The only thing I think is stopping kids from playing 3 hours a week is game mechanics in online games rewarding playing more time like competitive rank dropping if not played a certain number of times and such.
I also think a lot of game mechanics were introduced because players play a lot and got borded easier which forced less addicted players to play more or get left behind on features and experience and in no matter what still getting no fun from the game, the only person having fun is the big ceo sleeping with 30 women on a gold plated yacht or whatever.
So, I believe another step China should do is banning “chore mechanics” in video games, anything that forces the player to play more than the player wants like the things I mentioned before should make kids less addicted to games and happier when playing them.
When I did game, I could never get into MMOs and grind-type-games, because it was so immediately boring. I gotta spend two weeks in some forest killing cute forest critters before I can get a key that opens a door to a portal to a gateway to an underground city where I gotta fight some boss to get some armor so I can repeat this whole thing again? No thx.
From my experience i can tell you it is way more addicting than seems from outside. It relies on the sense of progression and turns into attachment - for online mates, for your character, for some places ingame, for the climate, etc.
Especially when the unlocks are things that can have an attachment by the player, like a car or a weapon or clothes yk, like people will spend 50 hours in a racing game to unlock a Toyota supra than spend 3 hours on a generic car that’s faster. Or like you’ve referenced in the other comment: 💳
So, I believe another step China should do is banning “chore mechanics” in video games, anything that forces the player to play more than the player wants like the things I mentioned before should make kids less addicted to games and happier when playing them.
In other words, grind. Fully agree. Unfortunately, paying for lessening grind is the main way of every such game monetization, so impossible outside of socialist country.
Yeah, i laughed my ass off when few years ago China was implementing their first restrictions giving no fuck whatsoever to the entire western gaming industry and teh gamerz cried wolf about not happening, commies eating bitter pill because corpos will make them ultimatum etc etc.
And what happened in reality is that entire western gaming industry humbly follow every single regulation because China is currently the biggest market for games in the world (and it also confirmed that even without many scummy practices producing games is very profitable).
Whenever news like this gets posted on social media I get a kick out of all the gamers absolutely incensed that a company would “kowtow to the CCP” to continue making money in China. Like, yeah no shit these multi-billion dollar corporations will follow the regulations and don’t care about “making a statement” or whatever lol.
My favorite so far was that one esports guy who said some kind of pro-HK riots comment in an interview and Blizzard dropped him like a hot potato. Stuff like that wouldn’t happen if capital ran things in China like they do in the US. I wish I lived in a country with a communist party powerful enough to make foreign companies scared of getting on its bad side.
Schrodinger’s gamer, simultaneously pissed about predatory addiction baiting and lootboxes in gaming and pissed at the only people on the planet actually doing anything about it
In the end racism and anti-communism are more pressing needs to gamers than actually getting better games.
I’m not sure it’s the biggest market in the sense of being profitable but it’s certainly a giant market and it’s like, why would you limit yourself to just one market when you could literally double your profits by publishing in China too?
It’s first in both revenue and number of players. Note though how number of players is over 3 times the next one, but revenue is only slightly more. Still completely worth it.
Ayy finally surpassed the US
The lootbox law was actually beneficial to game studios operating in China.
I read an article from specialised press (happened on it completely randomly) that explained how to work with it if you publish your game in China. With the way app stores work you automatically publish in every available country unless you opt out of it, so it’s a no-brainer to publish in the whole world.
It’s a non-issue basically. They have to show percentages but also have to up the percentage points after every box you open and tell you how many tries it will get to give you the item with 100% chance. The article was explaining how this worked and how you could work within that framework.
Years later and I don’t hear any game studio complaining about lack of revenue in China.
And yet here we still get the gambling mechanics.
I honestly even preferred when we had actual gambling in games lol, remember Pokémon and the casino? It was better than lootboxes, lootboxes are neither fun nor interesting. Hey look I got this trash-tier weapon for the fourth time, great, who cares?
Grindr
Found it interesting that while this move was in its infancy, the capitalist world was trying to sell us on the metaverse. Of course it’s been a spectacular failure, but it’s interesting to see the dichotomy of values being promoted between the capitalist world and the socialist one – dissociation from reality vs. further engagement with it. It should be incredibly obvious which will lead to a more prosperous future for humankind.
I mean the metaverse has so much more opportunity for prosperity now that they’ve patched in legs!
Tbh I wouldn’t be playing video games as much if I lived in China.
I’m interested to know what those kids replaced gaming with. Personally I don’t play games a lot but I’m often on the Internet talking to people or watching stuff.
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I doubt the policy was effective
Ah… Gamergate 2.0
