Online game addiction among teenagers has become a social problem in China due to its flourishing technological development such that there are more and more fascinating mobile game applications being launched by local game developers and attracting young mobile phone users. For the well-being of the young game players, Tencent Games recently announced that there have been an upgrade in the system of one of its most popular mobile games ‘King of Glory’ (王者榮耀) which is the implementation of a compulsory ‘real-name registration’ measure.
In response to the ‘Online Game Anti-Indulged System For Adolescent’ which was jointly carried out by various Chinese authorities such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Public Security, the Tencent Games introduced a ‘health system’ to the game ‘King of Glory’ in 2017 in which all adolescent players under the age of 12 are not allowed to continue the game after an hour of accumulated playing time while the gaming time for players under 13 is two hours per day, and players will be forced to log out of the game if they try to violate the ‘health system’. Moreover, the adolescent players are not allowed to log into the game during the period of 21:00 to 08:00 in the next morning which is supposed to be teenagers’ bed time, as it is worried that children are so addicted to the game that they would sacrifice their rest time and play mobile games for long hours.
After the recent upgrade of the ‘health system’, all players need to undergo a process of ‘real-name registration’, while the game system will be connected to a public security database which can precisely identify whether the players are under 12 or not so that the mandatory measures can be enforced accordingly. More measures, such as constraining the amount of money spent by adolescents on mobile games and establishing parental control platform, will be introduced in phases so as to better monitor and deal with the adolescent game addiction problem.
According to Tencent Games, rating and ranking are not the sole concerns as they also value the gaming experience and well-being of the young gamers, so they are devoted to help teenagers strive for a balance between gaming and other aspects of life.
