6 ludicrous (to us) reasons China is banning sexy game ads

As we reported last month, Chinese officials have become fed up with the amount of skin being shown in videogame advertisements. They’ve decided that these ads are an “unwholesome” influence on Chinese youth and must be toned down to prevent debauchery from becoming the norm.

Is China’s decision based on a real epidemic of unsavory advertisements, or is the government simply being conservative? To find out – and hopefully find some lewd photographs or adults-only videos – we decided to spend some time navigating around Chinese game sites to find out exactly why the country is deciding to ban sexually suggestive game ads. What we found was infuriating, enlightening, and to our freedom-of-speech-oriented minds, often a bit disturbing.

Reason #1: Sex is everywhere

It didn’t take long for us to discover that the use of hot girls to bring in desperate guys was as common as a blue sky. The image above might lead you to expect that it advertises some kind of online brothel. Three sexy girls sit outside on a dark street, ready to be molested by a pair of hands that you can move around the screen. The hands even make a kneading motion in case you weren’t clear on what they were for.

Once we signed up for the game advertised in the image above, however, we found nothing lewd about it. Instead of leading us to a hardcore dating game or some kind of lady-groping sim, the site asked us to select a server and a class, just as in any typical online RPG – which is what this game was. There were plenty of female characters, but they were dressed in modest fantasy garb and they were anime characters instead of real women. It’s a classic Evony bait-and-switch, although the groping hands are even more blatant than Evony’s “save the queen!” bullshit. 

In case you don’t know about Evony, welcome to your first time on the internet. Here’s the scoop: Evony is a crappy, incredibly unsexy online Civilization knock-off funded (ironically) by a Chinese gold farmer. Its ads typically consist of a landscape with a stolen picture of a random porn actress photoshopped on. They are exactly the kind of crap that should be banned – but not because they’re lewd. Because they’re obnoxious and annoying and misleading.

Above: Just a few of Evony’s internet ads. Eff you, Evony 

Reason #2: Barriers between reality and fantasy are being broken

Take a close look at the image above. Try not to look at the girl. Instead, look at everything else. Her clothes, the table she is laying on, the walls in the background. Does it remind you of a game?

If you said World of Warcraft, pat yourself on the back. This is one of a series of photos that integrates the fantasy graphics of World of Warcraft with the real life aesthetics of a beautiful woman. It is important to note that these images don’t appear to be promotional material released by Blizzard or anything affiliated with the game itself, but instead are for a specific website. There are some games that are using this tactic, however. The blog listed on the image is a gold mine for photos of Chinese game babes.

Apparently, this kind of game-meets-reality sexual fantasy is common, and is exactly the sort of thing China doesn’t want happening. The danger of young men fapping their life away to fantasy-themed video game babes is real in a country that is facing a literal shortage of women. Or so the government types believe, anyway. You’ll see this concern revisited from slightly different angles in our next two entries, too…

Reason #3: Porn Stars and sex scandals are fueling game ads

It’s not just the amateur cosplayers who are a problem, either. It isn’t unusual, of course, to see sexually suggestive game advertisements no matter where you live. Gamers in the west have lusted over (and occasionally objected to) game babes who never seem to be rocking a rack smaller than double-D for years. Yet the games industry here has usually kept the real-world women themselves out of the spotlight, choosing relatively unknown models or falling back on in-game artwork.

Game advertisers in China are much bolder. The girl in the center of the image above is Sora Aoi, a Japanese porn star famous throughout most Asian countries. She was hired to promote Warrior OL, a popular online RPG, by attracting hordes of oogling boys. Here, appearances are generally mundane – she isn’t being asked to give lap dances to potential customers, and if you think the green outfit worn by the girl to her right looks sexy, call your doctor. But the simple fact that she is a well-known porn star is enough to piss people off. Imagine the media outrage that would occur in the West if World of Warcraft developer Blizzard hired Jenna Jameson or Eva Angelina to dress up as a dark elf and prance around the Republican National Convention.

Above: Sora Aoi at her day job (what we can show of it, anyhow)