Chinese government approves games for sale again after nine months – Gaming – News

The most money-hungry part of the game industry goes way too far for me indeed, especially in just about the entire mobile world and part of the AAA games on PC and console. The game design is then deliberately made slower or more annoying than what would be optimal for gameplay, in order to push towards in-game purchases. And indeed often with gambling elements, because if you can buy what you want immediately, the major shareholder still does not earn enough. For example, GTA Online, Fortnite I think is way too much with the microtransactions, and in, for example, Destiny, FIFA Ultimate Team and Star Wars Battlefront that also comes in the form of loot boxes. Some games then become a bit more reasonable after a lot of criticism, but every time it goes a step further. And only enabling these features after reviewers have written their reviews is completely ugly.

Fortunately, we see a large countermovement in the smaller games. Those are sometimes even advertised as saying “no microtransactions or loot boxes”. That makes a difference; I increasingly play the medium-sized and smaller titles + those AAA titles that do not or hardly participate in this money-making business.

But I don’t believe China has the best interests of the population for this. The robbery practices of the big publishers do not seem to me to be the reason why China is pursuing such a censorship policy. For example, the state party is against any form of the occult, so literally any ghost or skeleton is wrong. Anything that adheres to ideas that the regime does not like is wrong. They seem to be concerned with silencing any noise that could undermine the state party. In my opinion that is a major underestimation of the people and a very paranoid, controlling attitude.

Anyway, as a Chinese game developer you have no idea if you are going to make money because the government opens and closes the market whenever they want. In terms of business climate, this is disastrous and creative freedom is extremely limited.

[Reactie gewijzigd door geert1 op 12 april 2022 12:16]

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