Gaming with Chinese Heroes

A couple of months ago I wrote about a new Chinese game that had been developed around Chinese national heroe Lei Feng. Although I never see people playing the game, the government decided to build another online game around Chinese heroes. Also this time Lei Feng will be participating, and he will be accompanied by among others Zheng Chenggong, a 17th century general who ‘liberated Taiwan from the Dutch’.

But will the game be a success? That’s doubtful considering the tasks that need to be performed: one of them is moving bricks, which probably sounds very exciting to gamers who are used to high-tech games in which they steer F1 racing cars or compete with magic swords in virtual worlds. Another task will be catching raindrops on a building site. No further comment needed I suppose.

The reporter wanted to know what gamers would think of the game. You would then normally go to an internet cafe and ask some of the gamers there about the game. But not this journalist from Chinese press agency Xinhua: he decided to go to the Beijing Internet Addiction Treatment Center and check with the internet addicts there! Can you imagine, you are addicted to games and try to get over your addiction, and then a reporter comes to by to ask how you would like a new government-developed online game.

At least he got some good comments from the inmates. They were not interested in this game, which goal is to ‘teach the public about Chinese ethics’. One even called it boring and a turn-off. And the center director agreed: “If hero games do not focus on killing and domination, gamers will not play them.” So I guess it’s back to the drawing board for the game developers.