To keep their children away from video games, Chinese parents sent them to e-sports training camp

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How to make video games painful for children: force them to play games for eight hours a day and set up unreasonable KPIs.

For parents in East Asia, it is “unpardonable” for children who are still in school to over play video games, especially in China, where the gaming industry is relatively backward.

As we have explained in this article, the Chinese government has introduced many very strict restrictive policies against the gaming industry over the past decade. These policies have nothing to do with censorship, they are simply in response to the desire of vast numbers of Chinese parents to “ban video games”.

But on the other hand, the Chinese government is still encouraging the e-sports industry, with many professional e-sports players from China winning titles at home and abroad, thus changing the fate of themselves and their families. The only problem is that these inspirational stories prompt many children to lie to their parents that they play games in order to be e-sports players.

That’s the background to the whole story, and you seem to have guessed what’s going to happen next: a company is starting to serve troubled parents. The company can show Chinese teenagers who want to be e-sports players that e-sports is completely different from “playing games”.

“My son is 16 years old and likes to play Arena of Valor. I want him to train on your side, get a little devil training, and then go back to school.”

“My son thinks he is a genius, playing much better than those children around them. He wants to be a professional e-sports player in the future. I want you to see if he can do it in the end.”

Many parents called the company because, when it was previously reported in the media, the head of the company said they had “discouraged” 90% of students who wanted to become e-sports players.

Hou Xu, the founder of the company, entered the e-sports industry in 2001 and is one of the experts in the industry. He founded the current e-sports training institution, “Brave Education” in 2017, with the initial goal of becoming an e-sports training school to select young people who have real potential to be a profession.

But soon, they realized that it could be profitable in two ways: first, they would still use the strictest training and exams to find young people with potential. On the other hand, they could wake up some young people who were addicted to video games and helped them to give up the road and return to China’s examination-oriented education system.

Hou Xu said in an interview that they had inadvertently invented the service of “dissuading e-sports players,” and that they had only talked in another previous interview about how difficult it was to become a professional e-sports player.

A report on this matter, via weibo

In an original interview, he told the media, “our training institution have recruited 100 students in the past year, aged between 14 and 16, 90% of whom give up, mainly because professional training is boring and it is difficult for people without talent to see their progress. In all respects, e-sports ‘s training has dashed the children’s imagination. “

This has been interpreted by the media and many parents as “as long as the child is sent to the institution for professional training, the child will lose interest in video game.”

Mrs.Zhang, from Zhejiang, is one of the parents who came to consult. Her 16-year-old son is addicted to the mobile game “Arena of Valor” and get a “Master” Rank. She wanted her son to come to Chengdu to receive “devil training” and give up the “game addiction”, and go back to school. On the phone, she repeatedly asked, “my son could only come for ten days. Could you get him to give up video games?”

But there are also some members here who survived painful training and succeeded in becoming professional players.

“My attitude at that time was to see if he had this talent. But the essence is to hope that some professional organization would change him. ” Mrs. He said.

In September 2018, Her son, who was still in the second year of junior high school, told her that he wanted to play professional e-sport games. At present, because his level is still improving, Mrs. He’s son continues to train at the e-sports educational institution every weekend. But Mrs.He admitted that the purpose that she initially decided to send her son to the e-sports educational institution, was not helping him become a profession.

In any case, going through professional e-sports training is completely different from “playing games”.

According to the curriculum provided by the institution, students are required to undergo three months of closed training first. The coach is a retired professional e-sports player, generally needs to carry on the complete repetition training for a particular technical action in the morning, carries on the team simulation competition in the afternoon. In addition, the organization arranges two theory courses a week to enhance students’ understanding of the games they practice. One of the most boring is the daily morning training, which is almost the same as professional sports training, to some extent painful and boring.

The schedule of another training camp includes daily 5km running training and 6-hour team-versus-team training. It is called “Youth training Model (Internet Addiction treatment package)”.

“Some people will like to drive, but absolutely no one will like to practice how to park, right?” A staff member of an e-sports training institution said.

In fact, this phenomenon is not new in the e-sports industry. China’s Ministry of Education approved educational services for the e-sports industry in 2016, during which many e-sports training institutions were established. Li Jitao, vice president of the Sports School Branch of the China Federation of Physical Education Schools, said. “In early 2018, there was already a ‘dissuasion service’ in the industry. “

Because, like most competitive sports, very few people can become real “professional players”.

In a follow-up interview, Hou Xu said that they will not provide “dissuading service” alone. In addition, if a gifted teenager is found in the course of training, they will also encourage their to participate in the competition and even persuade parents to help their children to become real e-sports contestants.

Hou Xu does not quite agree that their institutions can play a role in depriving children of interest in games.

He says that as a person in the gaming industry, he meets many teenagers who “addicted to games” every year. But only 40% of these people are really addicted to games because of “fun”, and the rest of the children spend a lot of time looking for comfort in video games because of life difficulties at school and at home. For these teenagers who indulge in games because of real-life difficulties, even if they do understand how hard of being a e-sport athlete is, they are reluctant to return to high school.

China’s famous professional e-sports club Royal Never Give Up’s market leader also said “Don’t do business to dissuade teenagers.” They believe that providing training services for a period of three months or less will help children and parents better understand the e-sports industry and games. It can play a role, but it can not solve the essential problem.

But in any case, Chinese parents have made great progress on this issue. Just a decade ago, many Chinese parents sent their game-addicted children to closed mental hospitals for electroshock treatment.

Today, no one has done so anymore.

The cover image is from unsplash, which is not related to the content of the article.

References: Https://m.bjnews.com.cn/detail/161131314415569.html Https://www.163.com/dy/article/G12L6V2L05149V0C.html

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