When I first came to China, foreign video console games were banned–not that I had noticed given the number of stores selling them illegally by Nanluoguxiang and in tech areas, such as Zhongguancun. It was only when I inquired on the high cost of consoles and their games, especially when compared to PC games, that I was told they’re actually black market products. Good, I thought, now my husband has no reason to buy the latest Playstation.

While parents debate over screen time and the possible harmful effects of gaming, game developers are creating educational games that encourage social responsibility, environmental awareness, and social skills. And let’s not forget those fun games that teach kids to code–because, as we all know, programmers are the future doctors and lawyers in our society!

Researchers have been confusing all of us with their zigzagging, one minute opposing all gaming for its fictionalization and violence, and the next minute singing its praises. The most recent fact everyone seems to agree on is that video games are mostly harmless and can stimulate a child’s brain in a positive way. So there you go! Games are good for kids, hence why the console/game ban was lifted, and life is good, right?

Wrong. Online gaming, one of the largest growing industry in China, is also China’s new evil. The industry only grows because the number of players grow. Although there have been attempts to prevent minors from gaining access to online games, the numerous internet cafes all over the country allow anyone to play 24/7, or until they run out of money.  Sometimes, teens don’t just run out of money, they run out of food, water, or even their lives.

Online gaming addiction has become such a big issue that suspicious boot camps have opened up shop, beating the addiction out of kids.  Rehabilitation centers for misbehaving children are usually just kids who would rather play games than study, but are treated as if they’re headed to juvi. Recent headlines showcased an angry girl who, upon escaping from a four-month-long, hellish experience at such a boot camp, tortured and killed her mother in revenge.

This is not the first time China has attempted to control the gaming habits of its youth.  In March 2011, China had released “The Parents’ Guardian Project for Minors Playing Online Games”, which gave parents the right to monitor their children’s gaming habits directly from the game operator’s website.  Game operators were required to have a special login for parents, so that parents could firstly, see how much time their kids were spending online, and secondly, request restrictions on their child’s account or freeze/delete the account entirely. The project clearly wasn’t successful given that a new project has been proposed.

The new proposed project, aimed to instill a night-time curfew for gaming minors, was first implemented in South Korea. In that project, they prevented under 15 year olds from playing online games between midnight and 6am, slowing down their network speed considerably (we, behind the Great Wall, know what that’s like!). In China, Global Times reports that players who are below legal age would be prevented from gaming from midnight to 7am.  The idea being that all players must register with an ID, but fake IDs are prevalent and authorities have not been vigilant about requiring all the country’s game operators to comply.

Or at least they haven’t in all the games that I have played in China…

Photo credit: Pixabay, Battlenet

On Christmas Day, my roommate debuted a game called Werewolf at our dinner party. Based on Mafia rules, the premise is deceptively simple: Werewolves lurk among a group of villagers, killing them off one by one at night. The goal of the villagers is to identify the werewolves and lynch them; the goal of the werewolves is to kill off all the villagers.

Though the evening started out innocently enough, the 12 of us soon spiraled into a vortex of recriminations, suspicions, double-crossing, and mob justice. In other words, it was awesome.

The Basics
The game is best for groups of at least seven players. The game is split into successive rounds of night and day in which different roles can take different actions.

The Moderator shuffles the cards and passes one out to each player, who are allowed to look at their card but can’t reveal it to others. There are five basic roles (one non-player role and four player roles):

• The Moderator: The omniscient Moderator serves as the narrator, game master, and chief whip. They know each player’s identity and ensure that the game moves along at a brisk pace. The quality of the Moderator directly affects the quality of the game.
• Werewolves: Werewolves are the game’s “informed minority” whose members are aware of each other. When night falls, the Werewolves choose one victim to kill. Their goal is to kill all the Villagers without being found out and lynched. For a group of seven without any special roles (more on those below), two Werewolves are enough. (For 12 people, three Werewolves was a good number.)
• The Seer: Arguably the most important role in the game, the Seer is a villager who can “investigate” one player each turn to find out if they’re a Werewolf.
• The Doctor: The Doctor is a villager who can “protect” one player from being killed by the Werewolves each turn.
• Villagers: Everyone else is a Villager, the game’s “uninformed majority.” The Villagers must figure out the Werewolves’ identities through deduction and discussion, and avoid accidentally lynching other Villagers.

Gameplay
Once everyone has their card, Werewolf can begin. The rules below are greatly simplified; click here or scroll to the end of the post for complete rules.

Phase 1: Nighttime

• The game begins at night. The Moderator sets the scene (“It was a cold January night with 500 AQI…”), then instructs all the players to close their eyes.
• The Moderator instructs the Werewolves to open their eyes and asks them who they want to kill. The Werewolves must silently agree on a victim, then signal their choice to the Moderator. The Moderator asks the Werewolves to close their eyes.
• Next, the Moderator instructs the Doctor to open their eyes and asks who they want to save. The Doctor silently signals their choice to the Moderator; note that Doctors are allowed to save themselves. The Moderator asks the Doctor to close their eyes.
• Then, the Moderator instructs the Seer to open their eyes and asks who they want to investigate. The Seer silently points to a player, to which the Moderator will either nod or shake their head (you can also do thumbs up or down). The Moderator asks the Seer to close their eyes.

Phase 2: Daytime

• It’s now daytime; the Moderator asks everyone to open their eyes and announces the name of the player who was killed last night. Dead players aren’t allowed to talk.
• This is where things get interesting. The Villagers must figure out who the Werewolves are. They can use deduction, act on hunches, observe other players’ reactions, etc. Meanwhile, the Werewolves must avoid suspicion by drawing attention to other players, lying, acting natural, etc.
• Once the Villagers settle on a suspect, that player is lynched. If the person was a Werewolf, they must reveal their card. If the person was a Seer or Doctor, they can’t reveal their special role.
• Once a player is lynched, night falls and the cycle starts again. The game continues until either the Werewolves or the Villagers are killed off.

Extra Roles
Once you get the hang of Werewolf, there are many special cards that can be used to spice up the game. Here are a few:

• The Witch: The Witch is a Villager with extra powers; she has one potion and one poison, which can be used at any point in the game. The potion brings a player back to life while the poison kills a player.
• The Village Drunk: The Village Drunk is a Villager who can only communicate with gestures or noises. They can’t talk at all during the day; if they do, they automatically die the following night.
• The Alpha Werewolf: The Alpha Werewolf is a player who can turn a Villager into a Werewolf. This can only be used once.

One commercial version of the game, Ultimate Werewolf, includes more than 40 player roles. With so many discussion threads dedicated to extra roles, there’s potential for endless variations on Werewolf.

Where to Find Werewolf
The best part? Werewolf is free. Though many commercial versions are available, fans of the game have released their own printable card sets for download. Alternatively, make and laminate your own cards with the kids; even Post-It notes with roles written on them are just fine.

My roommate downloaded the beautiful card set by American designer Max Temkin. (If his name sounds familiar, that’s because he’s the co-founder of the decidedly un-kid friendly Cards Against Humanity). Temkin’s PDF template includes the Witch and six blank cards for extra roles.

Here is another downloadable card set featuring cute stick figures from a website dedicated to “print and play” games.

For complete Werewolf rules, click here.

Werewolf is recommended for ages 10 and up.

Sijia Chen is a contributing editor at beijingkids and a freelance writer who has covered travel, tech, culture, parenting, and the environment. Her work has appeared in Travel + Leisure, The Independent, the Beijinger, Midnight Poutine, and more. Follow her on Twitter at @sijiawrites or email her at sijiachen@beijing-kids.com.

Photo: mikequozl (via Flickr)

As NFL legend, Jerry Rice heads south to Shanghai for the second leg of this China tour he has had a busy time in the city with crowning the Beijing Sports University city champions, passing and catching footballs with local players on the Badaling section of the Great Wall, holding clinics for kids and players at the Home Field games, speaking at the US Embassy Press Event for International Education Week and meet-and-greet sessions at the International School of Beijing and Kerry Hotel, Beijing.

Rice had a message he kept stressing, education. He stressed on the importance of learning the fundamentals of the game and getting a formal education as he tries to promote the sport in China. The NFL is trying to get America’s favorite sport in to the Chinese market with the creation of the Home Field games in three cities (Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou).

Rice jokes,"I would like to see a Super Bowl  in China", at the finals of the Home Field games after saying the international games in London have gradually grown from one to three games popularity of the sport grows. But he said the teaching the fundamentals of the sport is key to getting people to understand the sport and eventually grow to like it. The American Football League of China will start to have games from next year.

"Getting an education is important as well, and if you get to play the sport you love, then that’s just a bonus", said Rice. He says that formal school acts like an insurance policy that can be cashed in when things do not according to plan.

In Shanghai, Rice will be the special guest at the launch of the Gridiron Leaders Foundation (GLF) at the Jing An Shangri-La tomorrow. An initiative aimed at providing opportunities for NCCA-level players to come to China and coach one of the twelve teams of the AFLC.

Check out some of the highlights that took place last weekend:

Photos: courtesy of Dragonmedia

If you take the subway or the bus, you’ll probably find several people playing the 2048 game on their phones either iOS or androids. The simplicity of this game makes it a cross-generational favorite at the moment. The game was first released in March 2014 as a web version and developed over a weekend by 19-year-old Italian web developer Gabriele Cirulli. Cirulli later released the free app version for both iOS and Android in May 2014. This app has made it to the iTunes App Store featured list numerous times.

Features
This is mainly a mathematical puzzle game. This simple thing to do is join the tiles to get to 2048; this is easier said than done. The starting point is titles of twos this can prove to be problematic when playing this game if there is no strategy involved. The tiles move up or down left to right and vice versa. The more you add matching tiles together, the new tiles will increase in value moving from twos to fours to eights till 2048.

There is a progressive challenge section, which sets a number of moves to make in order to compile the stated number before moving on to the next number. The compilation of tiles has to be done within a set number of moves. The option available is to go back to figuring out ways to get to 2048.

The app is in several languages English, French, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish. You can remove the ads within the app if it’s too distracting but for a fee and can be restored in the menu section (why someone would want to do that is beyond me). There is the option of sharing the information the scores via sms, mail, twitter or air drop.

Drawbacks
The graphics on this app are ordinary, in short nothing fancy and quite bland. This is done intentionally to make sure that the focus is on the objective to get the tiles to 2048.

Ages: 5+
Category: Games
Platform: universal
Language: English, French, Japanese, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish
Price: Free with In-App purchases- USD 1.99 to unlock the no ads version

Photos: appannie.com

Knowledge is power. The smug feeling of winning a quiz at a board game, at a local bar or simply knowing the answer to random question is gold. This week’s app is QuizUp, which is a good recommendation for teens and adults, arms with answers to history, geography, music, tv and hundreds more other topics. This app is developed by Plain Vanilla Corporation and falls under the game category. It currently has over 10 million users therefore a word of caution is necessary here for teens to play among friends and keep their information private.

Features
The app has nearly 508 topics ranging from books to sports and music that are top hits. The most useful topics are art, business, science, geography, history, education and general knowledge. The user interface has a matte black background with a splash of bright color that gives the app an element of fun and excitement. You can become a cognitive guru easily has the interface is easy to use and straightforward making it possible to build up your levels easily.

The wide range of topics is simply amazing, which makes this app compelling. The normal dull formats of going through sets of questions is something that will not be found here as the app has been made to have some dramatic flair. The quiz element offers a nice break from the rigors of assignments. And what better way to test out and challenge others, right? The app finds an opponent for you from anywhere around the world after you choose the topic and the subtopic. This is one of the most addictive apps there as you are mentally challenged with every topic choice. There is the option of logging on to quizup.com and submitting your set of questions.

Drawbacks
As is with living in China, there are times connecting to the iTunes store and game center will be more time consuming and frustrating. The one thing is that some of the topics are heavily centered on North America therefore if you’re not from this part of the region then it would be handy to have a friend nearby. This app is only available on the iOS platform which limits the fun to other iOS users. Hopefully, the developers will make an Android version. The issue of privacy sets in as you have to be careful who teens are sharing their information with via the app as you can connect with social media or email.

Ages: Teens
Category:games
Content: quizzes
Platform: iPad, iPod and iPhone
Language: English
Price: Free

Photos courtesy of iTunes.com