New limits give Chinese e-gamers whiplash. Again
China’s video game industry is booming. But it sure doesn’t feel that way to Stone Shi, a game designer in China.
Shi, 27, got his first job in 2018, when Beijing temporarily suspended approval of new games. The next year, the government placed new limits on minors’ playing time. A few weeks ago, the rules got stricter still. People under 18 can now play just three hours a week, during prescribed times on weekends.
“We never hear any good news about the gaming industry,” Shi said. “We have this joke, ‘Each time this happens, people say it’s doomsday for the video game industry.’ So we say, ‘Everyday is doomsday.’”
That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Shi remains employed and hundreds of millions of Chinese continue to play games each day. Minors still find ways around government blocks. Chinese tech companies, like Tencent, are cornerstones of the global gaming industry. The country has also been quick to embrace competitive gaming, building e-sports stadiums and enabling college students to major in the topic.
Yet China’s relationship with games is decidedly complex. A major source of entertainment in the country, games offer a social outlet and an easily accessible hobby in a country where booming economic growth has disrupted social networks and driven long work hours. The multiplayer mobile game Honor of Kings, for example, has more than 100 million players a day.
For years, though, officials — and many parents — have worried about the potential downsides, like addiction and distraction. As a more paternalistic government under the
Chinese leader Xi Jinping has turned to direct interventions to mold how people live and what they do for fun, gaining control over video games has been high on the priority list. In addition to other pursuits, like celebrity fan clubs, Xi’s government has increasingly deemed games a superfluous distraction at best — and at worst, a societal ill that threatens the cultural and moral guidance of the Chinese Communist Party.
On social media, gamers fumed about the latest rules. Some pointed out that the age of sexual consent, at 14, was now four years younger than the age at which people can game without limit. Even though minors represent a small portion of Chinese video gaming revenue, shares in game companies plummeted on concerns about the long-term impact on gaming culture.
Shi said despite the anger, gamers and the industry are growing used to the array of government demands. For most adults, the new bans have little impact. For companies, it’s simply one more obstacle to entering a lucrative industry.
Many in China’s gaming industry agree that games have some downsides. The most popular games in the country are made for smartphones and are free to play, meaning the businesses making them live and die based on how well they draw users in and get them to pay for extras. The game makers have become experts at hooking players.
But top-down attempts to wean children off games — what state media has called “poison” and “spiritual pollution” — have sometimes been worse than the problem itself. Boot camps fond of military discipline have proliferated. So have Chinese media accounts of abuses, like beatings, electroconvulsive therapy and solitary confinement.
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A major source of entertainment in the country, games offer a social outlet and an easily accessible hobby. Yet, state media has called games “poison” and “spiritual pollution”