What are video games? Video games also called electronic games, refer to all interactive games that rely on an electronic device platform such as computers. The development of China's video game industry began in the 1980s. Several categories of games appeared in the market including large arcade games, household games, handheld games, PC video games, online games, and cell phone games. The end of the 80s was the large arcade game era, mainly concentrated in an arcade hall. At the beginning of the 90s, household games and console games developed rapidly. By the middle of the 90s, benefiting from the popularity of personal computers, PC video games become the most popular form of games. At that time, a lot of fantastic domestic video games emerged like the Legend of Sword and Fairy. Moreover, game industry also ushered a golden period of development, by 2000, the total amount of China-made video games reached the historical 139 models. However, when we look around now, the video game market is full of games from European and American but few domestic works. As a student of computer science and also a Chinese video game player, like many other players, we are all curious about why there are few domestic games now. As my point of view, a number of factors have contributed to the decline of the decline of the Chinese PC video game industry.
A game is the most complicated software, and an excellent video game is a result of cooperation in different areas because it needs expertise in mathematics, graphics, statistics, and even art. With the progress of the game making technology, the shortage of national professionals absolutely limits the development of video game industry in China. Call of Duty, Diablo, Fallout, if we explore any one of these famous games, it can be easily find that they are much more than a simple game, they have grand world view, attractive music in every scene, excellent character-portrayal and wonderful combat system, which requires a large number of professionals from different fields. However, for now, there is not enough skilled person in the Chinese game industry.
In order to explore the problem deeper, there are two issues need to be discussed separately talent shortage and talent exodus.
Firstly, the talent shortage, currently, Chinese universities still lack of professional education of the game industry, especially the games planning and operations. At the same time, because of the immature talent delivery channels, the game talent gap is very large. For example, based on a survey called the 26th display statistical report on Internet development in China from China internet network information center (CNNIC), in the first half of 2012, the total Internet users in China reached 420 million, Online game users also continue to grow, increased 31.56 million over the end of 2009, to 296 million, which account for more than 70% percent in the overall number of Internet users. On the contrary, domestic game talent gap further expanded, according to incomplete estimates, game talent gap in China is nearly 300,000.
Secondly, the Chinese game industry is also facing the challenge of talent exodus. Job-hopping is quite common in IT industry, and famous game producers are more likely to move to another company which may provider higher salary or self-employment opportunity. According to a report that made by Linkedin database, in 2015, the Chinese game industry practitioners only accounted for 4.6% of the global game industry, which reflect the seriousness of this problem from a different angle. In addition, in the article “Analysis of the talent exodus in the Chinese online game labor market,” Howard and Joelle K (2009) believe that the major reason for this phenomenon is the game industry in China is still in nascent stage so that many firms are still immature on human resource management, especially in reward mechanisms and staff training.
There is no doubt that nowadays the competition of companies is the competition of talents. However, the Chinese game industry cannot really rise without a talent pool of our own. This is a basic and urgent problem that need to be solved.
Besides, the Chinese government should also responsible for the dilemma of the video game industry. Because the influence of old planned economic system bring too much government interventions in business areas, many companies trying to build a closer relationship with China’s government department to maximize their benefits instead of improving the quality of their productions.
In China, there is a strict censorship for productions from culture industry. This system is necessary because it could help us find those works with superstitious belief, bloody violence, extremist thought and then clean them out. Because the censorship largely determined whether and when the game could release on the mainland of China, some firms, sometimes have to, pay more attention on how to establish a good relationship with government agency but not how to improve the quality of games. On the other hand, some good domestic games are not available for sale for a long time
In the article “The realities of virtual play: video games and their industry in China,” Yong and John D. H (2008) analyze how government intervention effect game business. They emphasize that some regulators take advantages of their job to gain extra financial benefits is the main problem and the preference of content also play a role in censorship. However, if an industry highly relies on policies but not the market it could hardly give excellent works.
For example, BLOOD LION is a domestic video game that released in 1997, benefiting from its positive topic—Chinese people fight against foreign invades, it gets strong support from the government and carried out a lot of publicity in many software magazines. As a result, the orders from players over 40 thousand before it released. Nevertheless, when the player is in contact with this game, they all hurt by its poor quality and then two-thirds of players chose to return it. This event causes great damage to many players who support domestic video games. It is also a negative example of too much government interventions.
It is very difficult to manage the scale of government interventions in financial areas. Too much interventions may lead to unfair competition and market shrinkage but without supervision illegal behaviors would increase. Anyway, the inappropriate government interventions in past few decades hinder the development of the Chinese PC video game industry.
Since we have mentioned the social environment before, some would argue that young people, especially teenagers, can easily imitate the violent content of video games, which results in more aggressive behaviors and social problems and the game industry could also be influenced by this phenomenon. However, there is a great deal of research on the relationship between video games violence and aggressive antisocial behavior, and many researchers support that there is not enough evidence to prove the direct link between the two.
It is human nature that people could be influenced by what they see and what they listen, this is also the way how we learn new things. It is certainly that violent scene and bloody picture will bring negative effect to teenagers. In the article “Self-transcendence and self-oriented perspective as mediators between video game playing and aggressive behavior in teenager,” Espinosa and Clemente (2013) have a study in more than 600 Spanish teenagers which are aged from 12 to 18 years with both sexes, and the result is even if the violent content has been controlled to some extent, there is still a clear relationship between the number of game played and aggression.
However, whether this phenomenon can become a social problem is still unknown and more researches show different result about the same subject. In this article “Video games and aggressive behavior,” Unsworth and Ward (2001) also try to clarify this topic by testing influencing factors as much as possible. They emphasize that there is no any explicit conclusions for the relationship between aggressive behavior and video game violence, because the progress rate of video game technology and the result from a large research institute and is inconsistent. Moreover, in another broader study “Video games vs. reading and school/cognitive performances: A study on 27000 middle school teenagers,” Lieury et al. even state that video games even have little effect on school performances among teenagers.
As we know, violent pictures or other unhealthy content are not only appeared in video games but also common in movies, TV series. It is unfair to contribute all the violent or antisocial behaviors in teenagers to video games. And many researches also prove that playing video games cannot bring aggressive behaviors, not to mention how it influences the total Chinese game industry.
In addition, whenever discussing about the game industry in China, piracy is an inevitable issue. Piracy in China is definitely a large “industry” that has penetrated into all aspects of common people’s lives such as music, movies, books and games. It is difficult to accurately computer the profits of the piracy industry, but it is certainly not a small number. However, the contribution of piracy to the national economy is not zero but a negative number. Piracy is the nightmare of all game developers, it erodes the profits of companies and dampens the enthusiasm of designers. Finally, it could destroy the entire industry.
The term piracy for game industry, due to mixing, now there have been a lot of confusion of meaning, sometimes refers specifically to the pirated optical discs, and sometimes they can download a cracked version of the network. In fact, generalization of "piracy" can be characterized as "reproduced, transmitted version of the game without permission from vendor." As what we have mentioned earlier, the 90s is the golden age of the Chinese PC video game market and the turning point of domestic game industry from wax to wane is the rampant piracy in the early 21st century. However, the driving force for the production of pirated PC video game is the large predictable profits. In order to figure out this problem, it is important to understand why piracy would appear in the Chinese game market first.
Firstly, the technical barrier cause the cost of developing genuine games much higher than piracy so that pirated games have a price advantage in the market. On the technical level, computer game software development clearly need higher technology level, more capital investment, more difficult course of research and more creative efforts. On the contrary, the main task of making pirated games is just copy which almost don’t require any professional knowledge. In the article “A study on computer game software piracy in China,” Hu (2011) indicates that a disc with pirated game only be sold at a price of 4 to 5 yuan while the price of a genuine game was generally above 100 yuan at that time, so the profit outlook of piracy industry was quite considerable.
Secondly, the consumption level of the Chinese people from late the 90s to early 21st century determines the cheaper pirated games have a large number of market demand. Though economic of China and living standards of the Chinese people have been significantly improved during the 30 years after the opening up reform. However, at that time, China was still in the primary stage of socialism, the living standards of the people still had a large gap comparing to the developed countries, thus affecting the consumption ability of the original video game productions. Specifically speaking, because of some defects in our country's social welfare and security system, Chinese people once have to spend a large part of their income on maintaining their daily expenses or depositing their income into banks against unexpected need. Even if people have a strong cultural and entertainment needs, the distributable income is extremely limited. Therefore, inexpensive pirated video games become a primary choice.
Furthermore, an interview of my classmate Yaqi Wu put forward another opinion, he emphasizes that the imperfection of relevant laws also provides living space for piracy. For instance, in the "Regulations on computer software protection", this law general provide that pirated computer game software is a style of copyright infringement of copyrighted computer game software, however, it doesn’t give a detailed statement about the amount of compensation and the form of compensation. On the other hand, the complicated legal system results in the huge difference in judicial practice of different places which is not conducive to fight against piracy industry as well.
After discussing the reasons for the spread of pirated productions, it is also necessary to treat the negative impact of pirated video games seriously. Early 21st century is the most rampant period of piracy, during that time, pirated games cause a great effect on the structure of the traditional game market.
Chart 1 reports the revenue of the Chinese game market from 2001 to 2004. As can be seen, in 2001, the revenue of total market is still as high as 280 million and there is slight decline by 2002. However, in 2003, earning of the Chinese video game market shrunk rapidly and have no improvement by 2004. From the comparison in Chart 1, it can be inferred that many companies would go bankrupt and the game design industry would unable to recover for a long time since the possible profits reduced beyond 50 percent suddenly.
Actually, the piracy problem still exists until today and some famous websites such as 3DM even regularly release the cracked versions of the latest game. In order to fight with piracy, there is still a long way to go.
In conclusion, the shortage of professional talent, the inappropriate interventions and the piracy problem are the three main reasons that should be responsible for the decline of the Chinese PC video game industry. As a graduate student of computer science, I hope that I could participate in the game designing one day and contribute to the Chinese game industry in the future.