![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-6-300x180.png\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/image-7-300x199.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
How China censors the video game world<\/em>, The Long Read, The Guardian<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of the more important cultural paradoxes of our times is that the same thing can be both ubiquitous and rarely discussed in the forefront of the public square at the same time:<\/p>\n Video games.<\/p>\n This matters, for among other reasons, because as The Guardian pointed out in its Long Read this week, video games are “the world\u2019s largest entertainment industry” and “an entire generation is learning about the world through video games.”<\/p>\n Wow. No big deal to talk about there.<\/p>\n But where once we did, now not so much.<\/p>\n Normally, this would seem more than odd, but in what have seemed the oddest years ever recently, to put it mildly, the once important discussions about video games receded to the background, for many reasons. Mainly, in our view, for the same reason that so many other things did–drowned out by the\u00a0unparalleled\u00a0toxic political noise, which itself was created by and further created a dumbing down of–everything.<\/p>\n The Guardian piece is a welcome reminder of the importance of video games, in many dimensions.<\/p>\n And it focuses on China, for good reason,<\/p>\n As it notes:<\/p>\n “C<\/span><\/span>hina is the world\u2019s largest market for the world\u2019s largest entertainment industry. Today, the number of Chinese gamers, about 740 million<\/a>, is bigger than the entire populations of the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK combined. Its domestic market is worth more than $45bn a year<\/a>.”<\/span><\/p>\n The piece focuses on Chinese censorship, yet serves as a kind of primer on the whole industry, and reminds that the US and Europe have had the historical front spots in influence, often pushing their own less than praiseworthy objectives, as have others.<\/p>\n It also shows the interrelationship of nations, corporations, money and public opinion.<\/p>\n And in focusing on China as a rising power, the largest global market, and an increasing censor for its anti-democratic political and nationalistic agenda, the piece does an excellent job of presenting facts without bias per se.<\/p>\n Here it is:<\/p>\n “No cults, no politics, no ghouls: how China censors the video game world”<\/a><\/p>\n By Oliver Holmes, The Long Read, The Guardian, London, 15 July 2021<\/p>\n China\u2019s video game market is the world\u2019s biggest. International developers want in on it \u2013 but its rules on what is acceptable are growing increasingly harsh. Is it worth the compromise?<\/em><\/p>\n I<\/span><\/span>n the years after it was founded in 1999, the Swedish video game company Paradox Interactive quietly built a reputation for developing some of the best, and most hardcore, strategy games on the market. \u201cDeep, endless, complex, unyielding games,\u201d is how Shams Jorjani, the company\u2019s chief business development officer, describes Paradox\u2019s offerings. Most of its biggest hits, such as the middle ages-themed Crusader Kings, or Sengoku, in which you play as a 16th-century Japanese noble, were loosely based on history.<\/span><\/p>\n But in 2016, Paradox decided to try something a little different. Its new game, Stellaris, was a work of sprawling science fiction, set 200 years in the future. In this virtual universe, players could explore richly detailed galaxies, command their own fusion-powered starship fleets and fight with extraterrestrials to expand their space empires. Gamers could choose to play as the human race, or one of many alien species. (My personal favourite dresses in a lavish golden cape and has a head like an otter\u2019s, with soft reddish-brown fur, dark eyes and a black snout. Another type of alien is a sentient crystal that eats rocks.)<\/p>\n The game was an instant hit, selling more than 200,000 copies<\/a> in its first 24 hours. Later that year, Paradox decided to take Stellaris to China. This would mean navigating the country\u2019s notoriously tricky censorship rules, but given that China was, at the time, home to an estimated 560 million gamers, the commercial appeal was irresistible.<\/p>\n Paradox had been burned in China before. In 2004, the ministry of culture had banned<\/a> another one of its releases, Hearts of Iron, confiscating CD-Roms and shutting down websites that sold the game. It wasn\u2019t hard to see why. Hearts of Iron was set during the second world war and touched on numerous sensitive issues \u2013 not least by portraying Tibet as a sovereign country. The Chinese ministry of culture<\/a> accused the game of \u201cdistorting history and damaging China\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity\u201d. (China argues that Tibet has been an inextricable part of its territory for centuries.)<\/p>\n The company was not concerned about a repeat of 2004. Unlike Hearts of Iron, Stellaris was a game set in the distant future, involving intergalactic travel and aliens. Still, to help navigate the Chinese market, the developer partnered with the Chinese megacorp Tencent, the biggest game publisher in the world<\/a>. As part of the deal, Tencent bought 5% of its shares<\/a>. Paradox was so confident of success that in December 2016, it took the unusual step of announcing<\/a> that it would launch in China even before a licence had been granted.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom our perspective, it should have been largely problem-free because it doesn\u2019t deal with any nations, Chinese or otherwise,\u201d said Jorjani. It did not pan out that way. \u201cWorking through the ministry of culture, the censorship is not a super-clear process,\u201d said Jorjani. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit of a black box.\u201d Five years after its big announcement, Stellaris has never officially launched in China<\/a>.<\/p>\n C<\/span><\/span>hina is the world\u2019s largest market for the world\u2019s largest entertainment industry. Today, the number of Chinese gamers, about 740 million<\/a>, is bigger than the entire populations of the US, Japan, Germany, France and the UK combined. Its domestic market is worth more than $45bn a year<\/a>. Yet, for decades, China has had a stop-start relationship with the entire industry.<\/span><\/p>\n Today, Allison Yang Jing is an established game developer in Hong Kong, but at the turn of the millennium she was a 13-year-old living in western China. \u201cFamilies would buy their children a home computer because they believed it was a way to boost grades at school,\u201d she told me. \u201cBut most of the parents would complain later that \u2018This is not a study machine, it\u2019s just a console.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, home internet was slow, so children started going to internet cafes to play PC games. Yang Jing remembers playing strategy games such as Age of Empires and Starcraft. There was a constant battle with parents and schools, who wanted to clamp down on gaming. \u201cTeachers would go to cafes to catch students,\u201d she said. Over the next decade, millions more would flood into internet cafes, as PC gaming flourished, creating an increasingly attractive market for international developers.<\/p>\n Any foreign gaming companies looking to operate in China are legally obliged to have a local partner. For Chinese firms such as Tencent and NetEase, this was a goldmine. These tech giants, the Chinese equivalents of Facebook or Google, have regularly part-acquired foreign video game firms and then helped them access the lucrative Chinese gaming market. One of the first and biggest deals came in 2011 when Tencent made an agreement with the American developer Riot Games. Riot went all in, selling a 93% stake to Tencent for a reported $400m. Four years later, it sold the remaining equity and become a wholly owned<\/a> subsidiary of Tencent.<\/p>\n Shortly after the 2011 deal, a game designer at Riot\u2019s headquarters in Los Angeles was called in for a meeting. After Tencent\u2019s takeover, office life at Riot had been filled with the usual paranoia that comes with a new owner. \u201cYou know how it is with acquisitions. They say: \u2018Oh, everything is going to be the same.\u2019 But it eventually changes,\u201d said the designer, who asked to remain anonymous.<\/p>\n They had been working on League of Legends, a fantasy-inspired online battle game. Today, League of Legends is one of the most popular<\/a> games in the world, with tens of millions of people playing every day. But back in 2011, it was still on the rise, and breaking into China was key. At the meeting, some designers discussed plans to create an altered version for the Chinese market. This process, known as \u201clocalisation\u201d, usually involves translating the text and dialogue of a game, setting up new servers to allow the game to run smoothly online, and ensuring the content complies with the publishing rules of the country.<\/p>\n According to the designer, Riot managers had provided a PowerPoint presentation that she assumed Tencent had made for them, although she didn\u2019t know for sure. The slides explained some of the hurdles they would need to overcome. First, Chinese regulators are notoriously squeamish about gambling, strong violence and nudity \u2013 not only in games, but in TV and film, too. This is partly because the country does not have an age-rating system. Daniel Camilo, a Shenzhen-based specialist in publishing games in China, has said<\/a> the government\u2019s mindset is that \u201cif something isn\u2019t fit for one person, it isn\u2019t fit for anyone\u201d.<\/p>\n The Chinese body responsible for censorship, the National Press and Publication Administration, has some very clear rules \u2013 no copyright infringement, for instance, and no sharing state secrets \u2013 but most of its guidelines are less precise. Works that \u201cendanger social morality or national cultural traditions\u201d are banned; as is media that \u201cpromote cults and feudal superstitions\u201d. This vagueness gives the censors almost unlimited power and flexibility when it comes to deciding what is and isn\u2019t allowed. Many of the rules come down to the \u201cmoral paternalism\u201d of Beijing\u2019s leadership, says Lokman Tsui, an expert on Chinese censorship. \u201cThey really see themselves as moral authorities \u2013 not just the authority on the truth, but also the authority on morality.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2011, the designer at Riot learned of an unwritten rule that no video game can show characters emerging from the ground, as if rising from the dead. There were other rules of thumb, too. \u201cThere can\u2019t be exposed bones or ribs hanging out,\u201d she told me. If a game features skeletons, developers reworking it for China will simply add on flesh. Nor can games feature realistic-looking blood. \u201cThere was a vampire character, and instead of red, [the blood] had to be black,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The team at Riot was also asked to consider the Chinese market\u2019s assumed preferences when designing characters. Some of the advice struck the designer as sensible. One slide focused on the importance of not mixing styles of dress from across Asia, which can be confusing, offensive or simply ridiculous to a Chinese audience \u2013 the equivalent of a British character in a French beret.<\/p>\n Other recommendations were almost comical. \u201cThey said things like, \u2018they [Chinese gamers] don\u2019t really love grotesque monsters, goblins and ogres,\u201d the designer recalled. \u201cThey like the pretty, young, more anime style.\u2019\u201d She remembers a long discussion about \u201cbutts\u201d and the subtle differences between drawing them for east and west. Another time, they talked about mermaids. \u201cA mermaid is great because she has a female torso and fish bottom,\u201d she was told. \u201cHere\u2019s what\u2019s not great: a fish head and sexy legs.\u201d<\/p>\n It is hard to distinguish what Chinese gamers truly want, and what the industry, or the Chinese Communist party, has decided for them. Yang Jing, the Hong Kong-based developer, believes the assumption that the Chinese market prefers \u201cbeautified\u201d games is a misconception. She said the industry has stumbled in its attempts to cater to children and women, who make up a large proportion of Chinese gamers. \u201cThere are games that are supposedly catering to the female market, but most female players find them very shallow and sexist.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking back on the 2011 meeting, the designer didn\u2019t feel there was any censorship of ideas or politics \u2013 it was purely a question of aesthetics. At that point, she said, there were no \u201cChinese overlords\u201d directing the American company on what it could or could not put into its games.<\/p>\n A decade later, the situation looks very different. Since Xi Jinping took power in 2013, China\u2019s government has become increasingly repressive at home, and increasingly resentful of international criticism of its handling of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and human rights abuses<\/a> in the western province of Xinjiang<\/a>. According to an industry insider who helps foreign developers enter the Chinese market, those developers haven\u2019t yet realised how restrictive the situation has become: \u201cAll these developers I talk to think everything is fine and dandy, whereas everything is on fire, and we should be panicking.\u201d<\/p>\n B<\/span><\/span>y now, China\u2019s growing influence on Hollywood is well known. In 2018, for instance, Paramount Pictures partnered with Tencent Pictures<\/a> to produce an upcoming sequel to Top Gun. In a trailer, Tom Cruise\u2019s iconic bomber jacket had a key difference to the one from the original 1986 film \u2013 a stitched-on Taiwanese flag had been removed<\/a>. (Beijing regards Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy, as a breakaway province of China.) In 2020, the US arm of Pen International, an association of writers that seeks to protect free expression, published an explosive report<\/a> on how decisions in Hollywood, including the content, casting, plot, dialogue and settings of films were increasingly \u201cbased on an effort to avoid antagonising Chinese officials\u201d. It wrote that during the past decade or more, \u201cdomestic patterns of censorship and control have extended beyond China\u2019s borders\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n Something similar is happening in the world of video games. In 2019, the US developer Blizzard, creator of massively popular games such as World of Warcraft and Hearthstone, expelled a top professional gamer<\/a> from an international esports tournament and took back his winnings after he expressed support for Hong Kong\u2019s pro-democracy movement. Chung Ng Wai, a player from Hong Kong known by the name Blitzchung, had given a live interview in which he said in Mandarin, \u201cLiberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times\u201d. After a backlash against Blizzard\u2019s decision, the company\u2019s president, J Allen Brack, apologised and admitted it had \u201cmoved too quickly\u201d. The prize money was returned, and Bitzchung\u2019s one-year ban was reduced to six months. Later, when asked in an interview if Blizzard\u2019s partners in China, NetEase, had an influence on the decision, Brack replied: \u201cWas NetEase in conversation around this issue? They were, certainly.\u201d<\/p>\n In the wake of the Blitzchung affair, the US developer Riot Games backed the ban<\/a> on political speech, saying official broadcasts of its tournaments were not a place for \u201cpersonal views on sensitive issues (political, religious, or otherwise)\u201d. Blizzard and Riot have interests in China. But more recently, paranoia about upsetting Beijing has spread deeper into the industry. In December 2020, a major European game publisher, GOG, pulled the release<\/a>of a game that was mocking of President Xi, even though it has no Chinese investors and had not planned to sell the game in China. The horror title had featured subtle artwork comparing Xi to Winnie-the-Pooh, a common insult against the leader whose appearance has been likened to the cuddly bear.<\/p>\n If re-editing a movie for release in China can be tricky, changing a video game often involves a whole different level of difficulty. Whereas a film is essentially a linear series of shots, many video games are mazes of interwoven systems. Imagine that a European developer wants to release a game in China, but there is a level in which a player assassinates a Chinese general. In a game, killing that general may lead to the player stealing his pistol, which will then affect how difficult the game becomes dozens of hours later on. The gun could be referenced in vast reams of branching dialogue. Feature film scripts average about 100 pages, whereas some games have hundreds of different potential endings that unfold according to how you play. I once reviewed a video game<\/a> that had a 4,000-page script. All this can make it incredibly hard to amend games to satisfy the censors \u2013 if one part of the game is removed, the rest can collapse.<\/p>\n Facing the prospect of such expensive and time-consuming reworks, developers might simply decide it\u2019s not worth the trouble. Battlefield 4, a Swedish-made and US-published game in which you fight the Chinese military after a coup and can blow up buildings in Shanghai, was never going to make it past the censors.<\/p>\n Other developers, enticed by the promise of hundreds of millions of players, go back to the drawing board. One of the highest-grossing video games of all time, the Korean-developed PlayerUnknown\u2019s Battlegrounds (PUBG), was not officially released in China because it was deemed too violent, with players killing each other until the lone survivor is declared a winner. In 2017, Tencent partnered with the Korean developer, promising to ensure that the game accords \u201cwith socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules\u201d. Getting past the regulators required creating a completely new game. Peacekeeper Elite, as the modified version was called, had no blood and no death \u2013 when a player was eliminated, they simply kneeled and waved goodbye<\/a> before vanishing.<\/p>\n C<\/span><\/span>hina\u2019s government runs a gargantuan system of direct censorship \u2013 in 2013, it was estimated to be employing 2 million people<\/a> to monitor and censor internet content \u2013 but perhaps even more important is the way it enforces a climate of self-censorship. The scholar Perry Link once described<\/a> the threat posed by Chinese censors as being less like \u201ca man-eating tiger or fire-snorting dragon\u201d than \u201ca giant anaconda coiled in an overhead chandelier\u201d. He continued: \u201cNormally the great snake doesn\u2019t move. It doesn\u2019t have to. It feels no need to be clear about its prohibitions. Its constant silent message is: \u2018You yourself decide.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In the video game industry, as in many sectors, most censorship is not about top-down directives. Because the official guidelines are so vague, foreign developers tend to abide by a fuzzy, speculative and ever-changing set of unwritten \u201crules\u201d, many of which are gleaned from trial and error. Time travel, for example, is considered best avoided. \u201cI\u2019m not 100% sure why,\u201d said the industry insider I spoke to. \u201cBut from what I heard it\u2019s because the government doesn\u2019t want the people to think there is a possibility of going back in time and changing the party regime.\u201d Lokman Tsui, the Chinese censorship expert, suggested this may be true, pointing out that history and science fiction have sometimes been used to surreptitiously criticise the government. \u201cFor a while, history was a loophole for discussing political stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cYou would tell tales to make political commentary. I don\u2019t know if that is similar for time travel, but I can imagine there is some similar logic going on there.\u201d<\/p>\n In recent years, the industry insider, who works to help western developers in China, has found his job increasingly difficult. Growing restrictions on the internet meant he could no longer access Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, which he needed to promote his client\u2019s games, or online game publishing platforms, which he used to sell the games. Even previously reliable VPNs had stopped working. To get around this, he would regularly travel to Taiwan, where the internet is not tightly controlled.<\/p>\n Then, in 2018, the government announced it was halting the release of any new games, Chinese or international. The ban lasted nine months. No official reason was ever provided. Chenyu Cui, a Shanghai-based analyst at the video game consultancy firm Omdia, said it was partly a response to complaints from parents that their children were addicted to gaming. Other explanations include an internal power battle by regulators, or a panicked attempt by authorities to rein in companies such as NetEase and Tencent, which had grown immensely rich and powerful in a very short time. \u201cIt was kind of a slap on the wrist to Tencent, to say, \u2018Yes, you are a multibillion conglomerate, but you still have to obey the Chinese government,\u201d said the insider. This slap on the wrist caused Tencent stocks to plunge by 40% in just a few months, wiping $200bn off its value<\/a> \u2013 a hit it took a long time to recover from.<\/p>\n During the freeze, authorities introduced even stricter regulations on video games, such as an outright ban on blood, no matter the colour. Games that fail three times to pass the byzantine review process \u2013 which includes submitting videos, screenshots and often tens of thousands of words explaining what the game is \u2013 may be permanently blocked. Meanwhile, an online game ethics committee was established<\/a> to \u201cimplement the spirit of the National Propaganda\u201d. The Communist party-backed Global Times reported that the body would block games that \u201cviolate family ethics\u201d by portraying \u201chomosexuality or pregnancy before marriage\u201d.<\/p>\n Although the market reopened in 2019, the ban has left behind a fear that Beijing could pull the plug at any time. Before the shutdown, Tencent usually had a hands-off approach when working with developers, said the insider. Now, he said, they are under far more pressure to control the content of their games. After the government expressed frenzied alarm around gaming minors, Tencent added an \u201canti-addiction system\u201d to its mobile games, announcing that it would check players\u2019 identities and ages, and limit children aged 12 and under to one hour of play daily. (Since then,Tencent has implemented<\/a> face-recognition technology to verify the age of users.) The company has also unveiled new titles<\/a> that promote patriotic themes. In autumn 2019, Tencent collaborated with the state newspaper People\u2019s Daily to produce Homeland Dream, in which players can make \u201cChinese\u201d cities or provinces \u2013 including Hong Kong and Taiwan \u2013 more prosperous with real-life policies implemented by Beijing.<\/p>\n Some international developers I have spoken to say they can tailor games for China without changing their operations elsewhere. They play down the censorship, pointing to the fact that China tolerates a grey market<\/a> in which players can buy foreign games that haven\u2019t been approved for domestic consumption by using Steam, the largest online distribution platform for PC games. But even that is changing. This year, an \u201cofficial\u201d Chinese version<\/a> of Steam was launched, with just a few dozen games. If China were to restrict access to the global version, it would drive many more developers into the censorship process, or else risk losing millions in sales.<\/p>\n My interview with the insider was in late 2019, and at the time he was happy to speak on the record. \u201cWe\u2019re always vocal about China,\u201d he told me. \u201cIt\u2019s really good that somebody big is doing a story on this, so we can get the word out.\u201d But when I went back to him recently, ahead of publication, he had become nervous and requested anonymity. He said he believes his Chinese staff\u2019s phones are being monitored, and he is worried. \u201cIt\u2019s really turning into a dystopia.\u201d<\/p>\n T<\/span><\/span>o their strongest critics, Tencent and NetEase effectively play the role of a private arm of the government\u2019s censorship operation. There is no doubt that Tencent\u2019s founder, Ma Huateng, and Netease\u2019s CEO, Ding Lei, have capitalised on the country\u2019s move towards a more open economy in the past two decades, while always trying to keep on the right side of the authorities. But many international video game companies see Tencent and Netease as helpful allies in working around censorship, rather than more sinister enforcers of the government line. Tencent itself says it wants the companies it invests in to \u201coperate independently\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n In April 2021, Ma became China\u2019s richest man<\/a>, with an estimated fortune of $63bn. Min Tang, an assistant teaching professor at the University of Washington Bothell, wrote a dissertation on how capitalism and power structures shaped Tencent, but even she found it hard to understand how close Ma was to Beijing. \u201cNot much documentation reveals Tencent\u2019s government relations,\u201d she wrote, \u201cexcept for the known fact\u201d that, after rising to prominence in business, Ma became a deputy in parliament.<\/p>\n Even less has been written about NetEase\u2019s Ding Lei. He founded the company in 1997 and offered one of China\u2019s first internet services. Ding became the country\u2019s first internet and gaming billionaire in 2003, and today Bloomberg\u2019s Billionaires Index puts his net worth<\/a> at $34.7bn. Despite this, NetEase\u2019s English-language presence on the internet is minimal \u2013 its official Twitter account has only about 5,000 followers.<\/p>\n Still, no Chinese company could rise to such power without a close relationship with the authorities, and the influence of these two companies goes far beyond video games. Tencent owns the messaging app WeChat, which has one billion users, and has been accused of using it to surveil people<\/a>, even outside China. (The company denies this, saying all \u201call content shared among international users\u201d is private.) In China, the firm regularly shuts down WeChat accounts at the request of the government, including critical voices. Meanwhile, NetEase has a massive internet presence and has branched out into other seemingly unrelated industries, including, surprisingly, pig farming<\/a>.<\/p>\n When I spoke to video game industry workers inside Tencent and NetEase \u2013 none of whom were willing to provide their names \u2013 they framed China\u2019s strict censorship rules as just one element of a global market in which all<\/em>governments restrict culture. In Russia, for instance, portraying LGBT characters can lead to a ban<\/a>. In some Muslim-majority countries, smoking or alcohol consumption has to be removed. Some localisation experts refer to \u201cgeopolitical imaginations\u201d \u2013 an assumed shared view of the world from country to country.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a tricky issue,\u201d said a staffer at NetEase. \u201cI think a lot of western observers assume that the things that end up being censored in games are things that only people in the government care about. In reality, they are sensitive to a lot of Chinese people, too.\u201d But given the Communist party\u2019s increasingly harsh restrictions on free speech, it is impossible to know to what extent the Chinese censors really reflect public opinion. Maya Wang, a senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, says she believes that a fair proportion of Chinese people actually are \u201cvery critical of the government, but the manipulation of the online environment has meant those voices are drowned out, creating this mirage that Chinese people are very nationalistic, which tells only part of the story\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n
\n\nVideo game consoles started to arrive in China in the late 80s \u2013 some legally imported from Japan, others smuggled in to avoid high customs taxes \u2013 and arcades popped up around the country throughout the 90s. Like many governments around the world, the Chinese authorities were wary of this emerging interactive entertainment, and worried about its impact on young people. Around the turn of the century, Chinese officials and the media started to describe games as \u201cdigital opium\u201d or \u201celectronic heroin\u201d. In 2000, the Communist party banned gaming consoles and arcade machines outright. But the ban did not include personal computers, and pirated copies of video games became widely available on the black market.<\/div>\n![\"Esports](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/9ea9e0cd7f4b621855b123e0c2589114ef6689f9\/0_205_4770_3005\/master\/4770.jpg?width=1020&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=061ae13eb9ec6074b8cdb9636154b5c6)
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n<\/div>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/c20b824dab409942c7f762bf3f4015c03c78a379\/0_167_5000_3000\/master\/5000.jpg?width=1020&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=16954549011d226d487ed7764c81f67d)
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/886ec28503a9c0bb20a38f80f8b7f47d1cfbe480\/0_315_4468_2681\/master\/4468.jpg?width=1020&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=11af98f68fda472ba612e179ff5e5559)
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n![\"Gamers](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/d656923cad07e63a2421c6d2e77f3abaf5479f1c\/0_316_4912_2948\/master\/4912.jpg?width=1020&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=99f73ae450228e4b2007b6b910045d5d)
<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n\n<\/div>\n![\"Pro-democracy](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/7eb263a6880ab3fb9009160a85a9681e36342ad0\/177_0_3323_2201\/master\/3323.jpg?width=1020&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=7fe051c89ebb907d585728c634c66045)
<\/picture><\/div>