Futures of Learning

Gaming in China has become a huge phenomenon in recent years, both in terms of China’s own domestic gaming industry and the number of Chinese gamers. As Cao and Downing (2008) explain, digital gaming in China began in the 1980s with video arcades and home game consoles. Since that time China’s online gaming industry has progressively developed – particularly in the last few years – into a multibillion-dollar business. While PC-based games are still played, massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs or MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft and domestic titles including NetEase’s Fantasy Westward Journey (which is loosely based on the Journey to the West and the legend of the Monkey King, see image above) are extremely popular, especially among youth. According to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), in June 2008 online games were the seventh most used Internet application, with around 58 percent of Internet users, or 147 million people, reporting that they had played some type of online game (although this represented a 1 percent decrease from December 2007). Of these, 53 percent, or 78 million, played role-playing games for an average of 11.9 hours per week. According to CNNIC’s most recent report, by the end of 2008, 187 million people were playing online games, accounting for approximately 63 percent of those online. Such growth was attributed to the enriched content and format of gaming products as well as various social networking sites adding gaming elements to their offerings (http://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2009/1/13/92458.pdf). In 2008, online game revenue was over 18 billion yuan (around $2.7 billion), reflecting a growth rate of nearly 77 percent (Wang, 2009).

With the popularity of online games in China has come a focus in both popular and government discourse on the negative effects of gaming. For example, in Guo’s (2007) study of the Internet usage in seven cities in China, 55.5 percent of users and 49.5 percent on non-users of the Internet agreed that online gaming should be managed or controlled. The Chinese government has been a major proponent of controlling online gaming because of what it perceives as a direct connection between game playing and Internet addiction, and because of its desire to promote a “civilized” or “healthy Internet culture.” The state-run media runs fairly regular stories on the perils of Internet addiction – exhaustion, failure in school, and even death – and to deal with the issue the government has taken a number of measures. These have included everything from setting up boot camps to cure Internet-addicted youth, to electronically limiting to three hours a day the number of hours a minor can play an online game (through a program called an “anti-indulgence system,” http://www.china.org.cn/english/entertainment/217375.htm), to forbidding the opening of new Internet cafes throughout most of 2007. However, the government does not want to ban gaming altogether, especially in light of what a huge revenue source it is. For this reason, it exhorts gaming companies to exercise “self discipline” and to make games that are “healthy.” In line with such exhortations, in early 2008 the Ministry of Culture released its “Third Round of Suggestions for Appropriate Network Game Products for Minors,” which endorsed 10 games (all Chinese made) that were ostensibly “healthy and beneficial” for “brain development” and educating through entertainment (http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/20008-02/08/content_7581520.htm). In general these games also align with the government’s view that games should promote traditional Chinese culture and values, and in fact games that draw upon Chinese history, legends, and martial arts are indeed popular. Chan (2006) notes that discourses of Asianness within games produced not only in China but also Korea function as a “common reference point for in-game narratives, characters and imagery” and invoke a form of authenticity while also allowing for hybridity.

Reflecting the tension between the perceived benefits and drawbacks of online gameplay, the academic literature on gaming in China seems to take two general tracks. In one body of research, especially studies that adopt a social-psychological perspective, online gaming is often associated with Internet addiction. For example, Huang et al. (2007) have developed a “Chinese Internet Addiction Inventory” to assess the correlation between long hours online (usually gaming) and “conflicts, mood modification, and dependence.” Similarly, Wu and Li (2005) compared “normal” university students to those that have failed in their coursework and found online game playing to be a factor in the latter’s poor academic performance.

In contrast to fears about gaming and Internet addiction, other research has noted that discourses about the harmful effects of the Internet seem to be a stand-in for more general anxieties associated with the rapid changes going on in Chinese society, which have led to what many regard as a breakdown in traditional values and created a vast generation gap between Chinese youth and their parents. For example, in their analysis of Internet-addiction and video-game related suicide discourses in China, Golub and Lingley (2008) argue that a “medicalization of social relationships” and the rise of “new forms of self-fashioning enabled by new media that are not socially sanctioned” have emerged as constitutive of more general changes in the nation’s moral order (p. 60). While acknowledging that some online games and users’ gaming habits might be problematic, some educators in China have also reacted strongly to what they perceive as discourses that serve to stigmatize and victimize adolescent Internet users (Chen, 2007).

Still another body of research on gaming seeks to find the positive benefits and the informal learning that takes place through game playing. Echoing work done in other cultural contexts, Liu (2006) argues that multiplayer online role-playing games teach Chinese college students about cooperation, teamwork, and the ability to deal with real-world issues. In a similar vein, Lindtner et al. (2008) stress the collaborative learning that takes place among World of Warcraft players in Internet cafes in China and argue that cultural values as well as socio-economic considerations combine to construct a hybrid cultural ecology of online gaming in China. Wu, Fore, Wang, and Ho (2007) looked specifically at in-game marriage among Chinese players in MMORPGs and concluded that such role-playing allows players to deconstruct gender binaries, question the significance of marriage in the real world, and develop intimate friendships. They thus emphasize the potentially transformative role of online gaming.

Perhaps most clearly revealing the intersections of culture, economics, and moral discourses circulating around gaming in China is the phenomenon of “gold farmers” – primarily young males of rural origin who are paid paltry wages to play online games, especially World of Warcraft, 12 hours a day in what can justifiably be called gaming sweatshops. Rather than reaping the rewards of their gameplay, the gold farmers (also dubbed “peons for hire”) instead turn over whatever game coinage they accumulate to their employer, who then relies on a middleman to sell the virtual loot to a distant customer, usually western, who does not have the time and/or inclination to advance in the game by their own efforts and skill (Dibbell, 2007). Though such practices exist in other countries, China is believed to have the largest number and most extensive network of gold farmers. On the Chinese Internet advertisements for such work can easily be found (e.g., http://bbs.jhnews.com.cn/redirect.php?tid=472192&goto=lastpost), as can reports on the hardship faced this by this class of gamers, who are often treated like “indentured servants” by their bosses and as disappointments by their parents (http://news.iresearch.cn/0200/20080324/78191.shtml). Like their counterparts laboring in factories, restaurants, and data input companies, their long hours and meager pay are still considered by most to be a better option than actual farming in the countryside.

In various realms the gold farming phenomenon has generated debates about everything from gaming ethics to labor in the virtual, global economy, and it has even inspired a documentary (http://chinesegoldfarmers.com/; for an interview with the filmmaker and clips of the film, see http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/05/homo-ludens-ludens-desire.php). Outside of China, especially in countries such as the U.S., the Chinese gold farmers have been the target of much hostility because they are perceived as violating the spirit, if on not the rules, of the game. Many have argued that gamers who legitimately compete in World of Warcraft are justified in their anger at the gold farmers. However, others have noted troubling discourses in the game realm in which frustration with the gold farmers (and similarly with Chinese adena farmers in Lineage II) becomes justification for hostility toward China and Chinese people more generally (Steinkuehler, 2006; Yee, 2006). It appears that as gameplay competition becomes divided along racial and ethnic lines, the resentment generated in the game becomes mapped upon and aligned with deeper anxieties and suspicion of China as a “threat” and as a country that doesn’t “play fair” (e.g. intellectual property, copyright).

Finally, just as the practice of gold farming raises issues of race, ethnicity, and nationality, like many new media practices in China, online gaming has also been a space for overt expressions of nationalism. As mentioned above, strains of nationalism run through government discourses related to both the promotion of China’s domestic gaming industry as well as game content. Some Chinese gamers as well have used cyberspace to voice overtly nationalistic sentiments and to mobilize against perceived threats to their (virtual) national sovereignty. The most famous incident occurred in 2006 within Fantasy Westward Journey when a virtual mob of thousands gathered to protest a Jianyi city (a fictional city) government office that was alleged to have an image remarkably similar to a Japanese “rising sun” flag on its wall. The protestors scrawled anti-Japanese insults into the virtual space and demanded the image be removed. This incident was apparently linked to a player of the game who had had his name and guild (both anti-Japanese) revoked. The story was first covered by the Beijing Evening News (Beijing Wangbao)
(http://epaper.bjd.com.cn/wb/20060707/200607/t20060707_45533.htm) and then by major Chinese news sites such as Sina and Xinhua (http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2006-07/07/content_4806343.htm). Of course it also spread rapidly across the Chinese blogosphere (http://www.zonaeuropa.com/20060709_1.htm). Writing about the event, Henry Jenkins notes that it reflects the gamers’ internalization of government policies that seek to promote Chinese national culture and pride within games, yet most likely in a way never anticipated (http://www.henryjenkins.org/2006/08/national_politics_within_virtu_1.html). It certainly reveals the Internet as a virtual public sphere, an issue that will be picked up in my next blog post.

References

Cao, Y., & Downing, J. D. H. (2008). The Realities of Virtual Play: Video Games and their Industries in China. Media, Culture & Society, 30(4), 515-529.

Chan, D. (2006). Negotiating intra-Asian games networks: On cultural proximity, East Asian game design, and Chinese farmers. Fibreculture, 8. Retrieved March, 3, 2007, from http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue8/issue8_chan.html

Chen, W. (2007, August 19). Chenmi de weiji neng fou zhuanhua wei shangshang dongli? (Can a sinking crisis be transformed into an upward force?). China Youth Daily. Retrieved November 22, 2007, from http://zqb.cyol.com/content/2007-08/19/content_1864591.htm

Dibbell, J. (2007, June 17). The life of a Chinese gold farmer. New York Times. Retrieved June 17, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/magazine/17lootfarmers-t.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Golub, A., & Lingley, K. (2008). ‘Just like the Qing empire:’ Internet addiction, MMOGs, and moral crisis in contemporary China. Games and Culture, 3(1), 59-75.

Guo, L. (2007, November). Surveying Internet usage and its impact in seven Chinese cities (The CASS China Internet project survey report 2007): Center for Social Development, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Huang, Z., Wang, M., Qian, M., Zhong, J., & Tao, R. (2007). Chinese Internet addiction inventory: Developing a measure of problematic Internet use for Chinese college students. Cyberpsychollgy & Behavior, 10(805-811).

Lindtner, S., Nardi, B., Wang, Y., Mainwaring, S., Jing, H., & Liang, W. (November 8-12, 2008). A hybrid cultural ecology: World of Warcraft in China. CSCW ‘08.

Liu, X. (2006). Qianyi wangluo youxi dui daxuesheng xiaoyuan shenghuo de yinxiang (The influence of online games on college students’ campus life). Journal of Nanchang Institute of Aeronautical Technology, 8(3), 83-85.

Steinkuehler, C. (2006). The mangle of play. Games and Culture, 1(3), 199-213.

Wang, X. (2009, January 14). China’s online game market grows 76.6% in 2008. China Daily. Retrieved January 20, 2009, from http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-01/14/content_7397315.htm

Wu, W., Fore, S., Wang, X., & Ho, P. S. Y. (2007). Beyond virtual carnival and masquerade: In-game marriage on the Chinese Internet. Games and Culture, 2(1), 59-89.

Wu, Y.-W., & Li, X.-L. (2005). Xueye shoucuo daxuesheng yu yiban daxuesheng shangwang zhuangkuang bijiao (A comparative study of Internet usage status between normal and study-failed college students). Chinese Mental Health Journal, 19(2), 116-118.

Yee, N. (2006, January). Yi-Shan-Guan. The Daedalus Project. Retrieved October 10, 2007, from http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001493.php

Today, the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in collaboration with the Mills College Civic Engagement Research Group, released a report of findings of the first nationally representative survey of how teen video gaming relates to civic engagement. The study was an effort to survey the distribution of certain forms of video game practice in teen culture, as well as to investigate specific questions about what forms of gaming contribute to prosocial and civic forms of engagement. The project has released a report that documents the overall findings of the survey (authored by Amanda Lenhart, Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, Alexandra Rankin Macgill, Chris Evans, and Jessica Vitak), as well as a research paper analyzing the civic potential of video games (authored by Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Chris Evans). 

A note of disclaimer – I participated as an advisor on this project, so I did have a small role in it, and it is funded by the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Initiative that I also am part of.

This work has a number of interesting findings that are worth highlighting. First, the survey confirms that fact that video games have become a pervasive fact of life for US teens, with 97% reporting that they play some form of video game with boys having only slightly higher rates (99%) than girls (94%). The survey does more than give us these blanket numbers for overall video game engagement, but also asks questions about teens’ favorite games, game genres, and frequency of game play. Here we see a diversity in different forms of game play, with boys more likely to be frequent players, and preferring M rated games more than girls.

Interestingly, the four top games in terms of popularity were Guitar Hero, Halo, Madden NFL, and Solitaire. These four titles span an immense range in terms of genre, giving good evidence that the forms of game play are diversifying and that we should not approach teen game play assuming that there is a single “typical” form of game player or a single game or game genre that is overwhelmingly popular. This may seem to be a commonsensical point, but so often public debates over game play proceed as if there are particular kinds of behavioral effects of game play that apply regardless of the form of game play involved. A teen who lists Solitaire as a favorite game is likely to be a very different kind of gamer than one who lists Madden NFL or Halo.

The survey also confirms that gaming is a social activity for most teens, with only 24% saying that they only play alone. These findings are in line with the work reported on in Grand Theft Childhood, that gaming has become a baseline for social participation, and that teens who don’t game are more likely to be socially troubled than kids who do. I would have liked to know the relationship between game genres and the level of social game play. For example, of the 24% who play alone, are they more likely to play so-called casual genres such as Solitaire? Or are those kids fairly distributed among different game genres? Based on our ethnographic work, I would expect the former, but the report does not break down the results in this way.

After setting out these findings about the overall distribution of game practices, the report focuses on civic engagement measures more specifically. The research paper explains how the authors identified certain features of gaming which they call “civic gaming experiences” that they see as exhibiting features of civic engagement.

The civic characteristics of game play:  Do teens who have civic experiences while gaming—such as playing games that simulate civic activities, helping or guiding other players, organizing or managing guilds (an opportunity to develop social networks), learning about social issues, grappling with ethical issues—demonstrate greater commitment to and engagement in civic and political activity than those with limited exposure to civic gaming experiences?

Overall, the study found that teens who have high levels of civic gaming experiences also tend to have high levels of civic and political engagement. They also found that teens who tend to play with others in real life also have higher rates of civic and political engagement than teens who primarily play alone, and that the same was true for teens who have social interaction around the game, such as commenting on web sites or contributing to online discussion groups. One of the more surprising findings was that the link to civic and political engagement did not hold for teens who played with others online. Included in this category are both more casual “pick-up” forms of online play as well as more intensive forms, such as in MMO guilds. This deserves further investigation; my guess is that the different forms of online play would have different relationships to civic engagement measures. In our observations of youth gaming practice, we’ve found certain forms of engagement that are highly social, but much more focused on competition and performance than what you would think of as a more expansive civic orientation, while other forms of gaming have more explicitly civic and political agendas. The more we can get specific about these different dimensions of practice, the more we can begin to untangle the threads that tie together gaming activity with different dimensions of kids’ lives.

One of the significant findings for educational practice is that civic engagement activities are relatively equitably distributed, where income level, race, and age do not determine levels of engagement. The only major demographic category that did make a difference, not surprisingly, was gender, with girls having lower rates of civic gaming experiences. In our ethnographic work, we also found that girls had lower rates of participation in the more social and “geeked out” forms of gaming. The finding that civic gaming is accessible regardless of socioeconomic status is a significant one. The report authors point out that traditional measures of civic engagement indicate that elite youth are much more likely to have access to these experiences. In other words, if gaming is indeed an avenue into civic engagement, it could become one that provides broader avenues for access for diverse teens.

The survey is an effort to get more precise about the specific forms of games and game practices that might be related to specific forms of public participation. In other words, this report is doing work to move the discussion of the learning outcomes of gaming away from simply positing relationships between media content and behavior. Instead, the report suggests looking at the social and cultural contexts of gaming in practice. In doing this, the report does not assume that participatory forms of gaming automatically result in civic participation.

This work is a promising step in building an empirical base for mapping relationships between recreational and social new media practice and ones that have a closer relationship to formal education and civic engagement. The findings confirm many of the intuitions and initial findings of those of us engaged in qualitative research in this area – that youth engagement in sociable forms of play relate to comparable forms of sociability in other realms of life. At the same time, the report challenges us to be much more precise about positing the nature of these linkages, and to proceed with cautious optimism in interventions that target the space between game play and civic engagement.