The Chinese game Happy Farm (2008) was included in Wired s list of The 15 Most Influential Games of the Decade at 14, for its major influence on global social network games, particularly for having inspired a dozen Facebook clones, the largest being Zynga s FarmVille. 17 A number of other games have since used similar game mechanics, such as Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond, Happy Pig Farm, 18 19 Farm Town, Country Story, Barn Buddy, Sunshine Ranch, and Happy Harvest, as well as parodies such as Jungle Extreme and Farm Villain. 20 21.

Revenues from China make up around 25 of nearly US100 billion video game industry as of 2018, and since 2015 has exceeded the contribution to the global market from the United States.

Because of its market size, China has been described as the Games Industry Capital of the World and is home to some of the largest video game companies.

China has also been a major factor in the growth of esports, both in player talent and in revenue.

With the introduction of the second generation of home consoles in the mid-1980s, a new black market of illegally-imported goods and video game clones arose to avoid the high costs of imports, driving away foreign companies.

Notably, China imposed a near-complete ban on video game consoles in 2000, fearing the addicting-like impact of games on its youth; the ban was ultimately lifted in 2015.

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During that time, Chinas video game market greatly expanded in the area of computer games, including massively multiplayer online games (MMOs), social games, and mobile games, all which could be free to play titles with monetization to appeal to the average lower income of Chinese players.

This massive growth from 2007 to 2013 led the games publishers and operating companies like Tencent and Netease to become large global companies.

Despite the legitimate growth of the industry, Chinas video game market continues to be offset by illegal importing and intellectual copyright theft.

All games released there must go through a government approval process to affirm content is appropriate for the values of the nation; a 2018 approvals freeze, a result from the government reorganizing the agencies responsible for this process, caused numerous game releases to be held up, reflected in economic factors over the next year.

Additionally, the government fears the potential for its youth to become addicted to video games, and have required games to include anti-addiction measures to limit playtime.

Part of the reform was modernization of its media systems, helping to boost economic prosperity for citizens.

As such, China saw little of arcade games or the first generation of home consoles, like the Atari 2600.

By this point, Chinas economy had significantly improved, and Japan started to make inroads into selling consoles into China.

However, importing these into China was costly, with a 130 tariff on hardware and games along with value-added taxes.

Console systems were in high demand, but because of the high costs of importing, only few foreign companies did so.

This created the video game clone grey market in China reverse manufacturing of consoles and games at much lower costs than imported system, even if this required dubious or illegal copyright infringement.

Outright copyright theft (piracy) was also rampant in China due to the countrys poor intellectual property controls.

The sales of cloned console hardware and games outpaced that of legitimate imports, and further drove many foreign companies away since they could not compete with this area, such that by the 1990s, most video game systems in China were manufactured there.

The impact on youth was particularly of concern, as video games were known to detract students from schoolwork, leaving them unprepared to enter Chinas college system.

This situation was partially created by Chinas one-child policy, with sibling-less children having few others to interact with and little to do outside of school.

The anti-addiction facet also discouraged foreign companies from trying to break into the Chinese market.

The State Council passed a bill crafted by seven ministries specifically aimed at video games.

The bill established certain provisions on video game content and regulations on operations of Internet cafs and arcades.

The most significant facet of this bill was a ban on the production, import, and sale of consoles and arcade machines.

This ban was not absolute, as it allowed for some consoles to be released in China, notably Sonys PlayStation 2 in 2004 and several of Nintendos consoles rebranded under the iQue partnership.

However, with the restriction on game imports and their content, these consoles did not catch on in China.

The ban did not include games available on personal computers (PC), and as a result, the PC video game market in China flourished over the next fifteen years.

Internet cafs flourished, growing from 40,000 in 2000 to over 110,000 by 2002, and have remained numerous since.

As a result, Chinese gamers frequently visit the arcades to play action games, particularly fighting games, and occasionally unlicensed arcade ports of popular PC or mobile games such as Angry Birds or Plants vs.

Developers of legitimate games in China recognized that, to compete with this black market, they had to develop games that had a free or low upfront cost model but offered a way to monetize their games over time.

Many Chinese-developed games became online games offering numerous microtransactions to recoup costs; such games could be offered at Internet cafs, which became a popular option for Chinese players that could not afford computer hardware, even as the price of computing equipment dropped over the next decade.

This created a boon of massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the Chinese market and which helped to establish market dominance of companies like Tencent, Perfect World, and NetEase.

PC cafes proliferated in urban centers as Chinas population continued to grow.

Western free-to-play and subscription-based games like League of Legends and World of Warcraft, poised to take advantage of this model, also became successful.

A government report claimed that 6 of the countrys teenaged population, about 3.5 of the countrys population, were playing online games more than 40 hours a week.

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In July 2007, the government required that online game publishers and operates incorporate anti-addiction software on their games, specifically by monitoring how long underaged persons played.

If a minor played for more than three hours straight, the game was to wipe half of any in-game currency that had earned that session, and lose all credits if played for more than five hours.

Additionally, these systems were required to have the player to log in using their national identification.

However, at the time of implementation, not all publishers incorporated the required controls, and for those that did, players would find ways around the limitations, such as using family member IDs, or otherwise would simply play past the time requirements as there was nothing else to do beyond the video game.

A number of other games have since used similar game mechanics, such as Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond, Happy Pig Farm, 18 19 Farm Town, Country Story, Barn Buddy, Sunshine Ranch, and Happy Harvest, as well as parodies such as Jungle Extreme and Farm Villain.