The following hour-long satirical Chinese machinima video quickly garnered 10 million or more viewers. “New York City based trends research and innovation company” PSFK quotes this description from Chinese media blog DigiCha:
The film tracks the fight between The9 and Netease over the renewal rights to Activision Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, the requirement that skulls be removed from World of Warcraft (hence the Skull Party), the bureaucratic battles between GAPP and the Ministry of Culture over the re-approval of WoW in China, the money-obsessed Uncle Yang and his Internet addiction camps and electro-shock therapy, and the attempts to impose “Green Dam Youth Escort” software on Chinese web users. The movie concludes with an impassioned speech calling for Chinese World of Warcraft players to end their silence and raise their hands in protest to fight attempts to harmonize China’s Internet and keep them away from World of Warcraft, followed by an agreement between the warring bureaucracies-GAPP and MOC–to put aside their dispute and go after Netease for more money.
PSFK also copies this comment from the video’s page on host site YouKu:
More than a few Chinese netizens have hailed The War of Internet Addiction as more valuable, and more entertaining, than Avatar. Watching this you’ll realize that it’s not just about World of Warcraft, but about the relationship between young, tech-savvy netizens and a paternalistic, authoritarian state. The “impassioned speech” toward the end of the movie moved many viewers into tears.
The video’s in Chinese, so far without English subtitles: