Video game draws rule breakers
IN CHINA, teenagers can purchase a fake ID online for as little as $2. Is it for buying booze? Subverting the state? Many simply want to play a game on their phones. More than 200 million people in China play Honor of Kings, the social media-focused app that has become the biggest moneymaking smartphone game in the world. On Wednesday, its creator, the Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent Holdings, said that Honor of Kings helped power a nearly 40 percent rise in its game revenue in the three months that ended in June.
But the game’s popularity among the young has alarmed Chinese officials. In response, Tencent has added restrictions that limit those under age 12 to an hour of play a day, and those between 12 and 18 to two hours a day.
Like savvy Chinese internet users have done for years, many players have found workarounds.
One is Min Jingxi, a 17-year-old student. She plays the game as many as five or six hours a day during her summer vacation – often as a character namedWang Zhaojun, a famous beauty from Chinese history – thanks to a fake identity she has established online. “If you don’t do real-name verification for your new accounts, the system has no way to know how old you are, so there won’t be any limits,” Min said. “I have two accounts, and most of my friends also do this to bypass the restrictions.”
Honor of Kings offers swashbuckling sword-and-sorcery action through characters familiar to Chinese players. The game pits one team of up to five players against another in a magical land. Adding to its addictive gameplay, friends can fight with or against one another in private rooms and see each others’ scores on social media.
Tencent already allowed parents to monitor their children’s use of the game, but it imposed the tougher restrictions last month, one day after People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s main newspaper, called Honor of Kings “poison to the teenager”. This month, an official military newspaper warned that the game could distract soldiers from their duties.
China has tightened its grip on its domestic internet in recent months, in part because officials are seeking stability ahead of an important Communist Party meeting this fall. Last week, it ordered online platforms to crack down on objectionable content.