No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world

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• 00:00

  This is The Guardian.

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  The Guardian Archive Long Read.

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  Hello, my name's Oliver Holmes.

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  I'm the author of No Cults, No Politics, No Ghouls.

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  How China Censors the Video Game World, which was published as a Guardian article for the Long Read section in 2021.

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  This story was a look at the impact of China's extremely restrictive controls on culture and how those restrictions

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  could affect artistic freedom in the world's largest entertainment industry.

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  I wanted to write about video games, which I absolutely adore,

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  but I felt that their impact on society was often overlooked by the mainstream press,

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  which focuses on books, TV, film, and the wider arts.

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  That means as journalists, we are missing the biggest cultural stories of our age.

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  Now, China is the world's largest market for video games.

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  Today, the number of Chinese gamers is twice the population of the US.

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  But China is not a fully open society.

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  Its government is highly repressive.

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  So how does that come up against a hugely creative and artistic industry?

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  There's a tension there.

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  When people are listening to this, I 'd love for them to think about how culture impacts your worldview,

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  depending on where you grew up.

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  If you watched Top Gun or played Call of Duty games, what worldview did that give you?

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