this time? I think that because a Japanese social game became too popular.

Japanese social game is profitable very much now. On the other hand, there are a lot of people who want to make them a evil. Core gamers, people who do not know a lot about IT, Information illiterate...etc... In a disgraceful thing, most of politicians and government officials of the Japanese Government are Information illiterate.

Japanese Government and most of government officials are VERY STUPID. They do not support new business. On the contrary, they create a drag on it. The biggest obstacle of the contents business of Japan is Government. The Japanese creator, the developer and the businessman survived while fighting against their interference.


I am apprehensive in whether they tighten up regulation rapidly taking advantage of this.

See Also:
“Complete Gacha”: Japanese Government To Regulate Social Game Mechanism Soon [Social Games]

[Study]Why does the Japanese play a social game?

Japanese publishing company Enterbrain released a social game user action psychology report [PDF]. This had various interesting data. This investigation was carried out for 1,600 15-59-year-old social game users.

Q. Why do you play a social game?
(Answers of 5 high ranks)
1.I want to collect something(30.8%)
2.I want to be connected to somebody(20.3%)
3.I want to beat somebody(18.9%)
4.I want to be healed(15.6%)
5.I want to become free(12.9%)

Q.What are the first virtual goods for you to buy? 
(Answers of 3 high ranks of men)
1.Status up item(The item which can stimulate a game more profitably)(29.8%)
2.Time shortening item(25.2%)
3.Gacha(virtual capsule vending machine)(21.4%)

(Answers of 3 high ranks of men)
1.Avatar item(27.3%)
2.Time shortening item(25.9%)
3.Gacha(virtual capsule vending machine)(19.8%)

Grave in the Internet "Web Nehan"

Japanese funeral and grave are very expensive. Both cost millions of yen. There is not the memorial service of the parent now because Japanese youths are poor. Then, Japanese Buddhist temple Choukeiji started interesting service "Web Nehan(Web涅槃)". "Nehan" means Nirvana in Japanese.

http://choukeiji-nehan.com/

Web Nehan is an online grave. Users can place the full name of the deceased, an address, photos, anniversary of a death, sound, video, motto, family precepts in the page in the Internet and can customize it freely. ID and a password are published in a user and can make a visit to a grave from anywhere if there is Internet environment. The cost is 200,000 yen in 33 years. It is cheaper than a real grave.

A point of this service is that a temple runs it. In Japan, family, grave, monk and temple are tied closely. Individual can develop similar system. However, the value of Web Nehan is to run it a temple.

By the way, the chief monk of Choukeiji is a former newspaper reporter and former TV director. He left them and became a monk. Therefore he seems to do a new challenge without being seized with old convention.

[Experiment] Does the bond exist on the Internet?

Omocomo is the most playful joke column site in Japan(And it is one of my favorite sites). However, they sometimes show interesting experiment articles.

Sebuyama who is one of Omocoro writers did an experiment used Twitter, mixi and Facebook.

Source:
http://picup.omocoro.jp/?eid=1365

First, he did tweet in this way in Twitter.

After having eaten lunch, I dropped a wallet and became penniless. Therefore I cannot eat dinner. Will you treat to dinner? Please!

Then Twitter users did reply in this way "Eat wild grass!". However, the tender-hearted university student appeared after this, and invited him to the tavern.

Then, he called for help with a diary of mixi. GREE and Mobage are topics, but mixi is still social networking service of the biggest in Japan.

However, there were not the reaction at all. Probably mixi has decreased number of the active users.

Finally, he called for help in Facebook.

Then, Facebook users became kind and were anxious about him in this way. "Is it true? regrettably" "I treat you to a favorite dish if you can come to Ueno" "Because I have rice and a rice cooker, I can treat you" "If you can come to Osaka, I welcome you warmly". Meanwhile, his friend Ryunosuke wrote comment earliest "What do we eat? ". And Ryunosuke took him to the cool restaurant.

This is an interesting experiment to know the tendency of Japanese Internet users. Sebuyama writes various experimental articles as well as this. The part was reported for foreign countries.

See Also:
Experiment: Can You Identify Twitter Users In Tokyo? (Asiajin)
Stalker's delight? Experiment reveals how your Twitter feed makes you easy prey (ZDNet)
The Twitter Experiment: Japanese Man Forbidden From Leaving Work Until He Gets 1000 Retweets (Rocket News24)
Death By A Thousand Tweets (Ubergizmo)
This Japanese marketer used a painful but unique approach to go viral on Twitter (The Next Web)