Cost and standards have become a new challenge for game anti-addiction, and uninsured work still requires the joint efforts of many parties in society

On December 15, the "2021 China Game Industry Annual Conference Minors Guardian sub-forum and the implementation of the new anti-addiction regulations" sponsored by the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association was held in Guangzhou.

Zhang Yijun, first vice chairman of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association and chairman of the Game Working Committee of the China Audio-Visual and Digital Publishing Association, said that since the release of the new anti-addiction regulations and self-discipline conventions, through the joint efforts of all parties, some new progress has been made in the protection of minors. In the future, game companies still need to improve their positions, always put the protection of minors in the top priority; focus on the key points, be good at grasping key issues to carry out work, such as content security, real-name authentication, etc.; unblocking and combining, not only to see the current situation, but also to focus on the future; to gather forces and form a pattern of joint participation of the whole society.

Underage protection initiatives continue to increase

Ge Subiao, vice president of China Search of Xinhua News Agency, revealed that since the "Reporting Platform to Prevent Minors from Addicting to Online Games" sponsored by the State Press and Publication Administration and undertaken by China Search has been officially launched, 341 anti-addiction illegal games (platforms) have been accepted and verified, involving 241 game companies and 63 game download channels.

At the same time, game companies are also constantly increasing the relevant measures for the protection of minors.

Zheng Lei, head of Tencent's uninsured system and general manager of Tencent's user platform department, revealed that Tencent strictly implements the "three defenses and one hit", that is, relies on the authoritative data platform of public security to strictly manage minor accounts; in response to the problem of children "fraudulently using" adult identities to bypass supervision, take financial-level face recognition verification, and upgrade protection through a large number of innovative measures; provide control tools to parents outside the game; severely crack down on online black and gray production, and protect the rights and interests of minors online.

At the same time, Zheng Lei also shared the relevant results of Tencent's game anti-addiction. According to it, as of November, an average of 6.86 million accounts triggered face recognition during the login process every day, and more than 70% of the accounts were included in anti-addiction supervision due to refusal or failure to verify. In September this year, Tencent Games' domestic proportion of minors' game time fell to 0.7%.

In addition to Tencent, representatives of game companies such as NetEase Games, Perfect World, and Lilith Games who attended the meeting all said that the company has set up an independent juvenile protection department to cope with the changing situation of juvenile protection.

Wu Xinxin, deputy director of NetEase Game Marketing, said that in May this year, NetEase Games set up a department dedicated to serving minors, "NetEase Game Minors Protection Center", and set up working groups such as user and policy research, anti-addiction product development, network environment governance, and network security education through the operation of independent departments to build a new juvenile protection mechanism from different dimensions.

At the same time, Wu Xinxin also said that the company has built an artificial intelligence protection system based on deep learning to identify minors, covering hundreds of different types of games under NetEase, and the system can judge the characteristics of players from multiple dimensions such as real name situation, landing time, payment habits, etc., and timely intercept and verify and effectively control suspected minor players.

In addition, Hu Rui, vice president of Lilith, also said that the company has further strengthened the content control of internal affairs and after the event on the basis of time limit charging, real-name authentication and face recognition. At the beginning of product development, the content risk control department will intervene in advance to review the characters, settings, world views and other content in the game; after the game is tested, it will continue to strictly review the subsequent development content to ensure that there will be no illegal content such as wrong value orientation, bloody violence, and obscene pornography in the game. At the same time, the control of content also extends to all aspects of advertising and community management in the process of game operation.

Uninsured work still faces challenges and requires the joint efforts of many parties

In Zheng Lei's view, after the introduction of new regulations on the prevention of minors' addiction, the thinking of game manufacturers' protection of minors still needs to be further transformed. Zheng Lei said that after the implementation of the new anti-addiction regulations, there have been many derivative problems, such as minors fraudulently using other people's accounts, buying and renting numbers to bypass the anti-addiction system, the rise of black and gray production that "helps to lift anti-addiction", etc. The problem faced by game manufacturers is no longer the planning of the juvenile protection system, but the need to think about how to cooperate with all sectors of society to coordinate to cope with more complex challenges.

Zheng Lei also revealed in an interview that in the process of anti-addiction, real-name verification and additional measures to identify suspected minors will bring huge cost consumption, and the annual cost consumption is hundreds of millions. At the same time, due to the non-compliance of the anti-addiction system and standards of major game manufacturers, there is a loophole that minors continue to play games in Company B after Company A has used up the amount of game time.

"On the whole, from the industry level, whether it is led by the Press and Publication Administration or jointly initiated by industry self-discipline, only when everyone joins in, it is the key to fundamentally solving industry problems", Zheng Lei said, to do a good job in the protection of minors, major game companies do not "sweep the snow in front of the door", but to work together to build a unified minor protection system for the whole industry, and further explore more and better methods and ways.

"For minors, online games are not only entertainment products, but also educational products, cultural products, and spiritual products," said Zhang Haibo, executive deputy director of the Media and Education Working Committee of the China Youth Palace Association. Social responsibility is not only the aspect of keeping the bottom line, the game itself is part of social education, and it is a very important spiritual food for minors after 00 and 10 on the Internet.

Zhang Haibo took the "functional game" that game manufacturers are more enthusiastic about recently as an example. He believes that game companies should not only engage in functional games, but also pay more attention to the functionalization of games. The game itself has a variety of functions, but now the attention to the function of education is not enough, thinking about how to strengthen and optimize the learning education function, more effective than launching a functional game alone.

At the same time, Zhang Haibo also said that the role of all sectors of society and families in the protection of minors is also very important. After a decade of continuous tracking, there are more than 300,000 pieces of data, and he concluded that it is very similar to the film research of more than 100 years ago, that is, children of different ages are affected by online games differently, and different family backgrounds and different family supervision models have different effects on children's addiction to games. Therefore, it is necessary to make network security education the same as traffic safety, food safety, and fire safety, and become the specific content of school safety and literacy education.

In this regard, Zhang Haibo stressed the importance of the combination of dredging and blocking, "The social education problem, including the control of 'double reduction' and game anti-addiction, or the brake mode." But in the long-term model, it is always development-oriented. He added that on the one hand, game companies should adapt to policies, but also focus on the long term, and in the case of bottom-line thinking, they should start from the perspective of children.

Written by: Nandu reporter Chen Peijun