The sounds of simulated warfare blare from the computers.

H., a teenager who is bare to the waist, pulls out a backpack from under his chair.

“All of the clothes I carried with me are dirty, so I have to go home for more,” he says.

Another boy sitting next to H. says he told his parents he was staying at his close friend’s house for a couple of days to review for the next high school graduation exam.

“I’ve been here for the whole week,” he says.

Thirty minutes later, H. comes back to his seat, orders instant noodles, cigarettes and ice tea before continuing his game.

“I play more than I sleep,” he says, “Whenever I’m tired, I take a nap on a folding chair in the corner of the room.”

A friend then asks him, “Are you not going to take the graduation exam?”

“The exam is trivial; it only takes one or two days to review!” he says. “I want to make good use of this time to earn more money [fake currency used in the game] then sell it for real money.”

He jokes that he can use this real money to buy food to energize for his exam.

Like H., most of the game players at the shop are teenagers.

They play online games day and night, and many ignore their studies.

The phenomenon is also growing among college students, who can access the Internet in the dorms at the HCMC National University in Thu Duc District without the supervision of their families.

Every day T. starts playing games at 11 p.m. because “the Internet is faster at night,” he says.

One of his roommates says: “Daytime is like nighttime for him. He plays games all night and then sleeps until the afternoon. Some days he ignores meals.”

Due to his addiction, T. has to pay nearly VND1 million for his monthly Internet bill.

Sometimes he borrows money and sometimes he uses money sent by his parents for tuition.

His grades have sunk and he has had to re-take several exams.

Prohibition fails

The Ministry of Information and Communications now controls all online gaming accounts in Vietnam and only allows players to play on a certain account for five hour limits each day.

After the five hour limit, users’ accounts are logged off.

Users only get the full extent of their bonus points if they play for three hours or less.

Between 3-5 hours of play, the ministry limits bonus points earnings to 50 percent of the true total.

But most game players have figured out surprisingly simple ways to circumvent the system.

The most common way is to simply reset the playing hours, meaning that after the player completes their regulated hours he can exit and then log in again.

Minh, a game player in Hanoi, says he can play 24 hours a day, seven days a week thanks to tricks that can be found on game suppliers’ websites.

He can reset about four to five times per day.

Parents’ concerns

Pham Huy Lu, a father in the Central Highlands province of Lam Dong, says an increasing number of teenagers in the countryside are addicted to online games.

“We’re worried because they cut class, steal money and ignore meals and sleep to play online games,” he says.

“But we don’t know what to do.

We prohibit game playing and we punish our kids, but it has no effect.”

In May a parent in the central province of Quang Ngai rushedfrom Internet shop to Internet shop searching for his son who had left home to play games for a whole week.

His son has been addicted to online games for more than two years and has been expelled from school, he says.

He and his wife spend all their time in the fields.

He says they once caught their son selling rice he had stolen from them for money to play games.

The father says he then hit the boy and matters only got worse.

Later the boy and friends began stealing helmets for money, which ended up getting them arrested.

“Now I have no idea where he is,” says his father.

Source: Tuoi Tre