China's Gaming Ban - Well Intentioned, But Misguided

The above was taken after the gaming ban was applied to youths below the age of 18 in China on August 30th 2021. Unsurprisingly, China’s youths are finding different ways to “game” the system and continue to engage in video games available in the non-mobile/offline formats.

Despite the apparent failures, I think there is merit in trying to rein in the negative effects of the gaming industry on the young. As a person who grew up in the digital age, it is hard to not look around and see that most of the top grossing applications today are targeted at short term engagement and hoarding our attention. This stated goal of consumer application development has led to today’s age being dubbed the Attention Economy. Today, Gacha games like Genshin Impact employ slot machine mechanics, while World of Warcraft and Honor of Kings use loot boxes and raffles to trick their free to play gamers into spending increasing amounts of money and time. On the other hand, consumer apps like Facebook, Instagram and Youtube continue to employ their billions of dollars at creating cycles of compulsive usage, more commonly known as optimizing daily active user (DAU).

All these psychological tactics, combined with the commoditization of smartphones makes for a potent and lucrative combination - Everywhere, Free and most importantly, Fun. Through insidious game mechanics aimed at simulating the dopamine and fake rewards from gambling, combined with the near instantaneous feedback loops, the virtual world has become much more exciting and accessible to nearly every gamer today compared to the real world. Thanks to the sum of technological advances, we are currently facing the greatest explosion of the gaming and entertainment industry of all time.

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