China, gaming and 2024

 The CCP won't let me be- let me be me so, let me see- trying to shut gaming down globally, but we'll be so empty without our Wii... s...

Not my best.

China, home to 1.4 billion, one of the largest economies on the planet, and full to the brim of doctors who would do a damn sight better job of saving the world than any one of our pitiful western Avengers! Why even bother putting together a team for the multiverse saga in order to take down Kang or Doctor Doom or whoever Marvel manage to vomit out on the screen when you can instead replace all of that with attractive-young-doctors drama? God knows I'm 15 times more interested to know what's happening in the personal lives of my favourite 'Iron Man 3 Chinese Version' Doctors then I am in anything the MCU has cooking. Heck, any Chinese professional is a master at their job according to the Chinese movie edits I've spied over the years! Their justice system managed to both capture and reform Tyler Durden completely off screen in Fight Club! (That is commendable!) But if there is one thing that China doesn't have over the rest of the world, and it's only this- their government really hates games.

Well, I mean all older people hate games. The demographics are peeling back a lot these days, we're seeing middle aged people who grow up playing video games starting to realise that pieces of software are not, in fact, the devil incarnate; but the generation still clinging onto power just before them- they consider computers and their screens utterly anathema to their way of life. But China seems to harbour a very special hatred of games and gaming that touches a bit deeper than anyone else in the world. In fact, China's government were the one's who put out a statement bashing video games declaring them to be 'spiritual opium', which is wild conflation of two vastly distinct entities probably deserving of some deeper investigation of the psyche of whoever is messed up enough to even consider such a connection in their mind. Unfortunately the people who made that connection are in charge of the government, so they won't receive the concerned oversight and speedy retirement they likely require.

China already established utterly draconian rules cutting to ribbons the amount of time that young people are allowed to play video games, probably figuring that once they reach adulthood those people will be far too busy to fall to the 'spiritual opium' of the west. But as you can imagine, no country as big as China can be effectively policed by vague government guidelines and China has still pretty openly remained the largest enclosed video game market on the globe. Not least of all thanks to the many partnerships of Government backed 'Tencent' who has it's tendrils in so many international video game companies they might as well rename themselves to the 'gaming world order'- their influence is that ridiculous! Game companies wouldn't still be bending over backwards to develop Chinese censor approved editions of their games if there was no longer a market to sell them too. However, that market might have been in danger recently...

You see, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) were the fellows in charge of the many schemes to crackdown on the industry within China- from the stringent game approvals system to the proposed name verification imposed upon gamers. Last Year the NPPA decided to shift their gaze not just on the gamers, but at the companies who produce the games themselves with a wide-reaching set of rules and measures aimed at reducing the spending of gamers- within a market fine-tuned and shaped around encouraging spending: Chinese gamers. Merely the mention of these measures was enough to spark absolute chaos and panic across the market, reportedly wiping out $80billion worth of market value in China's two biggest gaming companies. That's not the kind of figures that just fly under the radar.

Hence the regulatory body in charge of directing the NPPA was recently relieved of their head, one Feng Shixin, reportedly for these very announced measures. Whereas before the NPPA was riding high on their efforts to stamp out the plague of gaming, it would seem the one time they hit a target that actually caused some damage the sheer magnitude of what they were up against dawned upon them. The NPPA are already opening up the possibility of amending their regulation based on public feedback, presenting a possibility for a push back that might just shatter their steel grip on the Chinese gaming market. And of this I consider myself of two minds. One of both applause and mild mannered scepticism if things are heading in the right direction. 

On one hand it is the regulatory decisions of the Chinese Government which is holding back the games industry from their biggest potential injection of customers. The amount of hoops that need to be jumped through in order to reach the Chinese populace requires a frankly infantile dumbing down of any art heading into the country in a manner that is downright insulting to the intelligence of their people. As though seeing a dead body in a video game is going to trigger the dormant psychopathy hiding in the hearts of all people, or something equally as dense. It's that same styling of ill-informed faux-science which makes it seem like the Chinese government learnt nothing about the aimless ineffectiveness of their 'limited child policy' from a whole other lifetime ago. And yet...

I can't just pretend like the overzealous pricing strategies of gaming companies, particularly those connected to the CCP through Tencent, aren't harmful to the entire industry. Those who saw the Diablo Immortal trainwreck and identified it as the absolute worst of the worst were fortunate never to have spied the many other China-centric online games with equally as horrendous monetisation practices. It's simply the way of game design around there, and any kick to the stomach that cancer on the industry takes is a win in my books. But it already seems as though this slap to the face is being recalled by the NPPA, and if that happens these sorts of practices will only become emboldened which will give Tencent and it's friends the courage to enact these ideas further and further abroad. There really is no winning with this one, is there?

So it's looking like another big year of industry changing over in China for how the country is attempting to define it's relationships with gaming in an international market that is coming to greater favour them with every passing month. Will China's Government stick to their guns and kneecap one of it's most profitable sectors all in the pursuit of proving a point? Will the NPPA turn around with their tail between their legs and relent to the money-moving industries that dwarf them? Will Feng Shixin live up to the vibe I get reading his name and use the resentment and shame from being removed as fuel to power his origin story as an anti-videogame pro-regulation supervillain? Find out in this year's season of: China hates games!