Kliuless #53: The China Cultural Clash

Call of Duty: Mobile, developed by Tencent, has rocketed to become the fastest ever mobile game to 100 million downloads, an especially impressive feat considering the game is not even available in the biggest mobile gaming market, China

Blizzard, as new president J. Allen Brack reveals, has been working with NetEase on Diablo: Immortal for years already

"Values of equality, respect and freedom of expression have long defined the NBA — and will continue to do so. As an American-based basketball league operating globally, among our greatest contributions are these values of the game [...]

It is inevitable that people around the world — including from America and China — will have different viewpoints over different issues. It is not the role of the NBA to adjudicate those differences. However, the NBA will not put itself in a position of regulating what players, employees and team owners say or will not say on these issues. We simply could not operate that way"

"I am increasingly convinced this is the point every company dealing with China will reach: what matters more, money or values?

I am not particularly excited to write this article. My instinct is towards free trade, my affinity for Asia generally and Greater China specifically, my welfare enhanced by staying off China’s radar. And yet, for all that the idea of being a global citizen is an alluring concept and largely my lived experience, I find in situations like this that I am undoubtedly a child of the West. I do believe in the individual, in free speech, and in democracy, no matter how poorly practiced in the United States or elsewhere. And, in situations like this weekend, when values meet money, I worry just how many companies are capable of choosing the former?

The NBA, to its immense credit, appears to have done just that. Will technology companies be so brave? [...]

The biggest, shift, though, is a mindset one. First, the Internet is an amoral force that reduces friction, not an inevitable force for good. Second, sometimes different cultures simply have fundamentally different values. Third, if values are going to be preserved, they must be a leading factor in economic entanglement, not a trailing one. This is the point that [Bill] Clinton got the most wrong: money, like tech, is amoral. If we insist it matters most our own morals will inevitably disappear"

Unfortunately, for many, the answer to that will of course be no

Activision Blizzard, Epic, Riot, and countless others are already deep in the pockets of the Chinese, having taken their capital during Tencent & NetEase's decade-long "shopping spree," which especially accelerated these past several years

However, I hope future game developers though will at the very least pause to reflect about the potential moral implications of accepting censorship capital when seeking investment and/or partnerships

Not everyone at Blizzard agrees with what happened

Wait But Why: The Mute Button

Related: Jam Sesh: How a Popular Online Contest Sparks Design Innovation

"Currently dubbed Project Haven, the game is targeting players older than 35 years, which is supposedly around the age the second-highest loneliness spike manifests"

"I think a lot of the folks making games-as-a-service now kind of took some of the wrong lessons [from old MMOs]," Koster says. "They looked at things and said, 'It's about engagement.' But engagement, the sense of wanting to check back regularly, should be driven by the player's interest. Engagement is there in order to lead you to retention. When we were designing those games back then, we weren't thinking in terms of, 'How do we get people to come back daily in order to increase our [day 2] or [day 7] return rate,' which is sort of the metrics-driven way of thinking of things. We didn't approach it that way. We were always thinking, 'We need this person to come back next month'

"And that drives a different mindset. It puts you in the mindset that we're building long-term relationships here. We're not trying to drive necessarily constant activity. We want to drive something where a relationship of trust is built with the player. We don't need them to log in every day. What we want them to do is to feel attached and care about our fictional universe and want to come back all the time"

Related: ArenaNet co-founder leaves to start different studio