Entertaining or Destructive?

People’s Daily Online July 3

The mobile phone game King of Glory has become a phenomenon in China, though it is also recognized as being extremely harmful. To satisfy both the adherents and detractors, how can it be made safe?

As a game, King of Glory is successful. But it is damaging to society. It has 200 million registered users in total and 80 million daily active users. Some 20 percent of the players are young people aged under 17. However, some tragedies related to playing King of Glory have occurred: A 13-year-old student jumped out of a window after being scolded for playing the game; an 11-year-old girl stole 100,000 yuan ($14,696) to buy virtual equipment; and a 17year-old almost died after playing the game continuously for 40 hours.

The producer of King of Glory recently took measures to prevent addiction, including limiting the time that juveniles can access the game and strengthening real name authentication.

However, a lot of work can still be done to supervise games’ social effects. From the perspective of the game producer, social responsibility is as important as its product. Game developers should not give priority to thrilling experiences while ignoring potential hazards.

It’s also urgent for the government to strengthen supervision over mobile phone games. Whether to strengthen examination and approval of mobile phone games, how to make regulations and whether to adopt a classification system are the issues the government needs to consider.