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China will ban games that include same-sex relationship, effeminate men and is looking to crack down ... [+] on anything the state deems immoral.

China is set to crack down on video games with content the state deems immoral. According to a leaked memo, games must have correct values in order to be approved by the Chinese government, as well as an accurate understanding of Chinese history and culture.

The memo was leaked to The South China Morning Post, and details the types of content the governments regulators will no longer approve. This includes:

Sorry Mass Effect, you tick off all these boxes.

This comes after China recently announced new regulations to the amount of online gaming kids and teens are allowed to play in a week to just three hours. China has also cracked down on TV, banning effeminate or sissy men and instructing broadcasters to promote excellent Chinese traditional culture instead.

Ive written about censorship plenty in the past, though more frequently about efforts in the US to have problematic content banned (where it is thankfully much harder to do). I think Chinas censoriousness can help serve as a cautionary tale for anyone not sold on the importance of free speech.

Most recently, I wrote about the Geena Davis Institutes report on violent video games and how video games reinforce notions of toxic masculinity.

"Hyperexposure to these kinds of tropes is very impactful," Davis said during a fireside chat discussing the report. "What we're exposed to over and over becomes a sort of reality for us. Media and games, the things we see in our popular culture, have a tremendous impact in shaping who we are. So as you can imagine, playing these games over and over or watching people play these games can have a significant impact about what you think is the actual way that men should be, or what masculinity should look like."

Its curious to see how much Davis and the Chinese state agree (and it was Ashely Judd saying this before Davis). Both believe that video games impact our understanding of masculinity. Davis worries that games will make men and boys more violent and sexist; the Communist Party in China is concerned that games will make men sissies. They have diametrically opposed views other than this belief that games cause some form of real world harm and must be regulated to prevent that harm.

The same goes with a new open letter to Rockstar Gameswhich I discuss on my YouTube channelfrom a group of LGBTQ+ game devs in the UK asking the studio to remove harmful transphobic content from the Enhanced version of GTA V.

Then there is the attempt, by a surprising number of game developers and media, to ban or deplatform the upcoming tactical shooter Six Days In Fallujah because they believe it will somehow inflict harm on Arabic people and Muslims.

Rewind further and you may recall the tale of Hatred, a game about a guy going out and killing innocent people thats little more than a murder simulator. People wanted that game banned and for a moment, Valve compliedpulling Hatred from its digital shelf, though only briefly. Valve boss Gabe Newell intervened and Hatred was returned to Steam, though it received an Adults Only rating, something typically reserved for graph sexual content.

At the time, I wrote: Getting excited over games being banned, censored, or otherwise restricted is a lot more troubling to me than killing pixels.

Because in a video game thats all you can ever do. Whether youre shooting people in Call Of Duty, brutalizing orcs in Shadow of Mordor or demon-slaying in DOOM, at the end of the day its all just pixels and the act of killing pixelswith a gamepad or mouse-and-keyboardis a far cry from doing the real thing. If GTA V made us all car thieves and killers wed have 100 million murderers on our hands.

Australia banned Hotline Miami 2 over a rape scene in that incredibly bloody and violent game. But that scene, like the game itself, is parody. We do not need the government to pick and choose whats appropriate for us to see or read or play, if for no other reason than the fact that the state is not subtle or nuanced enough to distinguish whats satire and whats not.

A Clockwork Orange

It is impossible to balance the scales between security and freedom in a way that satisfies everyone. If we are worried that art can cause harm, its a natural instinct to censor art in order to prevent harm. But someone always has to define what harm means and who is threatened by it.

The Chinese governments definition is very different from Geena Daviss or Ashley Judds. China wants to ban same-sex romances while Out Gaming wants Rockstar to self-censor GTA V because it includes trans sex workers. The motives may be different but the results are the same: Censorship of art in the name of preventing harm due to the misguided belief that games make people violent or toxic or gay or whatever.

At my Substack, we have a Book Club and our first book was Anthony Burgesss A Clockwork Orange. I chose this novel for a few reasons. All the books in the Book Club have movie adaptations that we can watch and compare, and Stanley Kubricks film version is excellent and controversial (the second entry is Starship Troopersyou should absolutely subscribe!). But I was also interested in Burgesss dystopia and what it says about the importance of human freedom.

Burgess believed that if we took away the ability to choose between good and evil we would become no more than a clockwork orange, not a person at all. How can we truly be good if we have no choice in the matter? We are little more than a machine at that point. Its our agency, our free will, that allows us to be truly good. We must have the ability to eat the forbidden fruit in order to turn it down.

When the film was released in the UK it caused a moral panic. There were reports of copycats dressing up like Alex and his droogs and calls for the film to be banned. Anthony Burgess said at the time:

To try and fasten any responsibility on art as the cause of life seems to me to put the case the wrong way around. Art consists of reshaping life, but it does not create life, nor cause life. Furthermore, to attribute powerful suggestive qualities to a film is at odds with the scientifically accepted view that, even after deep hypnosis in a posthypnotic state, people cannot be made to do things which are at odds with their natures.

In other words, while some bad people might take inspiration from A Clockwork Orange, they were already bad. The movie didnt make them bad anymore than a video game will make you a car thief or a killer. Most people will not watch A Clockwork Orange and leave the theater a rapist or a killer or a thug.

As I have written on countless occasions, the rise in popularity of video games can be correlated directly to the drop in violent crime. Correlation is not causation, obviously, but the fact remains that as weve found new, relatively inexpensive ways to entertain ourselvesfrom games to streaming servicesviolent crime has fallen. If games caused real world violence, surely we would see that actually play out in the real world.

Chinas regulations will greatly diminish the types of games Chinese gamers will be able to legally play. We should condemn this, naturally, but its important to remember why theyre doing it in the first place: To prevent harm, to enforce their version of what is morally right and good.

We may believe that our version of censorship is the good kind, that we are only trying to stop bad games from getting released or that were doing it to help women or children or the most vulnerable in society. But power doesnt work like that and we cant always assume that the good guysaka the people we agree withwill always be in charge.

Censorship, unlike art, really is a form of violence. We forget that at our own peril.

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Read more from the original source:
China Is Banning Same-Sex Relationships And 'Effeminate' Men From Video Games - Forbes