Viral Chinese mobile game requires players to "applaud" a speech by President Xi Jinping

Cory Doctorow 10:46 am Fri Oct 20, 2017

Such a Great Speech: Applaud Xi Jinping has been played 860 million times; players score points by button-mashing an "applause" button while watching outtakes from President Xi Jinping's 3.5 hour speech to the Communist Party Congress last week.

Players then tap their phone screens to clap as many times as possible during a set period after one sentence of Xi’s speech that describes the Communist Party’s mission to work towards the happiness of the Chinese people.

Despite the game’s chunky graphics and propagandist tone, it has gone viral on social media networks including Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter, the website said. One player was able to hit the applause button in the game 60 times a second, almost as fast as the beats of a humming bird’s wing, according to the financial news service Bloomberg.

Game to give most ‘applause’ for Xi speech a smash hit in China
[Laurie Chen/South China Morning Post]

(via Naked Capitalism)

Enjoy a relaxing half hour compilation of rain scenes in videogames

Jez Burrows edited this "supercut of video game characters taking a break from solving crime or shooting people to enjoy a meditative minute of miserable weather." "It's Rain in Games,… READ THE REST
Peculiarities and miscellanea of the Street Fighter series

Capcom's Street Fighter is one of the most famous and expansively franchised games in history, rolling mercilessly on since 1987. RAE compiled an exhaustive collection of miscellaneous details, from hidden… READ THE REST
Non-Euclidean game worlds

Code Parade (also on itch.io) is developing a "hyperbolic" 3D game engine (download) where a line is not necessarily the shortest path between two places. I was impressed by the… READ THE REST
Short Post, just one paragraph

Dessert cheesecake wafer bear claw fruitcake. Fruitcake chupa chups donut candy canes marzipan. Apple pie sweet roll tart chocolate cake macaroon marshmallow carrot cake gummi bears sweet. Pastry sugar plum… READ THE REST
Save 50% on a 1-year subscription to Dashlane's premium password manager

We all know vital information about ourselves and our private digital accounts can be compromised by cybercriminals. However, many would be frightened to know just how compromised they and their… READ THE REST
The Bite Helper removes the itch of a mosquito bite in seconds

While mosquitoes have certainly earned their title as the deadliest animal on earth, their impact on most of our lives is usually a lot less consequential. But even though they… READ THE REST