My friends have an indie game development studio that's basically been doing this for years. You might have heard of them since they did a MidEast "Peace Strategy" game that got lots of critical acclaim.

However, just because they make great games based on real news, doesn't mean that they have an easy business model that just prints money. If you're doing traditional sales, you have to worry about piracy. And if you're trying what's popular now, free web-based games, then you're relying on almost the same advertising model that failing to keep traditional news outlets afloat.

I know that my friends' Play The News platform basically simplifies the process of converting news into games, but I don't know if journalists and traditional media companies are receptive to adopting this technology. In fact, late last year, they had to temporarily stop producing new content for their platform. Not exactly sure why, but I can probably get them to comment here on Slashdot if you guys are curious.

I also doubt the "truthiness" of this article. Stories like this tend to get alot of play in the press because people like pointing out that, "Hey, you think current US wiretapping is bad? Check out those Commies in China. That's some good ol' fashioned totalitarianism for ya. You got it good in the US!"

I'm visiting China right now and realistically, there's lots of official government edicts, both old and new, that people only pay lip service to or don't bother following at all. Remember the governmental mandated breaks in online gaming sessions story from a few months back? Most people in China don't even know this law exists, and even if they did, it'd be impossible to enforce. Likewise, if you prohibited teenagers from going to online cafes, they'd all go out of business since that's their main clientele.