When video games started becoming popular in the 1970’s, China was in the middle of a cultural revolution, very few people had access to the early devices and games struggled to become popular as a consequence. China was not hooked on video games as quickly as the western world seemed to be.
When the 2000’s rolled around and video games became more diverse with brands like PlayStation and Xbox entering the market, China had undergone major economic and political reforms which had improved peoples lives, however, PC’s and most games where still banned from being sold and imported into China with the government claiming to worry about their young people having a ‘video-game addiction’. This did not stop video games from growing in popularity by the mid to late 2000’s.
However, video games, at this point, where still nowhere near as popular in China as they where in the west and this, while not solely the reason, was largely due to the inaccessibility of different games to the Chinese market where you could find a console but not different games to play, the market for video games never took off.
Instead, China’s gaming boom came from the introduction of free-to-play online games that have saturated the market. Where people may not have had money to buy a video game they do have a few free hours to play online. This rise in online gaming was also benefited by China’s internet café’s where people can go and play out in public rather than stuck at home. This had flourished into a huge market in China with tournaments and game play being extremely popular.