New Occupation... Digital Avatar Hitman? Hardcore Gamers Rejoice

The man, named by the Kotako East blog as Mr Feng, was concerned about the amount of time his 23-year-old unemployed son was spending online.


He hoped his actions would deter his son from playing the games, he is reported to have said.


His son eventually asked one of the gamers why they kept targeting him.


"It's not going to do much for family relations," Prof Mark Griffiths, a gambling and addictions expert at Nottingham Trent University told the BBC.


"I've never heard of that kind of intervention before, but I don't think these top-down approaches work. Most excessive game playing is usually a symptom of an underlying problem."

Full Story at BBC

Over at Kotaku.com they had a bit more personal story to tell about this epic parenting win.

Feng's 23 year-old son, "Xiao Feng" (小冯) started playing video games in high school. Through his years of playing various online games, he supposedly thought himself a master of Chinese online role playing games. According to his father, Xiao Feng had terrible grades in school because of his gaming habit; he couldn't even land a job. He, however, says he simply couldn't find any work that he liked. Feng was annoyed that his son couldn't even tough it out for three months at a software development company.


Unhappy with his son not finding a job, Feng decided to hire players in his son's favorite online games to hunt down Xiao Feng. It is unknown where or how Feng found the in-game assassins—every one of the players he hired were stronger and higher leveled than Xiao Feng. Feng's idea was that his son would get bored of playing games if he was killed every time he logged on, and that he would start putting more effort into getting a job.

Full Story at Kotaku.com