The Red Curtain

Game manufacturing and game development in China is beginning to become a huge business. With the amount of people in China combined with their seemingly natural attraction towards games, the influence that China might have on the future of gaming could be massive. However, there’s one large thing holding this massive chain of events back, the Chinese government.

It seems to some that when gaming is mentioned, the last entity you want to hear from is one adorning the red flag. In 2004, The Ministry of Culture set up a committee that screened against imported games which potentially had the wrong message for their audience. Some of the regulations include

· Violating basic principles of the Constitution
· Threatening national unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity
· Divulging state secrets
· Threatening state security
· Damaging the nation's glory
· Disturbing social order
· Infringing on others' legitimate rights

Sims 2, Photo: SpoilMeWith

Most games guilty, such as Hearts of Iron and Football manager, were banned for either giving Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau their own independent country while others were banned for ‘smearing the image of China’ or ‘blackening the image of the Chinese army’. Indeed, in 2005, nearly 50 electronic games were banned, including The Sims 2 and FIFA 2005.

Although censorship hasn’t been a deal breaker for most western game developers, Activision Blizzard, who runs World of Warcraft are looking to be largely disappointed if their new expansion isn’t allowed to see release. And soon.

On March 13, 2009, it was reported that The9, the company who supplies Chinese WoW gamers with their fix faces bankruptcy if the censorship board doesn’t allow them to release the game and gain back some profit from the game’s licensing fee and upkeep of vital equipment.

This isn’t the first time that The9 has had to change in-game content to please the censorship board. Just look at the release of the original game and the first expansion: The Burning Crusade. In the first two releases, gamers found that skeletons, a pervasive imagery of the game themselves, were banned. Instead, the developers put flesh on the skeletons or danced around the issue by putting graves in. These changes were all to promote a ‘healthy and harmonious on-line environment.’

Photo: gruntzooki

The9 has submitted 2 versions to the censor board which were subsequently denied and is eagerly awaiting the next ‘fixed’ version which they hope can be released sometime in April. The changes in this version include taking out a city raid mission, and removing an entire class: The Death Knight. The surprising thing is that the Death Knight was and is one of the most exciting things about the expansion. Without this class, Chinese gamers will be missing a huge part of the game.