China's video game market is the world's biggest. International developers want in on it – but its rules on what is acceptable are growing increasingly harsh. Is it worth the compromise?
[...]
In the video game industry, as in many sectors, most censorship is not about top-down directives. Because the official guidelines are so vague, foreign developers tend to abide by a fuzzy, speculative and ever-changing set of unwritten "rules", many of which are gleaned from trial and error. Time travel, for example, is considered best avoided. "I'm not 100% sure why," said the industry insider I spoke to. "But from what I heard it's because the government doesn't want the people to think there is a possibility of going back in time and changing the party regime." Lokman Tsui, the Chinese censorship expert, suggested this may be true, pointing out that history and science fiction have sometimes been used to surreptitiously criticise the government. "For a while, history was a loophole for discussing political stuff," he said. "You would tell tales to make political commentary. I don't know if that is similar for time travel, but I can imagine there is some similar logic going on there."
[...]
Ostensibly liberal governments also censor. Australia has a
particularly paternalistic attitude to video games, restricting them much more than TV or film. In Europe, German regulators
have banned scores of mainstream games for gratuitous violence. For this reason, some Chinese industry figures argue that singling out China is unfair. "The direction this conversation usually goes is people say [video game developers] are bowing their heads, or 'kowtowing'. They use some shitty, racist, veiled language to say how people are trying to make money," said one person at NetEase. He pointed out that age ratings of films, TV shows and video games are also a form of censorship that dictates artistic choices. Hollywood producers will make sure films are edited to get a PG-13 rather than an adult rating, because that means they can pack the cinemas with teenagers. "In the same sense, you can say
that is censoring to try to make money," said the NetEase staffer.
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