The Chinese government has reportedly banned or ordered changes for twenty massively popular video games as of last Wednesday. Major games in the gaming industry such as Fortnite and PUBG have been reportedly banned for blood, gore and vulgar content. China's Online Games Ethics Committee (OGEC) has appointed most of its concerns to the "Battle Royale" genre, which has obliterated other formats of games throughout 2018. The real question is, why is China this drastic when it comes to censorship? In comparison to other countries these hypothetical bans sound comical when compared to other places who have little to no limitations on video games apart from the mandatory age restriction labels. In my personal opinion these bans strongly show China's communist ways in order to keep social order at an extreme level in which one cannot immerse and express himself in his game of choice just because it was deemed as slightly "violent" or "inadequate" by the OGEC and government.
A blog post by South China Morning Post mentions that video games are considered as a hazard by the Chinese community in terms of addiction as it poses as an inescapable addiction that hinders any form of education and progress in life. In my eyes this statement is quite ironic as China produces some of the world's best players in the video game industry who are always at the top of their game taking home international titles in multiple video game titles.
A blog post by South China Morning Post mentions that video games are considered as a hazard by the Chinese community in terms of addiction as it poses as an inescapable addiction that hinders any form of education and progress in life. In my eyes this statement is quite ironic as China produces some of the world's best players in the video game industry who are always at the top of their game taking home international titles in multiple video game titles.
At the end of the day what does this mean to the economical gaming industry in China? The country is already suffering its slowest growth in the last decade as it has to go through months of waiting approval from the Chinese government in order for new games to be released to the public. In fact in the first half of this year the gross revenue for video games only went up by 5%, this was reported as the first single-digit growth since at least 2009 as stated in a report from Beijing-based researcher CNG. One of the most successful Chinese companies Tencent has also reported that it has experienced its first decline in profit since 2005 in gaming revenue. Being the largest shareholder in the gaming industry this is quite concerning as statistics have shown that its shares have decreased by almost a whopping 20%.
To conclude with my own personal opinion I think that the situation is quite ridiculous as this limits both freedom of expression and personal enjoyment. The video game culture brings together communities of people that are genuine and creative. The gaming platform inspires both friendly competition and a social environment and these bans will continue to kill this sense of community. Another final point to state that this has caused major problems for professional players who have not been allowed to compete by the Chinese government in multiple tournaments such as the annual DOTA 2 international tournament in which players compete for ridiculously high prize pools as both fans and the company contribute to the awarded money through online transactions.
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