Parent-child contracts to trade video game playing time for domestic chores

Every day, between 55 and 80 million people in China use their mobile phones to play the popular Honor of Kings video game (known in the West as Arena of Valor), which makes it the most successful game of all time, ahead of other phenomena such as Clash Royale and Candy Crush. The video game industry in China is booming, with revenue projections of up to $35 billion expected by 2021, and the consequent impact on children has become a problem of national concern.

The developer of the popular video game, Tencent, had already imposed a playing time limit for minors, but, after seeing that many were getting round the restrictions by creating fake profiles, the company has now decided to go one step further and is studying the introduction of specific contracts that children will need to agree with their parents in order to continue playing their games. The company proposes that minors will be able to negotiate extra playing time by doing jobs around the house or achieving certain academic goals.

Tencent is a Chinese technology conglomerate that operates on a global scale. The Tencent Games division is the most profitable company within its sector worldwide and owner of other Western multinationals such as Riot Games (developer of League of Legends, one of the leading professional eSports games) and SuperCell (creator of the popular Clash of Clans and Clash Royale). Tencent also owns the WeChat and QQ social media networks, and users need to be registered on these platforms to be able to play.

Designed to be addictive

The success of games like Arena of Valor lies in "the tactical aspect, the social characteristic of playing alongside other people from around the world, the personalization of the characters (through micropayments ) and the competitive aspect by facilitating the potential to establish professional leagues", points out Joan Arnedo, director of the UOC Master's Degree in Video Game Design and Development.

UOC Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences professor Sílvia Sumell outlines four factors that make video games addictive to children and teenagers:

• Accessibility: free or cheap and easy to obtain
• Social recognition of achievements
• The publication of results on social media networks
• The immersion component in terms of the game itself: that calls for user engagement

This constitutes the perfect combination for a game to appeal to children and teenagers, at a time when "leisure activities have changed and are now far more passive and individual and, above all, more technology-focused", the psychologist explains.

Negotiating a contract: a mistake

The fact that the game is linked to a social media profile makes ”status-seeking one of the main driving forces”, which, Arnedo predicts, will compel users to keep coming up with strategies to get around the limitations.

"Using games as a punishment or reward places greater value on them than they have", warns Sumell, who does not consider children entering into contracts with their parents "as the most appropriate" course of action, as the setting of limits "needs to be down to the parents and the online world should not be the ones empowered with proposing the solutions" in relation to video game abuse.

Sumell believes that "families should be capable of demonstrating to children that video games are not the only way to spend their leisure time", and considers family protection factors, such as good channels of communication, the setting of clear rules and boundaries, the proposal of alternative joint leisure activities and consistency with regards to the use of ICT, to be key.

Exportable model

Although the company's decision to establish these contracts is limited to the Chinese market, the potential exists for this strategy to be extrapolated to other countries where the company has interests. “Criticism of games designed with the aim of promoting addictive behaviours (business is business) is nothing new in this industry and has recently become a central topic of debate and reflection", says Joan Arnedo, who goes on to point out that we have already seen cases in which Chinese legislation has set the precedent in terms of video game company liability, which has then been exported to the rest of the world. The clearest example of this is the decision to make it mandatory for video games that include payment content based on random rewards to disclose the relative odds to the player prior to completing the purchase. Apple has already made this a prerequisite for the distribution of this kind of game through the App Store.