Culture Policy and East Asian Rivarly: The Hong Kong Gaming Industry (Asian Cultural Studies: Transnational and Dialogic Approaches) - Softcover

Fung, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783486252 ISBN 13: 9781783486250

Publisher: RLI, 2018

Synopsis

Cultural Policy and East Asian Rivalry is an exploration of the market, challenges and competition in the Hong Kong gaming industry in relation to a wider Chinese and East Asian context. This book looks at the impact of the lack of cultural policy on creative industries.

About this title

About the Author

Anthony Y.H. Fung is Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also the Pearl River Chair Professor at Jinan University, China.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Cultural Policy and East Asian Rivalry

The Hong Kong Gaming Industry

By Anthony Y. H. Fung

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Anthony Y. H. Fung
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78348-625-0

Contents

List of Figures, vii, 
List of Tables, ix, 
List of Abbreviations, xi, 
Acknowledgments, xv, 
1 The Game Industry and Cultural Policy, 1, 
2 Development and Market Structure of the Creative Industries in Hong Kong, 23, 
3 The Game Industry and Market in China, 51, 
4 Cultural Policies in China, 71, 
5 East Asian Cultural Policies and the Game Market, 105, 
6 Beyond the East Asian Rivalry and Hong Kong's Creative Industries, 123, 
Index, 145, 

CHAPTER 1

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 (CEPA), although the effectiveness of the agreement is variable. The effects are evident in Hong Kong's film (i.e., coproductions) and service industries but not in the local game industries.

Nevertheless, it is a fact that the game industry is conducive to augmenting the economy of a nation or a city (Fung, 2016). During the past decade, business consultants and strategists have recognized that the game industry can drive economic growth. The report "The video game market in China: Moving online or DFC" (KPMG, 2007), which was updated in 2016 in intelligence reports on online gaming, is a clear example. The recent experiences of South Korea, Japan, and China provide insights into the game business. In South Korea, the annual game output was expected to reach US$10.04 billion in 2017 (Statista, 2016a), US$13.67 billion in Japan in 2017 (Statista, 2016b), and US$24.4 billion in China in 2016 (Newzoo, 2016). In South Korea, amid a Korean wave of popular culture that is prevalent worldwide, the export of Korean games has been much stronger in terms of market revenues than the exports of its globally vaunted film industry (Jin, 2010). In Japan, online consumption, which accounts for most social media gaming, constitutes 2.98 percent of the country's annual GDP (Hasegawa, Ito, Kawano, Kibata, & Nonomura, 2013). In China, the growth of the game industry has been so rapid that it has emerged to become a global center of game production in less than two decades. In 2016, China surpassed the United States (which had a revenue of US$23.5 billion; Newzoo, 2016) to become the world's largest game market, and it began to export locally developed games worldwide.

An investigation of the development of the game industries and markets in different countries is therefore useful for Hong Kong, in which the public often calls for a cultural policy on certain creative industries. Because of strong national rivalries in East Asia and the huge Asian market (US$46.6 billion), Hong Kong's game industry urgently needs the help of cultural policies, business models, regulation, and industry norms in order to enter the Chinese and East Asian markets. In South Korea, for example, in the past decade, the Korea Game Development and Promotion Institute (KGDPI) and the Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA) constructed extensive and successful policies for developing Korean games. In addition, South Korea's Asian Cultural Policy Network gathers international scholars to discuss the creative industries with Korean officials, industry representatives, and academics. South Korea game companies have also considered developing strategies to fend off global competitors, and in particular, China (Song, 2016).

Even though China did not pay particularly serious attention to the creative industries until the mid-2000s, it is now far ahead of Hong Kong in terms of designing policies for promoting and regulating the game industry. In China, a designated bureau, the Electronic and Internet Publication Section of the General Administration of Press and Publications, is in charge of developing the industry. The State Taxation Administration has introduced new tax laws on virtual game property. Game-relevant legislation has been ratified, and numerous legal cases (e.g. Li Hongchen v. Beijing North Arctic ) have been fought. In response to a social backlash against highly exploitive games and the online game addiction of students, China has designed anti–game addiction regulations (Golub & Lingley, 2008; Guan, 2008). The state has also set up the National Online Game Publishing Project to encourage the inclusion of local cultural content in games.

The development of the game industries in these Asian countries has a special meaning for the development of the game industry in Hong Kong, particularly with regard to referencing and complementing the perceived competition, market, and model. In addition to its implications for practical economic goals, this book makes an important theoretical contribution to media studies, management studies, globalization studies, and game studies. First, an investigation of the political economy of the game industry in Hong Kong and other countries can shed theoretical light on how the interplay of political factors (e.g., censorship, control, nationalism, and protectionism) and economic factors (e.g., sponsorship, tax, and trade) affect creative industries, particularly their structure, production, distribution, and content as well as the values and lifestyles of those who consume cultural products. Second, this examination of the globalized production and reception of games can enrich our theoretical understanding of cultural globalization and cultural regionalization in East Asia. This book presents the first systematic study to approach games from the angle of the problematics of cultural globalization, including local reception, glocalization strategies, localization of game content, global diffusion of games, and global game cultural asymmetry. Third, this book's focus on seldom-explored cases of game production and consumption (i.e., in Hong Kong and China) will provide an empirical basis for advancing the current debate on a range of major theoretical issues in game studies, including the social impact of games, non-Western game cultures, virtual taxation, virtual property transaction, virtual-world governance, gamer activism, and the formation of game communities.

LOCATING THE TRAJECTORIES OF GAME STUDIES

This study belongs to the academic discipline, or field, of game studies, which encompasses the study of game content, the act of play, the players, the production and consumption processes, and the interaction of all these — that is, gaming culture. It is fair to say that game studies largely originated in the West, and until the past decade no game studies had been conducted in Asia (see Ernkvist & Strom, 2008). Only recently has a systematic history of video games and development in China, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian countries been documented (Wolf, 2015).

However, research on digital games — or gaming in its modern sense — as Frans Mäyrä (2008) suggests, emerged in the 1970s when shooting and action games became the focus of academic studies. These were then followed by studies on role-playing and adventure games in the 1980s and on three-dimensional games in the 1990s. The bulk of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) discussed and examined in this book refer to a new genre of games that emerged along with broadband Internet, which made possible a smooth, massive connection to online gaming activities.

Game or gaming studies have become legitimatized with the emergence of specialized game-related academic journals such as Simulation and Gaming (founded in 1970), Game Studies (founded in 2001), Games and Culture (founded in 2006), Eludamos (founded in 2007), Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds (founded in 2009), International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (founded in 2009), and Games for Health Journal (founded in 2012). However, under the same umbrella of game studies, the term gaming studies can refer to very different areas in different disciplines, from the technical aspects to the sociocultural effects of gaming and the political economy of the game industry. Aside from the technical, design, and engineering aspects and social and cultural domains — although there is consensual agreement on the epistemology of game studies — there are at least two main branches here: the social, psychological effects of gaming, and the critical study of gaming culture, games, and their development.

First, I consider the social psychological effects of gaming by using a social-science approach to gaming, largely relying on lab experiments, surveys, and other quantitative methods of inquiry. My interpretation is that the effects of gaming are an extension of the effects of traditional media. The reason is simple: parents, adults, teachers, and policy makers are as concerned about the effects of the violence in video games as they were about the effects of violence on television. Using a social psychological approach, my focus is on gauging the effects of violent games on behavior, affect and cognition, physiological arousal, and antisocial attitudes and behaviors, particularly in children and adolescents (e.g., Anderson & Bushman, 2001). Bandura's social learning theory is a core theory that is widely applicable to such effects. In general, researchers believe that children can acquire behaviors by observing scenes and imitating the behavior of the characters in audiovisual content, including that of games (Bandura, 1977). The theoretical basis is comprised of the modeling and cognitive processes that underlie game play. The findings of empirical research suggest that the type of violent game has a positive correlation to violent behavior in children and adolescents, but the effect is less than the effect of television violence on aggression (e.g., Sherry, 2001).

My second approach is to examine the cultural effect of gaming. In this approach, games are both a part of and an influence on popular culture because they integrate the use of the Internet, social media, mobile phones, and other digital devices in different locations such as the workplace, home, arcades, museums, and educational institutions. As cultural texts, games can be interpreted as representations of culture according to race (e.g., Sisler, 2008), gender (Fisher & Harvey, 2013), and other social groupings. In cultural studies, games are examined as social practice in everyday life, and thus concepts such as ideology, resistance, hegemony, signification, encoding and decoding, and active reading are applicable when interpreting game consumption and gamer-users (e.g. Taylor, 2006). Adrienne Shaw (2010) further argued that cultural studies on gaming should focus on video games in culture rather than on merely games as culture, which suggests that gaming is a newly constructed culture and that investigators of game culture should reflect this culture in their critical practice. This argument is in line with Flew and Humphreys (2005), who suggested that games are a new medium that exemplifies a new productive relationship between users and games in social and network settings.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: RLI
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783486252
• ISBN 13: 9781783486250
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168