China declares victory over teenage video game addiction • The Register

China has declared victory over the scourge of teenage video game addiction.

A report on the state of the country’s video game industry, released last Saturday, assesses progress toward the state-mandated three-hour-a-week limit on underage gaming and the industry’s efforts to ensure it meets Chinese minds Player not poisoned.

The report — inexplicably released as a series of image files by the regulator’s China Game Industry Group Committee, which is affiliated with the regulator — claims that around 70 percent of Chinese children are complying with game-time limits and that the measure’s target has therefore been met.

The document also commends game developers for cleaning up their actions and their games so that player verification is done properly and steer game content away from prohibited or unhealthy topics.

Another observation in the report is that China’s gaming industry is quite significant — domestically and internationally — so it’s nice to see it rear its head and really fly, as it means its prospects are strong.

So strong that the government-sponsored organ China Daily published a paean to the gaming industry last week, noting that the technologies it uses have been misunderstood as being for entertainment only. Gaming technology has since been applied to real-world applications that benefit China – such as the creation of digital twins – giving the industry a reassessment and recognition that it has impressively matured.

That’s quite a reversal from last year’s position: gaming is “spiritual opium,” disrupting family life and causing children’s school grades to plummet.

The release of the report follows China’s regulator, which has approved a number of games for release. From mid-2021 to April 2022, China’s National Press and Publication Administration did not approve any new games for nine months. Since April 2022, the administration has issued monthly approvals for new games – but not every month.

Chinese tech giant Tencent offered investors a rosy outlook for its gaming business in a quarterly conference call last week, so maybe the industry has something to look forward to after all.

While the report is positive about gaming, it also notes that many of the kids who abided by playtime restrictions found another distraction: short online videos.

Fortunately, from Beijing’s perspective, pervasive censorship means such videos rarely deviate from approved subjects. The platforms that host them received the memo on appropriate expressions of Chinese values ​​ahead of the gaming industry. ®