China's Crazy Gaming Restrictions!
9A discussion on the new gaming laws in China that only allow Children to play 3 hours a week.
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Recently in China they've implemented some pretty big changes within their games market, to limit and control how long children are playing computer games, this is going to have massive repercussions in the gaming industry as a whole. I'm going to get right into the details, followed by looking at some of the repercussions, I'll try to play some devil's advocate (I admit this will be hard) and then I'll give my personal take.
So through China's new laws, Children will only get to play 3 hours of online computer games a week. That's not 3 hours whenever they want, that's 1 hour on a Friday, 1 hour on a Saturday, and 1 hour on a Sunday and only within the 1 hour time window of 8pm to 9pm. All online games must be linked to the governments anti-addiction system by law and require real name registration.
You might think it'd be easy to work around this new system, maybe you could use your parent's Ids but believe it or not, one of China's largest gaming companies Tencent is rolling out facial recognition to stop children playing between the hours of 10PM and 8AM. So the Chinese and their children now need to be monitored by camera whilst they're playing a game, talk about an invasion of their privacy.
Maybe tech savy gamers could come up with a sneaky way around this, I don't know maybe like having a pre-recorded video of your parents sitting at the computer and use software to swap this with the webcam line - tricking the system into thinking it's your parents playing. Well there's going to be something called "midnight-patrol" technology to monitor and prevent little tricks like this, and games companies themselves have been instructed by the government to prevent children playing outside the 1 hour gaming windows, or they'll face consequences.
Previously, earlier rules set in place had limited children's online game-playing to just 90 minutes per day, bad enough but not quite as bad as the rise to three hours on holidays. There's a few parents whom applaud the gaming restrictions while some on China's social media site Weibo criticise the government interference as being "unreasonable" and "arbitrary". One person asks, "Why don't you plan when I go to the toilet, eat meals and go to bed,"
And it's a Fair point, these new policies do give the Chinese government a lot of control. Not to mention all the personal data they're going to get too, what you're playing and what games or microtransactions you've been buying and that's whether you're a child or an adult. Later down the line this data could be used against you. Maybe for playing something at 3AM before work? Or maybe you'll be declined from a job application because of how much you play computer games in your free time. It's kind of scary to think of a world like this.
Gaming addiction itself is being used as a shield to implement these changes. Sure people with addictive personalities can be addicted to games and there are those scummy games which are designed to be exploitative and addictive - giving you little dopamine hits for every little microtransaction or loot box you open.
But not all games are evil, you've got those bad games designed to be exploitative and addictive but you've also got games which are fun, brilliant and addictive because they're enjoyable or a fun way to socialise with friends.
It's not the first time that gaming has used as a scape goat for control, greed, and larger problems. You can develop new skills through online games, if you've ever taken part in any kind of MMO raid, like Destiny or World of Warcraft, they require, organisation, communication, leadership skills.
Brilliant RPGs like the Witcher 3, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy 6, 7, teach you brilliant storytelling and character writing.
For some people games are just a therapeutic break from reality. Like me, some children could find their passion in games, and could lead into learning and being employed in game design and game development, they're all massive industries. Maybe they could partake in E-sports, but realistically is 3 hours a week going to be enough experience?
One of the other goals behind these new laws is to limit or control the expansion of large tech companies like Tencent which is absolutely massive and controls over 50% of the online gaming market in China. It's so large that you may have heard it's name before because it's been Investing in games companies around the world.
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