China the big unknown

There’s been a lot of articles, blog posts and news about China’s decision to delay Blizzard’s popular expansion Wrath of the Lich King. While almost every part of the world has been playing the expansion for months, Chinese gamers have had to content themselves with older content.

Most of the views on China take on a somewhat predictable Western perspective, that the delay of Wrath of the Lich King is a result of unnecessary censorship and also a barrier to free trade. From everything I’ve read, Blizzard, to its credit, has gone out of its way to appease China in making the game available to the market. Blizzard removed all skeletons from the game based on Chinese concerns that it would promote the occult, removed any instances of the Pandaren (a panda like race) in case that a reference to the national animal would offend Chinese sensitivities, and even removed a raid that takes place in a city (urban uprisings are something the Chinese would not like depicted in any fashion). However, even with these extraordinary measures, Wrath of the Lich King is stuck in video game limbo, and may remain there for the forseeable future.

However, if you try to take the Chinese perspective on this issue, you begin to understand their trepidation, if not their outright fear. World of Warcraft and its expansions are runaway successes, having gathering 12 million loyal adherents who dutifully quest in the land of Azeroth. The game is so huge that it’s almost a mini-culture on its own, spawning its own vocabulary, its own rituals and expected norms of behaviors. Add in the fact that video games are now on par with movies as being a significant cultural influence on younger people and you get a situation where the Chinese are faced with a popular, foreign and extremely influential medium which they don’t outright control.

That lack of control is frightening to the Chinese who tend to get really wound up (with some justification) on cultural movements that they fear will spread beyond what they can contain. History has shown that China will crack down on religious movements, the press, popular media and anything that deem as an unhealthy foreign influence. In a tightly wound up nation like China, the fear of even a small spark igniting a revolution is very real.

So am I seriously suggesting that World of Warcraft will spark a revolution? No, at the end of the day, it’s still just a video game. And Blizzard isn’t a tool of the US government. Blizzard’s motivation isn’t to aggrandize the American way of life, but to make an entertaining game and make a lot of profit from it.

And yet despite this, look at what the World of Warcraft unconsciously shows a Chinese gamer. In the World of Warcraft, it’s the individual not the society at large that determines the outcome of a myriad of important, game changing events. It’s the individual that quests, gains power, gains achievements and overcomes obstacles. The game also promotes competition, and this belief of competition (war between races, the auction house, player vs. player, etc.) is pervasive throughout the game.  The American influences in this mere video game are weaved in almost every facet of play. Like it or not, World of Warcraft is a commercial for American culture and its way of life.

Over the past several years, China, to its credit, has shown its willingness to open up to more foreign influences. The Chinese government realizes that while foreign influences do bring negative baggage, exposure to it is necessary to promote economic growth and the free flow of ideas that spawn it. However, to China, the exposure to things foreign is controlled by a spigot that they feel they can turn on and off at will. And while many pundits have suggested that it will be impossible for China to continue controlling their people this way forever, China has shown a remarkable tenacity in controlling the cultural influences that affects its people.

Partly sourced from Eurogamer.

Related posts:

1. No Lich King for Chinese The Chinese government has rejected approval for World of...
2. A million Chinese gold farmers! So according to a recent article in Eurogamer, there’s...
3. Buy a book based on a game? A book based on the popular expansion for the...
4. WoW is half Acti-Blizz earnings World of Warcraft accounted for half the profits earned...
5. Will World of Warcraft ever end? This morning Blizzard announced that it was gathering feedback...