Industry supervision should be based on "establishing first and then breaking", focusing on "seeking progress while maintaining stability"
On December 22, the National Press and Publication Administration solicited public comments on the "Measures for the Administration of Online Games (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)". The draft proposes to stipulate that excessive use of games and high consumption should be restricted. Online games are not allowed to set up inducing rewards such as daily login, first recharge, and continuous recharge. Online game publishing business units must not provide or condone high-priced transactions of virtual props through methods such as speculation or auctions. All online games must set user recharge limits, and pop-up warnings should be given to users of irrational consumption behaviors.
Although this is only a request for comments, the draft can also represent an attitude, a trend. The target of this policy is mainly adults, and the control is very detailed, and the details of login and recharge are included. This kind of policy draft that strongly interferes with the market represents a regulatory attitude that will naturally directly affect the game industry.
Therefore, the capital market immediately gave its own feedback. Affected by the news, Hong Kong stock Tencent once fell 14%, Hong Kong stock NetEase fell to 27%, the Hang Seng Technology Index fell by more than 4.5%, and A-share game stocks fell collectively. Some people estimate that after the policy, the entire market value evaporated by 500 billion. It can be said that the gaming industry has suddenly encountered a black swan event.
It's not that the game industry can't be managed, the key is that it must conform to the laws of the industry and the principles of the market. Yu Guoming, director of the Academic Committee of the School of Journalism and Communication of Beijing Normal University, doctoral supervisor, and Changjiang Scholar Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, believes that even if the necessary regulation is necessary for some current game phenomena, it is necessary to design policies from the perspective of digital consumption and the development of the game industry.
If you don't respect the law, you will damage the market and directly affect consumption.
At present, the domestic game market has broken the 300 billion mark for the first time, with 668 million users, both of which are a record high. E-sports events derived from games are now also an industry with an annual output value of nearly 140 billion. Driving adult consumption out of games does not mean that they will go to Xi, it is more likely that they will do nothing, brush short videos, chase dramas, and consumption will disappear like this. At present, China is a critical moment to promote consumption and promote economic recovery, and game-related consumption is a very important aspect.
If you consume less, you will find less employment. Chen Jingwei, professor and doctoral supervisor of Communication University of China, and deputy dean of the School of Animation and Digital Arts, said very sadly, he said: "We have always encouraged children to do innovation, independent games, functional games, games of traditional Chinese culture, and games for social service. But games can't be made with love, creators have to survive, recover costs, and compete with commercial games for approval. The situation was not conducive to the survival of indie game teams before, and now there is no hope at all. The graduate who was still insisting on indie games just now sent me a message to me, how pessimistic and pessimistic I should be. In commercial games, I don't even have the strength to cry. ”
Consumption is gone, employment is gone, and more importantly, expectations are gone.
Originally, things were going in a good direction. The Politburo meeting held on December 8 proposed that "next year, we must insist on seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting stability with progress, and establishing first and then breaking". A few days later, the Central Economic Conference mentioned the statement again. The meeting demanded that next year, we should persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting stability through progress, establishing first and then breaking down, and come up with more policies that are conducive to stabilizing expectations, growth, and employment, and actively forging ahead in changing the mode, adjusting the structure, improving quality, and increasing efficiency, so as to continuously consolidate the foundation for stability and improvement.
The saying of "establishing first and then breaking down" emphasizes that policies need to be built on the basis of the conditions of "establishing first," and there can be no hasty, arbitrary, and reckless work of "breaking." These statements will go a long way in reshaping expectations and boosting economic development next year.
However, unfortunately, just a dozen days later, the game industry ushered in the strictest and most detailed control policies. This is a policy of breaking first and then standing up, which brings not "stability", but "chaos", and panic in the capital market. The introduction of such a policy after the central economic work has hit the expectation that it is being regathered. With examples of platform economy, real estate, and education and training in the past, other industries will also panic, have doubts, and worry that it will be their turn next.
Expectations are gone, and the long-term prospects for technological development will also be affected. Games are the most nourishing consumption of technology, far more than KTV, billiards, playing mahjong, playing script killing, and watching concerts, which can promote the development of technology and promote China's technological catch-up.
The China Audio-video and Digital Publishing Association and the Industrial Culture Development Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology jointly released the report "The Source Power of Super Digital Scenes: Research on Game Technology and Innovation Application". The cross-domain contribution rate of game technology is 18.65% to the progress of chips, 31.37% to AI, 51.08% to cloud computing, 46.76% to the mobile phone industry, and 57.19% to autonomous driving.
It's not hard to figure out why, for example, the performance of mobile phones is too much for everyday applications, and isn't it just for a game when an adult buys a high-performance Huawei phone? Looking back at the entire history of IT technology, the same is true.
Nvidia is the hottest chip company in the era of large models, and its GPU is the underlying hardware foundation of the era of large models, and it has also become one of the most important neck technologies in the United States. But before that, Nvidia was a gaming chip company that drew profits from the gaming industry. As a gaming chip company, Nvidia has never been under ethical pressure, and neither have those gaming companies. If it had been banned and suppressed at that time, the United States would have lost its current leading position in AI, and mankind's entry into the AI era would have been delayed for many years.
It is precisely because games have such complex and extensive economic, technological, and social impacts that policies on games should also be considered comprehensively and acted carefully.
The Central Economic Work Conference in December proposed to enhance the consistency of macroeconomic policy orientation. Strengthen the coordination and cooperation of fiscal, monetary, employment, industrial, regional, science and technology, environmental protection and other policies, incorporate non-economic policies into the assessment of the consistency of macro policy orientation, strengthen policy coordination, and ensure that the same direction is exerted and a joint force is formed.
This means that each department should not just start from a single goal, but should consider the policy as a whole, and must avoid the fallacy of synthesis. You can't manage the part of your own one-acre and three-point field, because many times, what is right is only what it is right for the part, and it must be right for the whole. Gaming is an area where all these considerations come together. It is closely related to the development of multiple industries, the stability of the stock market, economic development, the development of IT technology, and even social stability.
It is not incomprehensible to issue such a draft for consultation and express stricter supervision, and the relevant departments have their own difficulties. In public opinion on the Internet, many people are strongly opposed to the game.
However, this kind of public opinion is based on an erroneous perception. With the popularization of smart phones, a large number of retirees have gone online, and they have more leisure time, more speeches on the Internet, and a large amount of voice, forming an illusion of mainstream public opinion. They do not recognize the significance of games to economic development and technological development, and only think that games are entertainment and dispensable, and the strictest control is beneficial and harmless.
The other type of opponent is parents, however, there are extreme users and extreme consumption behaviors in any market, but this is a very small minority. It is precisely because it is a very small number that there is news reporting value, but the policy cannot be based on extreme cases, and the method of managing extreme users should be used to manage all users and all industries.
It is possible for the policy to respond to wrong public opinion. Previously, Henan's wheat green storage, which was a common thing in agriculture, and wheat harvesting was also market-oriented, and there was no basis for introducing policies. These agricultural professionals and think tanks naturally know. However, under the suspicion that short videos endanger national security, a policy of banning wheat green reserves was really introduced later. To some extent, the strictest and most detailed regulation of the game is also due to the same mechanism.
The industry regulatory policy must first be in line with the macro trend of the national society, which is the main premise. The industry regulatory policy should also be determined, not to be disturbed by low-level public opinion, and to make long-term and holistic judgments with professionalism, scientificity and regularity. Such an industry policy can be conducive to the development of the industry and the establishment of good expectations of the society.
At a deeper level, in terms of attitude towards games, the whole society needs to learn Xi from the historical experience of IT technology and AI technology, keep pace with the times, and realize the significance of games, which is no longer limited to entertainment.
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