From Los Santos to Beijing GTA5 Quietly Meets the Chinese Market

by Scott Huntsman

As Grand Theft Auto fever swept across the United States and much of the world upon the release of the newest installment of the unprecedentedly popular， unapologetically violent console video game， a big question mark materialized over the worlds largest emerging video game market： China.

Although China is already notorious for its avid gamers， the majority of players use PCs and console game sales are relatively new to the country. Outdated modes of pirating intellectual property are quickly dissolving as greater proportions of the Chinese public find expendable income to allocate to entertainment， leading to the legitimate purchase of such products becoming increasingly favored. Its no secret that professional sports and Hollywood have been fixated on the Chinese market for some time – both NFL and MLB have been futilely attempting to promote their respective sports to the NBA-loving Chinese public for years， while Avatars arrival was so big that hundreds of new movie screens were erected solely to cater to the films demand. Yet， as New York City-based Rockstar Games Grand Theft Auto V shattered every earning record for an entertainment product， the Chinese market remained conspicuously absent from the story. Take-Two Interactive Software， GTAs publisher， has noted that the 2012 film The Avengers took 19 days to net US$1 billion – a mark matched by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2， making the three days it took GTA5 to reach the mark all the more impressive. Avatar grossed a record 1.3 billion yuan（US$194 million） in China. A month after its release， however， GTA5s earnings in China were so miniscule that the publishers didnt bother to compile the data.

GTA5s amazing market performance primarily occurred in English-speaking countries， which makes sense because the game is largely story-based and all in heavy-slang street American English –even the copy of the game I purchased in central Beijing. Numbers from the U.K. were also staggering， but across the pond to the other side， sales in Japan were comparatively modest – despite the fact that the game did set the Western game sales record for the country and exponentially eclipsed Japanese numbers for GTAs previous edition in 2008. Within Japan， the birthplace of two of the three major consoles for which the game was developed， GTA5 couldnt even knock Pokemon X&Y from the top spot on the video games bestseller list. The Chinese market is now much larger than Japan， but the fact that China restricts sales of XBox and Playstation consoles hindered it from even entering the conversation.

GTA5s performance in Japan is still being viewed as a positive development by video game insiders who note that the market has been hesitant to embrace Westernproduced games at all before. With the vast majority of Chinese gamers lacking access to a console – never mind the English com- prehension necessary to fully understand the game – any sales whatsoever in China must be viewed as a pleasant surprise by the publishers.

The many video game shops on Gulou East Street in Beijing were hanging promotional posters in their windows before the games release date. Regardless of the hefty price tag for a genuine copy of the import， each shop had stacks and stacks on hand and ready to go. A month after release， stacks of GTA were still strewn all over the shops， but not because it wasnt selling – because it was. “For most new releases， theyre hot for the first few days， but GTA has been our bestseller for over a month straight，” revealed one retailer.“Perhaps all the press surrounding the games massive success continues pushing more and more Chinese gamers to see what all the fuss is about.”

Despite the long road ahead， Chinese interest in the game， like its comparatively humble performance in Japan， must be viewed as a positive development for the vast majority of Western video game producers. Over the years， the most popular PC games in China have been World of Warcraft and Counterstrike. Along with roleplaying games， first-person shooters are already a market standard. And the Chinese public likes driving. Only one single copy of Madden， the American-football standard， which has been the perennial bestselling console game in the United States for a decade， could be found among 20-plus shops in the Gulou area compared to hundreds upon hundreds of copies of GTA.

“When I first played GTA5， it was like nothing I had ever before experienced with a video game： Mindless violence， fast cars， and rock and roll，” wrote one Chinese gamer with the screen name Windy. “I even like playing the mini-games within the GTA world such as golf and table tennis. Its like youre living a real life within the game.”

Another Chinese gamer using the screen name Xue2378 said， “I love GTA for the realism. The car damage is by far the best of any game – you can damage your vehicle in thousands of different ways and it affects handling and performance. No other game has this kind of detail. Once when I was playing， my mother sat down and started watching. She asked， ‘What movie are you watching？ The perspective looks strange， showing the characters back. Playing GTA is like producing a film by yourself on the fly.”

Such sentiments certainly arent unique to China and echo early buzz around the world. But the Chinese market is still fairly traditional in most ways compared to the West. For instance， pornography is completely illegal， and Hollywood films are often heavily edited. This year， when Django Unchained was set to hit Chinese theaters， its release was unexpectedly delayed for edits – not for violence， but for the quick male nudity at the end. The entire Grand Theft Auto series is more than infamous for its content. Parental complaints of sex， drugs， and violence in previous editions were overshadowed in GTA5 by a mission that requires the player to torture a man using a variety of techniques. But the fact that China is already strictly controlling the availability of consoles made censoring GTA5 a non-issue. China hasnt ever needed mechanisms to oversee video game content.

Chinese sellers of alcohol and cigarettes dont ask for ID， yet teen alcohol consumption in the country is almost nonexistent. Contrasting American video game retailers – one of whom penned a viral open letter lambasting the hundreds of parents who purchased the “mature”-rated game for their young children– Chinese video game retailers claim that the vast majority of customers who purchased GTA5 were young men in their 20s and 30s. “School-aged kids dont have the time or money to buy games like this，”explained retailer Ge Hui. “Their parents expect them to spend all of their free time on homework.”

A recent survey showed that 80 percent of Chinese parents dont want their children playing video games at all – regardless of content. “I would never allow my son to play violent video games，” declares Yu Hong， the mother of an eight-year-old boy，“because its too easy to become addicted.”

Indeed， the Chinese parental objections to video games are less about content and more about wasted time. In a country where guns are banned and incredibly rare， no one is worrying about such a game inspiring violent behavior as much as they worry about it wasting valuable study time. This is not a country where modern psychology is widely acknowledged or discussed. Theyre not using the television and XBox to babysit their children， doping them up on Ritalin， and blaming video games for any shortcomings. With most families getting only one shot at raising offspring， they invest all available resources into the child – and a parents investment in an XBox is about the parents free time more than the childs future.

While children obsessively playing games on smartphones and tablets has become an increasingly glaring problem and stories of gaming addicts living in internet cafes for months straight are familiar tales coming out of China， no one places blame on the content of the games or the developers. Classrooms full of angry birds have yet to emerge. For the most part， parents see every non-educational game as equally detrimental.

Chinese characters already play major roles in the storyline of GTA5， and it wont surprise anyone if future installments of the series shift more focus to the East as so many movies are already doing to win favor in the worlds most encouraging market. Dont look for GTA to tone down its content for that reason， though – the exaggerated chaos in post-financial-crisis Los Santos is exactly the impression of the United States that many traditional politically-minded Chinese people have already. So， for some parents， simulations of an ultra-violent， crime-ridden hellscape could be construed as educational after all.