The Game Industry and Cultural Policy

BACKGROUND

In 2017, King of Glory became the first Chinese mobile game to top the number of sales on the iOS platform since 2014, the year that statistics were first compiled. The game was developed by Tencent, which also owns League of Legends, the most popular online game in history. In China today, 80 million players are active daily, which means that for every 7 Chinese, there is 1 player of online games. Based on historical heroic Chinese figures across dynasties, in addition to legendary Japanese and Greek warriors, the gameplay of King of Glory involves attacking another player or team to increase and accumulate the virtual currency and military power of either a single player or a team of game-mates. Ironically, the game's popularity has led to tragedies, many of which have been reported in the media. In Hangzhou, China, according to a media report in June, a thirteen-year-old jumped from the fourth floor of a building after being scolded by his father because of the amount of time he spent playing online games, particularly King of Glory. The boy's father was reported to have heard his son say, "Why wasn't I capable of flying? If I had known, I would have not jumped from that high." He claimed his son had thought he could fly because of playing the game (Beijing News, 2017).

In April of the same year, official media also reported that after forty hours of "combating" on King of Glory — except for ordering a carry-out meal — a seventeen-year-old boy in Guangzhou suffered an acute cerebral stroke and was admitted to Jinan University First Hospital (People.cn, 2017). In July, the online media (without sources) reported that an eleven-year-old girl had spent more than RMB¥100,000 on a stolen credit card to play the game (People.cn, 2017).

The credibility of sources notwithstanding, it is not easy to determine, at least in the Chinese community, the degree of public anxiety about addiction to gaming and the general negative impression made by gaming. Without warning, the most significant trio of official Chinese media — the official online People.cn, China's Daily (Chinese version), and the Xinhua News Agency — publicly censured gaming and its excessive use. The People's Daily even called gaming "digital opium" (Zhang, 2017).

I find that the word schizophrenia best characterizes this phenomenon. In the same year (2017), the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China and Shanghai City organized the Chinese Comic and Animation Expo in which the gaming industry was applauded for its role in the strategic development of China and in the international collaboration of China in the gaming industry. Simply put, this event exemplified a contradiction between the development of the game industries as a cultural and creative industry and the potential negative effect of gaming on society. However, my impression is that when the monetary growth of China and other East Asian countries is the topic, praise of the development of the game industry gains the upper hand in any discourse on the effects of gaming.

DIGITAL GAMES AND EVERYDAY LIFE

Even with the public's cognizance of and outcry against the potentially negative effects of gaming, digital games have permeated our daily lives as a form of entertainment, education, work, and sport through different communication technologies and devices. In Hong Kong, there are over 600,000 active online gamers, and every teenager owns an average 2.7 handheld devices (for games). These figures exclude students who complete assignments through educational online games at school and adults who indulge in handheld and mobile games on public transport. The popularity of games is also demonstrated by the large number of visitors (an average of 650,000 since 2010) who every year swamp ANI-com, the most important animation, games, and comics festival in Hong Kong (ANI-com, 2015). This popularity has led to controversy about the negative effects of games on society. Local media often report the adverse social and psychological effects of games — particularly from their sexual, violent, and racialized content — including antisocial addiction, social conflict triggered by online disputes, and alienation from parents and peers.

Despite the popularity and social significance of games, very few studies have been conducted on the game industry in Hong Kong. For too long, scholars have seen games as marginal, peripheral, and frivolous. In fact, games today are one of the most dominant entertainment forms in developed and developing economies as well as one of the most lucrative creative industries in the world, in addition to being the most profitable information technology (IT) application worldwide. The Centre for Cultural Policy Research's baseline study of creative industries, which was commissioned by the Hong Kong government, devoted only a few paragraphs to games (Central Policy Unit, 2003). It was then followed by studies that were funded via public policy research grants to investigate these industries, such as the film industry (e.g., Chan, Fung, & Ng, 2009). This book mainly documents the findings collected by my research team and me in an academic and policy study under a Strategic Public Policy Research grant from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) to investigate the game industry and gamers in Hong Kong and Asian markets since 2010.

The game industry's economic significance also has been overlooked by policy makers and scholars. A conservative estimate of the market size of gaming in Hong Kong, according to a recent study of digital entertainment by Create Hong Kong (CreateHK), in which I was the main investigator (on behalf of the Chinese University of Hong Kong), put its value at over US$1 billion in 2017 (Hong Kong Digital Entertainment Industry, 2017). This amount far exceeds that of the sales of music albums and movie tickets in Hong Kong. Moreover, the estimated number of game-relevant companies (including the development, publishing, distribution, and retail sectors) in Hong Kong has reached 2,800, which also surpasses the number of film-related companies (figure based on my interviews with representative companies). Today there seems to be a cultural policy discourse regarding the development of local creative industries, including the game industry. Through CreateHK, the HKSAR allocates funding to support game-industry-related events although there is still no direct financial support in terms of investment and grants (e.g., through tariffs, tax breaks, or development funds as in other Asian countries). Eyeing the big Chinese market that is adjacent to Hong Kong, arrangements have been made under the China and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Agreement...