If we were to set one major rule for the world of video games, it would be this: whenever electronics companies place restrictions on games, children and teens will find ways to overcome them. But the only exception to this rule – and apparently others – is China, where minor players are required to log in using their real names and ID numbers as part of nationwide regulations aimed at limiting screen time and controlling internet addiction. Before that, in 2019, the country imposed an electronic ban that prevented those under the age of 18 from playing games between 10 pm and 8 am.
But that doesn’t mean the scheming teens raised the flag of surrender, and their most notable ploy was to use their parents’ devices or IDs to get around the restrictions. Realizing that ploy, Chinese internet giant Tencent said this week that it will close this loophole by deploying facial recognition technology in its video games (1).
On the broader scene, it looks like more than a game of trickery between authorities and companies and between teenagers. In the end, these measures divided the public into two groups, one advocating and championing the measures, arguing that they would help combat Internet addiction in adolescents in a country that classifies games as “spiritual opium” (2), in turn, opponents were skeptical about how the authorities monitor and use the data that She collects them, accusing Tencent of playing an excessively paternalistic role.
Of course, the use of data by a country to monitor its residents is an aggressive act, and it undermines the privacy of underage users, but Tencent is not the only video game company that tracks its players, and this phenomenon is not entirely new, all over the world video games, It is one of the most widely adopted forms of digital media, installing networks to monitor and control users’ devices.
Spy in my house
First of all, let’s mention the main idea behind all video games. We can simply define these games as systems that translate inputs – such as hand movement or gestures – into various electrical or electronic outputs that can be read by a machine. User behaviors, by behaving in ways that comply with the rules of the game and hardware specifications, are analyzed and converted into data by the game’s algorithms.
Sociologists Jennifer Whitson and Bart Simon argue that games are in fact systems that easily allow human action to be reduced to knowable and predictable forms. According to this definition, video games are a natural means of tracking, and researchers have long argued that large data sets about players’ in-game activities are a rich source for understanding player psychology and cognition.
In one of the studies that followed (3), researchers analyzed player activity data recorded on the World of Warcraft Armory, a database that records all the actions and movements a player made while playing the game (how many monsters he killed, how many times he died the player while playing, how many fish he caught or goals he scored, etc.). The researchers used this data to infer players’ personality characteristics, concluding that there was a relationship between players rated as being more mindful in their playing style, and a tendency to spend more time doing repetitive and boring in-game tasks such as fishing. On the contrary, those who fell in the early stages were less persistent and more hurried.
Sure, the relationship between personality, identity, and video game activity is too complex to be formulated in a conclusive or direct way, but – despite this – game companies are increasingly realizing the value of large data sets in studying gamers’ tendencies and preferences, and the things they are likely to spend money on and configures the appropriate content for each player based on this data (4).
To date, there is no clear tally of companies monitoring their players, but recent sources state that major developers (5), such as Epic, EA and Activision, state that they collect data in their licensing agreements. As this practice expanded, a new industry emerged, led by companies selling “data analytics” tools to game developers.
These data analytics tools promise to make users more sustainable by providing clear statements about their preferences. Such analytics were previously only available to the largest video game studios, which could hire data scientists to capture and analyze data, and software engineers to develop internal analytics tools, but they are now being popularized across the industry by companies like Unity, GameAnalytics, or Amazon Web Services.
Developers may use data from these middleware companies to improve their game, but our data is not only valuable in fine-tuning the design. Increasingly, game companies are exploiting this data to get the user’s attention through targeted ads (6). These ads serve many purposes, such as facilitating user acquisition and promoting the brand, similar to the approach of digital advertising giants Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook), where The data generated by system users via clicks, likes, and interests is supposed to make it easier to target these users with desirable ads.
In other words, video game companies are trying to harness the billions of interactions that happen within their games to create new revenue streams. These companies sell their users’ attention to advertisers, and collect data to build a better match between users and advertisers, based on the advertiser’s specifications or the software that is acting on the advertiser’s behalf.
Worse than Black Mirror
It doesn’t stop there, as games and their technology seem to invade our lives in ways we didn’t expect. Take the example of Uber, which has suffered for many years in its turbulent relationship with drivers who have long complained of low wages and unfair treatment.
Uber has used video game technologies, graphics and non-cash rewards to get drivers to work longer, sometimes at less profitable hours and locations. To keep drivers on the road, the company has tapped into some people’s tendency to set earnings goals, alerting them that they are very close to hitting a valuable goal when they try to sign out. The company has also started sending approval alerts for the next trip even before the driver has finished their current trip (7). Amazon uses similar “gamification” techniques, in which it awards workers points for doing certain work, with the points being exchanged for “swag bucks,” an Amazon-owned currency that can be used to purchase Amazon logo stickers, clothing or other merchandise.
By employing data under the guise of play, workers can be subject to more discipline and become more anxious about their productivity at the expense of their well-being. It has gone from just spying on your data to analyzing your behavior and directing you to perform certain actions, it’s worse than what is shown in Black Mirror (8).
In light of this, it is no longer surprising that major companies invest billions of dollars in the world of games, and Chinese companies – in particular – have the leadership in this field. Over the past 10 years, Chinese tech giant Tencent has either invested or directly acquired several of the world’s largest video game companies, including Activision Blizzard, League of Legends maker Riot Games, and Epic. Games, the maker of the game “Fortnite” and the communication platform on which video game players gather, “Discord”.
Americans spend far more time on Chinese-supported video games than other Chinese apps like TikTok. While Chinese companies have long been content to invest in well-established Western studios, Chinese developers are now making huge inroads.
Are Chinese video games a real threat to the national security of the United States? For policymakers in Washington, the answer is absolutely: yes. China is already using games to spread its soft power and collect data on US citizens as the current administration has made clear, more subtle that Beijing’s access to millions of gamers’ computers gives its spies an unparalleled opportunity to use games to conduct intelligence operations (9).
The most immediate threat to national security is access to the data that China has gained from its millions of game installs. Data collected from games can be exploited much more easily than, say, Tik Tok data. In most cases, players who play online, as mentioned before, must provide their real names, payment information, dates of birth and locations, and they create static audio samples using in-game chats. In the hands of a Chinese gaming company, it is reasonable to assume that the data is stored in China in one of the cloud services owned by Alibaba or Tencent.
The next question is: What can the Ministry of State Security in Beijing do with video game data? Modern games come with companion software that runs on your computer with the same privileges as an antivirus, meaning it can monitor just about anything your computer can do, undetected. Instead of tasking spies with risky transfers of sensitive data, a creative Chinese intelligence officer could use this access simply to put any hacked files into game folders. The possibilities here are endless.
What is the solution? It would be an exaggeration for countries to completely ban any game backed by Chinese investors. A better approach might be to evaluate video games based on transparency. Countries could also be required to store sensitive data with trusted cloud service providers, or use laws to force Tencent and Chinese game companies to get rid of games that are believed to be collecting sensitive data for their players.
—————————————————————————————-
Sources:
1- Game Over: Chinese Company Deploys Facial Recognition to Limit Youths’ Play:
2- China’s Tencent imposes controls to tackle gaming addiction among children:
3- Online Gaming Motivations Scale: Development and Validation:
4- Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity:
5- The Industry of Landlords: Exploring the Assetization of the Triple-A Game:
6- US Consumers Appreciate In-Game Ads:
7- How Uber uses psychological tricks to push its Drivers’ buttons:
8- ‘MissionRacer’: How Amazon turned the tedium of warehouse work into a game:
9- If You Play Videogames, China May Be Spying on You:
If we were to set one major rule for the world of video games, it would be this: whenever electronics companies place restrictions on games, children and teens will find ways to overcome them. But the only exception to this rule – and apparently others – is China, where minor players are required to log in using their real names and ID numbers as part of nationwide regulations aimed at limiting screen time and controlling internet addiction. Before that, in 2019, the country imposed an electronic ban that prevented those under the age of 18 from playing games between 10 pm and 8 am.
But that doesn’t mean the scheming teens raised the flag of surrender, and their most notable ploy was to use their parents’ devices or IDs to get around the restrictions. Realizing that ploy, Chinese internet giant Tencent said this week that it will close this loophole by deploying facial recognition technology in its video games (1).
On the broader scene, it looks like more than a game of trickery between authorities and companies and between teenagers. In the end, these measures divided the public into two groups, one advocating and championing the measures, arguing that they would help combat Internet addiction in adolescents in a country that classifies games as “spiritual opium” (2), in turn, opponents were skeptical about how the authorities monitor and use the data that She collects them, accusing Tencent of playing an excessively paternalistic role.
Of course, the use of data by a country to monitor its residents is an aggressive act, and it undermines the privacy of underage users, but Tencent is not the only video game company that tracks its players, and this phenomenon is not entirely new, all over the world video games, It is one of the most widely adopted forms of digital media, installing networks to monitor and control users’ devices.
Spy in my house
First of all, let’s mention the main idea behind all video games. We can simply define these games as systems that translate inputs – such as hand movement or gestures – into various electrical or electronic outputs that can be read by a machine. User behaviors, by behaving in ways that comply with the rules of the game and hardware specifications, are analyzed and converted into data by the game’s algorithms.
Sociologists Jennifer Whitson and Bart Simon argue that games are in fact systems that easily allow human action to be reduced to knowable and predictable forms. According to this definition, video games are a natural means of tracking, and researchers have long argued that large data sets about players’ in-game activities are a rich source for understanding player psychology and cognition.
In one of the studies that followed (3), researchers analyzed player activity data recorded on the World of Warcraft Armory, a database that records all the actions and movements a player made while playing the game (how many monsters he killed, how many times he died the player while playing, how many fish he caught or goals he scored, etc.). The researchers used this data to infer players’ personality characteristics, concluding that there was a relationship between players rated as being more mindful in their playing style, and a tendency to spend more time doing repetitive and boring in-game tasks such as fishing. On the contrary, those who fell in the early stages were less persistent and more hurried.
Sure, the relationship between personality, identity, and video game activity is too complex to be formulated in a conclusive or direct way, but – despite this – game companies are increasingly realizing the value of large data sets in studying gamers’ tendencies and preferences, and the things they are likely to spend money on and configures the appropriate content for each player based on this data (4).
To date, there is no clear tally of companies monitoring their players, but recent sources state that major developers (5), such as Epic, EA and Activision, state that they collect data in their licensing agreements. As this practice expanded, a new industry emerged, led by companies selling “data analytics” tools to game developers.
These data analytics tools promise to make users more sustainable by providing clear statements about their preferences. Such analytics were previously only available to the largest video game studios, which could hire data scientists to capture and analyze data, and software engineers to develop internal analytics tools, but they are now being popularized across the industry by companies like Unity, GameAnalytics, or Amazon Web Services.
Developers may use data from these middleware companies to improve their game, but our data is not only valuable in fine-tuning the design. Increasingly, game companies are exploiting this data to get the user’s attention through targeted ads (6). These ads serve many purposes, such as facilitating user acquisition and promoting the brand, similar to the approach of digital advertising giants Google and Meta (the parent company of Facebook), where The data generated by system users via clicks, likes, and interests is supposed to make it easier to target these users with desirable ads.
In other words, video game companies are trying to harness the billions of interactions that happen within their games to create new revenue streams. These companies sell their users’ attention to advertisers, and collect data to build a better match between users and advertisers, based on the advertiser’s specifications or the software that is acting on the advertiser’s behalf.
Worse than Black Mirror
It doesn’t stop there, as games and their technology seem to invade our lives in ways we didn’t expect. Take the example of Uber, which has suffered for many years in its turbulent relationship with drivers who have long complained of low wages and unfair treatment.
Uber has used video game technologies, graphics and non-cash rewards to get drivers to work longer, sometimes at less profitable hours and locations. To keep drivers on the road, the company has tapped into some people’s tendency to set earnings goals, alerting them that they are very close to hitting a valuable goal when they try to sign out. The company has also started sending approval alerts for the next trip even before the driver has finished their current trip (7). Amazon uses similar “gamification” techniques, in which it awards workers points for doing certain work, with the points being exchanged for “swag bucks,” an Amazon-owned currency that can be used to purchase Amazon logo stickers, clothing or other merchandise.
By employing data under the guise of play, workers can be subject to more discipline and become more anxious about their productivity at the expense of their well-being. It has gone from just spying on your data to analyzing your behavior and directing you to perform certain actions, it’s worse than what is shown in Black Mirror (8).
In light of this, it is no longer surprising that major companies invest billions of dollars in the world of games, and Chinese companies – in particular – have the leadership in this field. Over the past 10 years, Chinese tech giant Tencent has either invested or directly acquired several of the world’s largest video game companies, including Activision Blizzard, League of Legends maker Riot Games, and Epic. Games, the maker of the game “Fortnite” and the communication platform on which video game players gather, “Discord”.
Americans spend far more time on Chinese-supported video games than other Chinese apps like TikTok. While Chinese companies have long been content to invest in well-established Western studios, Chinese developers are now making huge inroads.
Are Chinese video games a real threat to the national security of the United States? For policymakers in Washington, the answer is absolutely: yes. China is already using games to spread its soft power and collect data on US citizens as the current administration has made clear, more subtle that Beijing’s access to millions of gamers’ computers gives its spies an unparalleled opportunity to use games to conduct intelligence operations (9).
The most immediate threat to national security is access to the data that China has gained from its millions of game installs. Data collected from games can be exploited much more easily than, say, Tik Tok data. In most cases, players who play online, as mentioned before, must provide their real names, payment information, dates of birth and locations, and they create static audio samples using in-game chats. In the hands of a Chinese gaming company, it is reasonable to assume that the data is stored in China in one of the cloud services owned by Alibaba or Tencent.
The next question is: What can the Ministry of State Security in Beijing do with video game data? Modern games come with companion software that runs on your computer with the same privileges as an antivirus, meaning it can monitor just about anything your computer can do, undetected. Instead of tasking spies with risky transfers of sensitive data, a creative Chinese intelligence officer could use this access simply to put any hacked files into game folders. The possibilities here are endless.
What is the solution? It would be an exaggeration for countries to completely ban any game backed by Chinese investors. A better approach might be to evaluate video games based on transparency. Countries could also be required to store sensitive data with trusted cloud service providers, or use laws to force Tencent and Chinese game companies to get rid of games that are believed to be collecting sensitive data for their players.
—————————————————————————————-
Sources:
1- Game Over: Chinese Company Deploys Facial Recognition to Limit Youths’ Play:
2- China’s Tencent imposes controls to tackle gaming addiction among children:
3- Online Gaming Motivations Scale: Development and Validation:
4- Do you identify as a gamer? Gender, race, sexuality, and gamer identity:
5- The Industry of Landlords: Exploring the Assetization of the Triple-A Game:
6- US Consumers Appreciate In-Game Ads:
7- How Uber uses psychological tricks to push its Drivers’ buttons:
8- ‘MissionRacer’: How Amazon turned the tedium of warehouse work into a game:
9- If You Play Videogames, China May Be Spying on You: