By Kaiser
Do you think video games should be violent? In America you play video games a lot, but in China there are a lot of bans for playing video games. In China they are changing certain parts of video games, because there are different restrictions, and so the future of video games is uncertain. The culture in China affects video games which is not the rule in America.
China is ending some video game restrictions. China had banned consoles like Xbox and Nintendo from 2000 to 2015. The console ban was enacted (put in place) by China's cultural ministry “to shield its youth from the corrupting influence of games.” In 2015 China ended the ban. That meant 1.379 billion people get to play those games. The point of this is after they put video game restrictions they ended it and many companies are getting into China.
When Wizard101 is played in China they are changing things in the game. As Wizard101 is being played in China they are changing skeletal enemies into non skeletal enemies because there is a law against showing certain pieces of art that relate to exposed bones. “ Whenever we had a skeleton walking around, that was seen as being disrespectful for the dead,” according to an employee, so they spent hours looking for bones to cover. According to a worker at the game company, “there can’t be any sight of blood, so we make it black. There can’t be words like ‘kill’ or ‘die’, and use of English is banned.” This affects a lot of games like Wizard101, Pirate101, and many other violent games. In China there are more rules about games which means there making changes to American games.
In the future everybody in China has different opinions about how video games will grow. Authorities in China are banning Pokémon Go as well as similar augmented reality games. That means they’re continuing to put rules on gaming. However more and more people are playing and companies are worried about addiction. One company named Tencent is planning to limit the time to be able to play games. As Reuters reports, “the Chinese internet will begin limiting play time for users below the age of 18 on Tuesday. Players under the age of 12 will be limited to one hour of playing per day and will be blocked from accessing the game after 9PM.” Tencent notes that “users between 12 and 18 years old will have a two-hour daily limit.” This could affect future video games because of addiction.
Making video games in China is hard because there are a lot of restrictions. Now since China is ending restrictions they are changing parts to the video games like Wizard101. Nobody knows what is going to happen. Americans may think these rules are very weird but in China it is normal.