Last week, a story that many Vietnamese gamers discussed was VTV’s report on the issue of gaming among today’s Vietnamese youth. In the 19-hour news program, a slew of issues that VTV considers alarming about online gaming were mentioned. Among them are addiction, lack of content regulation, no time limits on gameplay, and inability to control the actual age of gamers.
Recently, a Facebook user posted an article on this issue, and we would like to quote this post as follows:
The Story of Game Publishers and Children Who “Chew Rice with Their Mouths While Teleporting with Their Hands”
The mobile gaming market in Vietnam is widely known for its robust growth, and the age of players is quite very young.
For games that require teamwork like Arena of Valor or similar games, the age of team members is also an important factor in increasing the win rate in games. In fact, controlling the age of users is not too complicated (in my opinion). Over 80% of users on social media (mostly Facebook) use it to log in or register accounts on mobile games.
Publishers use User ID/Email to identify users playing games on their systems, but they never ask for the user’s age to prevent children under 13/14 years old from using their products. Technically, this is not difficult, and it doesn’t require many processes, and reviewing user birthday rights on Facebook is quite easy. Facebook itself does a decent job of age control, and creating a clone Facebook account will quickly trigger a checkpoint. This solution somewhat limits the issue if publishers comply with it.
Adults are also a bug in this situation. Just because you play harmlessly doesn’t mean it’s harmless for your child. The gaming experience of adults and children is different.
“Don’t let gaming control your child”
The post quickly garnered shares and comments from Facebook users, most of whom supported the author’s perspective and raised the issue. The problem lies on all sides, with publishers seen as a key factor, Facebook contributing significantly, and parents also playing a crucial role.
If we really want to implement effective age control, it will require many factors from both publishers and users. Hopefully, in the future, the issue of young children playing games will be more tightly controlled to avoid a situation where a large number of gamers are “named” on VTV news again.