Originally published at: 祸国殃民的电子游戏 – 曙光
The Nation-ruining and People-harming Video Games
Editorial Board of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
Editorial Board of the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Proletariat
One hundred years ago, China was still a country suffering from the Western capitalist dumping of opium. Opium ravaged the physical bodies of the Chinese people and corrupted their spirits, turning a healthy, lively person into a "Sick Man of East Asia" who only knew to lie in bed daily, indulge in extravagance, and take opium as a pleasure. Confronted with this tragic situation, the peasant leader of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom revolution, Hong Xiuquan, once bitterly condemned: “He who drives himself into the trap, the most frantic is the foreign opium. Now, how many heroes have been hurt by the gun of opium?”[1] For a century, the Chinese people have fought bravely, sacrificing everything, and finally changed this situation, making opium completely disappear from the new China.
However, since the capitalist restoration in China in 1976, not only has material-based drug addiction spread across the land, but also spiritual drugs—various bourgeois reactionary literary and artistic works—have been widely disseminated by the Chinese revisionists, used to numb the Chinese people's spirits and erode their class consciousness to resist the fascist rule of the revisionists, thus maintaining their reactionary and decayed regime. Among these bourgeois reactionary cultures, the most harmful and malicious is the bourgeois video game. All current video games, regardless of their themes or designs, fundamentally contain bourgeois ideology and are part of bourgeois culture. They reflect reactionary bourgeois ideas and seek to spread these reactionary thoughts through video games to all classes.
Moreover, since the petty bourgeoisie ultimately depends on the bourgeoisie in ideological terms, they also have to bow to bourgeois culture and become deeply addicted to bourgeois-made video games. They desperately indulge in these spiritual opiates, spending vast amounts of money, plunging into poverty, and using the social wealth painstakingly created by countless workers to satisfy their selfish desires. The bourgeoisie exploits this luxury consumption of spiritual opium by the petty bourgeoisie, raising prices and selling video game services at monopolistic high prices, further intensifying the exploitation of the working people. If impoverished proletarians happen to fall into the vice of video game addiction, the situation becomes even worse, as it means they must spend part of their wages—meant for their basic needs—on purchasing video games.
For the entire capitalist society, the revisionists, in order to maintain their reactionary fascist rule, go to great lengths to prevent the Chinese people from awakening, and to stop the petty bourgeoisie from “liberating themselves from moral decay and becoming a useful class.” They even tacitly approve or directly promote various reactionary video games. From initially tolerating the import of Japanese and Western video games, to vigorously supporting Tencent, NetEase, and other gaming conglomerates, to allowing the world's largest video game trading platform Steam to develop in China, and finally to the promotion of Chinese game capital represented by the so-called “Shanghai F4”[2]—these are all manifestations of the revisionists’ support for Chinese video game development. Today, the so-called “AAA blockbuster” “Black Myth: Wukong”, filled with dark literature, extreme individualism, and patriarchal ideas, is also a product of this support. The revisionists have always been the biggest supporters of Chinese video game development.
Today, video games have become a rotten, stinking giant sore in Chinese society. They damage people's material life, cause those addicted to them to forget to eat and sleep, turn day into night; deceive people into wasting money and indulging recklessly; ruin people's spiritual life, leaving them empty and morally corrupt, and in the process, they are led and eroded into selfish, morally degenerate extreme individualists. We must critically condemn video games that have caused extremely adverse effects on thought, economy, and politics.
Spreading Bourgeois Reactionary Ideology Nationwide
All current video games carry various reactionary bourgeois ideas, such as promoting the survival of the fittest, brutal competition, “self-interest and greed are the laws,” “everyone treats others like wolves”[3], and extreme individualism; as well as bourgeois human nature theories in “MOBA” type games; promoting the idea that oppression is justified, “sex and desire are natural,” vulgar ideas that trivialize love into animal mating, causing severe oppression of women; promoting idealist conspiracy theories, dark literature, anarchist ideas, and other reactionary themes—these are countless. All kinds of video games flood the scene, turning China's cultural and artistic circles into a smoky, chaotic mess. Once prosperous socialist culture in China has now become materialistic and decadent, and video games are partly responsible for this decline.
Reactionary “MOBA” games like “League of Legends” promoting the survival of the fittest and extreme individualism
In today’s widespread “MOBA” games, the ideology of extreme individualism of the bourgeoisie is extremely strong. The full name of “MOBA” is “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena,” a “multiplayer online tactical competitive game,” characterized by advocating “competition,” with the entire game centered on “competing” with others. All actions in the game aim to win, and upon victory, players receive various rewards. It’s easy to see that this is a game promoting the survival of the fittest and individual interests above all. It propagates the bourgeois extreme individualism worldview of pursuing money, fame, and status at all costs, advocating selfishness, deception, and plunder for personal gain. Taking the widely influential Chinese “MOBA” game “League of Legends” as an example, its game mechanics place personal competition at a very prominent position. To incite mutual scheming and killing among players, the game deliberately sets up the “KDA”[4] system to calculate kills, deaths, and assists, rewarding high kill counts with more rewards. It also establishes a “ranking” system to encourage players to climb the ranks through competition. Players thus become extremely selfish, viewing others as enemies in pursuit of victory. Moreover, besides these virtual “rewards,” since “League of Legends” is a social network game based on player relationships, winning in competition can also bring real-world benefits. Players can earn money through e-sports competitions and live streaming, compare their high ranks with others, flaunt their status, and even attain a “big shot” position, acting arrogantly over others. On the other hand, the game’s competitive mechanism also discriminates against and belittles losing players, turning them into objects of mockery and insult by high-rank players. Therefore, whether to show off or to avoid humiliation, all players in “League of Legends” compete for fame and profit, ruthlessly harming others for virtual and real gains. Marx pointed out that “competition makes the internal laws of capitalist production mode externally governed by coercive laws. Competition forces capitalists to constantly expand their capital to maintain it, and this expansion can only rely on progressive accumulation.”[6] The competitive phenomenon in “League of Legends” is exactly the same as that among capitalists. What “League of Legends” advocates is pure bourgeois individualism, a poisonous means for the bourgeoisie to corrupt the masses and incite class struggle among them.
Among various selfish behaviors, the most prominent is the moral decay and selfishness of “League of Legends” players, even leading to the so-called “Zuan” culture[7]. The “Zuan” culture is essentially hooligan culture. These “League of Legends” players, in order to vent their personalist emotions caused by their inability to defeat opponents in competition and to obtain money, fame, and status, unabashedly expose their hooligan nature. Against opponents in the game, they either mock and ridicule because they won, or curse and insult because they lost; against teammates, they either gloat over their own success or become furious and use filthy language to attack them. These players, in their frantic pursuit of fleeting fame and fortune, openly display their hooligan nature, insulting each other and exposing what kind of hooligans they are! This is also why most “hooligan” streamers known for “abstract” culture started by streaming “League of Legends”. For example, Sun Xiaochuan, a hooligan streamer who often utters “Your mother is dead” and insults fans who do not tip, is notorious for his hooligan tactics. Another player who viciously insults “Silver” and “Division” and calls others “cancer patients,” spewing vulgar language to mock low-rank players, is also a hooligan streamer named “Dian Gun,” who treats his vulgarity as a performance to attract petty bourgeois rightists and become a clown for online entertainment. Such hooligan behaviors, pushed to the extreme, can lead to heinous crimes. The Chenzhou Vocational and Technical College murder case in 2014 is related to this. A petty bourgeois student named Liu Kai, after losing three consecutive matches while playing “League of Legends” with his roommate Li Bo, erupted with extreme individualist thoughts, venting his resentment toward the “big shot” he couldn’t defeat in the virtual world by stabbing a weaker person—his roommate, who had been fighting alongside him. The depth of “League of Legends”’s toxicity can lead to such tragedies, warning those who think “games are all virtual” and “no one really takes games seriously”!
It should also be pointed out that “MOBA” type games not only cannot eliminate real-world class oppression but also strengthen the power of the bourgeoisie and uphold capitalist rule. These games, like others, reflect real class relations. In this virtual world, there are class distinctions and hierarchies. Although players are not openly divided by class within the game, the real-world class relations inevitably manifest in this artistic form. In “MOBA” games, the so-called “big shots” are mostly bourgeois and affluent petty bourgeois players who are in a stable parasitic state, capable of wasting a lot of time playing “MOBA” games, with enough money to recharge extensively or even buy accounts or hire others for boosting. Most petty bourgeois players, due to lack of free time and money, can only be at the bottom of the “MOBA” ranking system. Clearly, “MOBA” games are just a virtual reflection of the oppression and humiliation that the majority of petty bourgeoisie suffer in the real capitalist society.
The other major category of video games is erotic games. Erotic games promote an extremely decadent slave-owner philosophy—pursuing the most vile sexual stimulation, treating others as inferior and not as equals, degrading others into tools for satisfying one’s lust, shamelessly oppressing others. This extreme egoism is fully embodied in various erotic games. In many “2D” erotic games, characters are openly priced prostitutes. By spending money to buy in-game currency, which acts as their “electronic prostitution fee,” players can indulge their lust and commit obscene acts of “electronic solicitation.”
Taking the notorious 二次元 (2D) erotic game Azur Lane as an example, although the game is said to be based on naval battles from World War II, in reality, this game has nothing to do with actual history except for some superficial historical metaphors. The various so-called game characters modeled after "WWII navy ships" are completely unrelated to real naval vessels except for their names, and all appear as erotic images of 二次元 (2D) women. In the game, all female images are deliberately grotesqued with erotic techniques solely to please morally depraved bourgeois male players: extensive skin exposure, several characters' clothing combined into nothing more than incomplete outfits, and especially egregious exposure of sexual characteristics, [8] defaming all women as shameless exhibitionists; all female characters' body structures are extremely unscientific, with exaggerated breasts and hips, maliciously depicting women as inherently created to cater to male sexual desires as sexual tools; all characters' faces are intentionally drawn to resemble young girls or close to young girls, some even directly appearing as young girls, creating a reactionary justification for pedophilic child pornography advocating rape of young girls; all costumes, apart from being deliberately designed to be thin for erotic reactionary needs—such as low-cut tops, ultra-short shorts, miniskirts, and stockings—are also dressed to turn women into sexual tools, containing erotic connotations; the voices of all characters are not only high-pitched and soft, emphasizing the "weakness" of women who cannot resist, but also filled with vulgar content depicting women as "voluntarily" becoming male sex slaves, vilifying women as unprincipled servants; the most concentrated expression of Azur Lane's erotic ideology is the so-called "Vow System." This "Vow System" openly promotes promiscuity as love, falsely claiming that bourgeois marriage—an openly transactional relationship—is "beautiful" and "solemn," beautifying pornography to the utmost, and shamelessly encouraging players to establish "vows" with all characters without limit, romanticizing the bourgeois "harem of three thousand" as "love," etc.
Reactionary game company "Manchuu" hires erotic models and conducts erotic activities at the company annual meeting
The malign influence of Azur Lane is vividly demonstrated at the wildly decadent annual meeting of its creator company, "Shanghai Manchuu Network Technology Co., Ltd." (hereinafter "Manchuu"). At the meeting, Manchuu's capitalists unabashedly displayed their shameless sexual perversion, openly hiring 二次元 (2D) erotic models to portray various erotic images from Azur Lane, turning the company’s annual meeting into a vulgar and obscene orgy, with extremely harmful effects. Such a game and its parent company, from virtual to real, are nothing but electronic brothels! [9]
It must be pointed out that in capitalist society, patriarchal ideas dominate, so most women are oppressed by patriarchy. Pornography mostly promotes the justification of oppression of women, and thus, the most widespread and reactionary are the pornographic games played by petty-bourgeois male players. Currently, most pornographic games blatantly treat women as sex slaves, while only a few degrade men to such lowly positions in the game. Moreover, many pornographic games aimed at petty-bourgeois women mainly involve dressing up and selling themselves to a "good" man or engaging in bourgeois romantic relationships with "good" men who meet bourgeois aesthetic standards—games where women willingly become male slaves. In contrast, most games for petty-bourgeois male players feature women with large exposed skin, prominent sexual characteristics, and even obscene sexual scenes as commonplace.
As for women, although they are generally oppressed, pornographic games also significantly poison their minds. These games uniformly glorify bourgeois romantic love, promote the bourgeois wealthy lady's life of luxury and extravagance, and lure women to seek a "good" man to parasitize on, receiving meticulous material and spiritual care from men, ultimately accepting the prostitution philosophy of selling their bodies and souls for personal pleasure. Furthermore, such pornographic games distort reality, creating unrealistic romantic fantasies about "perfect" men who are supposedly from the bourgeois class and "truly care" for women, thereby beautifying the morally corrupt bourgeois men and deceiving female players who play these games long-term. This is why pornographic games, whether for men or women, are a harmful spiritual opium.
Compared to the latter, the former is obviously more reactionary and more harmful to petty-bourgeoisie. As Engels said: "Prostitution merely causes unfortunate women to become victims among women, and even they are far from the extent of degeneration usually imagined. On the contrary, it corrupts the character of all men. For example, long-term engagement in such relationships is, in nine cases out of ten, a real preparatory school for infidelity after marriage." [10]
Most petty-bourgeois men, through long-term playing of pornographic games, degenerate into sex maniacs full of yellow garbage, forming bourgeois morals that betray love, trample on sincerity, justify prostitution, and abandon relationships. They regard their marriage as an open prostitution, accepting reactionary ideas instilled by pornographic games that women should become their slaves, and have no moral pressure to oppress women. Then, they imitate various reactionary plots in the game, deceive and coerce women into becoming their household slaves, and unleash their淫威 (tyranny), exposing their true nature, oppressing women to the utmost, ultimately becoming patriarchal patriarchs full of righteousness and virtue, full of male thieves and female prostitutes. This is what Lu Xun called "the evolution of men"!
The reason why such a large tumor of pornography oppresses women in China is precisely because China is a country where Confucian culture dominates society. In such an extremely reactionary fascist country, the bureaucratic bourgeoisie, to maintain its shaky rule, vigorously promotes Confucianism, propagating patriarchal ideas such as "male superiority and female inferiority," "the three obediences and four virtues," and "the husband as the head of the wife," maintaining male dominance over women in society and the husband's authority over the wife in the family. Women are not only economically powerless and unable to support themselves through labor but also lack political rights. They are constantly suppressed by various police, courts, etc., of the bureaucratic bourgeoisie. The so-called "divorce cooling-off period" is the most obvious example. In a society where domestic violence is often inflicted by husbands on wives, restricting divorce under the guise of a "divorce cooling-off period" effectively keeps battered women under the control of their husbands, remaining as family slaves with no rights. Because of the extremely low status of women in China, such deeply insulting pornographic games as Azur Lane can flourish in Chinese society.
There is also a type of game centered on "black curtain literature," promoting anarchist ideas. These games are characterized by pretentious and obscure ways of pretending to "expose" the "darkness" of capitalist society, but in fact, they mystify the various forms of exploitation and oppression in capitalism, exaggerating bourgeois power and advocating the defeatism that capitalism is invincible and bourgeois rule unshakable. During this process, black curtain games also deceive petty-bourgeoisie with anarchist ideas. Lenin pointed out: "Anarchism is a dressed-up form of bourgeois individualism. Individualism is the foundation of the entire anarchist worldview." [11]
Black curtain games are precisely based on bourgeois individualism as their worldview. They exploit the narrow vision of petty-bourgeoisie, unable to fully understand capitalism and grasp its objective laws, using extremely superficial idealist conspiracy theories to interpret social phenomena. It can be said that anarchism is the deceptive basis of black curtain games. On the other hand, anarchism is also a handy tool used by black curtain games to promote defeatism and instill heroism and history myths into petty-bourgeoisie players. Black curtain games often use petty-bourgeoisie selfishness, deliberately elevating their status and position, praising the protagonist played by petty-bourgeoisie players as a unique "hero" who "knows the truth while others are drunk," while belittling the masses as "ignorant" and "numb" mobs. In this way, black curtain games depict a personal heroism picture: the protagonist as a "great" "hero" discovering the "dark curtain" behind society, i.e., that society is ruled by a few through conspiracy, while most people, as "mobs," are unaware and willingly enslaved, only the protagonist as a "hero" can uncover the truth. The protagonist then attempts to resist, but due to the overwhelming power of the rulers, cannot defeat the conspiracy alone, and finally the resistance fails. Although the protagonist fails, he gains the reputation of "honor in defeat," becoming the only "smart" and "brave" "hero."
Among these, the most notorious is the game Black Myth: Wukong, which is now specifically listed as a party class research topic by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and taught by bureaucratic bourgeois experts on how to use it to deceive money and lull the people[12]. Black Myth: Wukong is a reactionary mishmash pieced together from the original Journey to the West, A Chinese Odyssey series, and Wukong Biography, and is one of the most typical black curtain games. The entire game depicts the image of the bourgeois ruling class in capitalist society—the "celestial gods and Buddhas"—as the "black curtain" weavers in the Black Myth worldview, claiming that "Journey to the West" is a "conspiracy" of the "celestial gods and Buddhas," aiming to completely control Sun Wukong and other "earthly" creatures, maintaining the rule of the "celestial gods and Buddhas" over the "earth." This relationship metaphorically reflects that the bourgeoisie, a minority in society, maintains its rule through state machinery and bourgeois ideology. However, the game does not truthfully reveal the scientific relationship between the ruling and the oppressed classes in capitalism. Instead, it deliberately obscures and mystifies this relationship, using fictitious supernatural powers like "divine force," "magic," and "tightening spell" to replace the real tools of bourgeois rule, preventing petty-bourgeoisie players from understanding capitalism's true face. As a result, the petty-bourgeoisie influenced by the game cannot correctly understand the basis of bourgeois rule and cannot derive the scientific method to overthrow capitalism. Therefore, Black Myth distorts reality and spreads a strong defeatist attitude, using mysticism to make petty-bourgeoisie believe that capitalism is invincible and that "supernatural powers" cannot be defeated.
Among these, the most infamous is the game Black Myth: Wukong, which is now specifically designated as a party class research topic by the bureaucratic bourgeoisie and taught by bureaucratic bourgeois experts on how to use it to deceive money and lull the people[12]. Black Myth: Wukong is a reactionary mishmash cobbled together from the original Journey to the West, A Chinese Odyssey series, and Wukong Biography, and is one of the most typical black curtain games. The entire game depicts the image of the bourgeois ruling class in capitalist society—the "celestial gods and Buddhas"—as the "black curtain" weavers in the Black Myth worldview, claiming that "Journey to the West" is a "conspiracy" of the "celestial gods and Buddhas," aiming to completely control Sun Wukong and other "earthly" creatures, maintaining the rule of the "celestial gods and Buddhas" over the "earth." This relationship metaphorically reflects that the bourgeoisie, a minority in society, maintains its rule through state machinery and bourgeois ideology. However, the game does not truthfully reveal the scientific relationship between the ruling and the oppressed classes in capitalism. Instead, it deliberately obscures and mystifies this relationship, using fictitious supernatural powers like "divine force," "magic," and "tightening spell" to replace the real tools of bourgeois rule, preventing petty-bourgeoisie players from understanding capitalism's true face. As a result, the petty-bourgeoisie influenced by the game cannot correctly understand the basis of bourgeois rule and cannot derive the scientific method to overthrow capitalism. Therefore, Black Myth distorts reality and spreads a strong defeatist attitude, using mysticism to make petty-bourgeoisie believe that capitalism is invincible and that "supernatural powers" cannot be defeated.
“Game Science” core figure Yang Qi’s true face of anti-China, anti-Communist, anti-people
Does "Black Myth" tell players that communism "is an independent movement that benefits the majority of people and seeks their interests"? No. On the contrary, it openly declares, "The main and perhaps the only purpose of 'seeking destiny' is to allow Sun Wukong to achieve 'liberation,' becoming a 'Great Sage' who is 'free and unfettered,' not bound by 'heavenly gods and Buddhas.'" All player activities exist to uphold personal selfish interests, and for personal gain, they can disregard the people's interests and the communist ideals! Such extreme egoism is a poison that corrupts the morals of the petty bourgeoisie, allowing their selfishness as small private owners to grow infinitely, further turning them into faithful supporters of capitalism, fulfilling the bourgeoisie's evil aim of ensuring capitalism's eternal survival.
Regarding the large poisonous weed of "Black Myth" that paints capitalism in a flattering light, and the "Game Science" creation team’s reactionary literary and artistic gang that is anti-China, anti-Communist, and anti-people, a thorough critique must be made. All dark games should be ruthlessly condemned and ultimately defeated!
Wasting Social Wealth and Deepening People's Poverty
The production of video games not only lures countless petty bourgeois into the path of degeneration and positions them against the revolution, but also wastes a large amount of social wealth materially. Moreover, the bourgeois uses it as a tool for profiteering, strengthening exploitation of the people, causing the proletariat and petty bourgeoisie to sink into deeper poverty due to the massive spiritual opium intake.
As a form of social cultural activity, the labor involved in producing video games is non-productive labor. Programmers, artists, writers, designers involved in game production all exert mental labor. However, "People must first eat, drink, live, and wear before engaging in politics, science, arts, religion, etc.; thus, the production of direct material means of life, and the economic development stage of a nation or era, form the foundation". Only the labor that directly produces material wealth is productive labor that creates value, while the labor related to making video games is non-productive labor that does not create value. Its profit comes only because this labor helps transfer surplus value from the productive sector to the gaming sector.
Unlike commercial capital that profits by commercial markups based on the value of commodities, gaming capital does not set prices based on the value of the physical carriers of video games—servers, computers, desks, office buildings, etc., nor on the circulation costs of making the games. Instead, it sells the service of the game at a monopolistic price. This monopolistic price is set by the gaming capital based on its monopoly position—control over the source of game production—and depends on two factors: the maximum willingness to pay of players objectively and their subjective willingness to buy. Therefore, even if some petty bourgeois want to pirate the game at extremely low costs—only cheap things can be copied, unlike gold products made from indiscriminate human labor that cannot be easily pirated—gaming capital can still set a monopolistic price far above its actual production cost, earning huge monopoly profits by plundering players’ wallets.
International reactionary game trading platforms Steam’s monopoly prices for various "famous" games around the world
Although the level of monopoly profit does not depend on the actual costs of producing goods, the source of monopoly profit is the labor of others. As previously stated, value can only originate from productive labor that directly produces material wealth. Therefore, monopoly profit, as a form of surplus value, ultimately comes from extracting surplus value from all classes and strata of society—exploiting the working people. Specifically, if those paying the monopoly price for video games are bourgeois, then the gaming capital is taking a share of the surplus value exploited from these capitalists, participating in the exploitation of the proletariat through the collection of monopoly prices, and strengthening bourgeois exploitation of the proletariat to deepen their poverty. If those paying the monopoly price are the proletariat, then gaming capital directly exploits the proletariat at the monopoly price, taking part of their wages as profit, forcing the deceived proletariat to scrimp and save, spending their money on addictive video games instead of essentials, worsening their living conditions. If the game is sold in colonial markets, the monopoly price also includes surplus value obtained through unequal exchange with colonial peoples. If the player is a petty bourgeois student in a parasitic state, the monopoly price includes surplus value obtained from their family—if their living expenses for the game come from their family’s labor, then this is exploitation of their family by gaming capital; if they come from a exploiting class family, then gaming capital has taken a part of the surplus value exploited from their family.
There are many sources of monopoly prices, countless in fact. Here only some common sources are listed, but they sufficiently illustrate how video games help gaming capital greedily suck the blood of the people from all corners of society, nurturing a parasitic, decayed, dying capitalist tree. Every second this social tumor exists is a huge waste of social wealth and keeps the people in deeper poverty. According to statistics, "In 2024, the actual sales revenue of the domestic game market reached 325.783 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 7.53%, setting a new record." "The actual sales revenue of Chinese independently developed games in overseas markets was 18.557 billion USD, a year-on-year increase of 13.39%, exceeding one trillion yuan for five consecutive years and reaching a new high." However, at the same time, China’s 600 million monthly income only averages about 1,000 yuan, revealing that the people are already in widespread relative and absolute poverty. The most hateful are the poisonous snakes and beasts, devouring our blood and flesh!
To end the suffering of the people, criticizing and banning video games is imperative!
Video Games Are Reactionary Political Accomplices
In summary, the impact of video games on Chinese society is extremely detrimental. They are a narcotic that destroys the spirit and a costly electronic opium; they are tools used by reactionaries to serve their own interests. Although objectively, video games have already caused such serious harm, attitudes towards them vary among different people. All classes and groups in society decide their stance on video games based on their own interests. For the Chinese bourgeoisie—especially the small clique of revisionist bureaucrats who control the state power—to maintain their rule, they will never sit idly by as proletarian thought develops and grows, clearing away the superstitions caused by video games. Instead, they will go to great lengths to defend video games, using various means to maintain their harmful influence among the masses. The proletariat, as the most revolutionary and most promising class, will never collude with reactionary bourgeois ideas. They naturally tend to accept socialist ideological systems, and therefore their demands for criticizing video games are the most resolute. The petty bourgeoisie, on the other hand, is a wavering class. The left wing, after long struggles, will eventually shift to the proletariat’s side, proletarianizing itself and breaking away from the video games it once cherished; the centrists will remain indecisive for a long time, showing a hot-and-cold attitude; while the right wing will stand on the side of the bourgeoisie for their selfish, narrow, and pitiful personal interests, loving and obsessing over the reactionary bourgeois ideas promoted in video games. Lenin once said, "If the axioms of geometry offend people's interests, they will certainly be refuted." The right wing of the petty bourgeoisie are such stubborn reactionaries who desperately defend their low tastes. They will inevitably attack Marxism with all kinds of absurd and reactionary fallacies, justifying their obsession with video games and their ugly behavior.
Among various bourgeois and petty bourgeois factions opposing and criticizing video games, especially worth criticizing is the large leftist group in China. Their ideology is a chaotic mixture of “Anti-Revisionism,”[22] which in practice “does not recognize ideological struggle, prefers to maintain ‘harmony,’ calls everyone comrade, and uses ‘freedom of speech’ to gather various factions, with no central ideology and no Marxist authority… They like to gather in the ‘Petrarch Club’ to share low-level tastes, only because they share vulgar hobbies… The reason they propose the ‘Left Circle United Front’ is nothing but to protect their interests in maintaining low-level tastes under the guise of Marxism.”[23] Therefore, regardless of internal faction conflicts or ideological contradictions, these leftist elements form the “August Alliance”[24] to jointly oppose the Marxist ideological line, united in defending low-level tastes. For example, the so-called “Famous” reactionary leftist organization on the Telegram platform, “Workers and Peasants Liberation Society,” shamelessly extols “Black Myth: Wukong”:
Besides this, apart from a handful of reactionaries within the leftist circle, the petty bourgeoisie is ultimately not a hopeless class. Their future is not just about “fuming to death,” but also about transformation—through ideological struggle, they can shift towards the proletariat and contribute to the Chinese revolution. “Philosophers only interpret the world in different ways; the point is to change it.”[29] Criticizing video games is not for mere criticism, but to free the petty bourgeois, who are deeply poisoned by video games, from moral corruption and to make them “useful to the revolution”[30]. Only by breaking free spiritually from the influence of bourgeoisie can the petty bourgeoisie, which needs transformation, sever ties with the old ideas and culture of capitalist society, and through ideological struggle, establish a proletarian worldview, completing the process of overthrowing the old and establishing the new. We hope that the majority of the petty bourgeoisie still immersed in the capitalist spiritual opium can wake up in time, participate in the Chinese socialist revolution, and not be the sacrificial victims of the old world, but the masters of the new world!As a cultural work of the gaming industry, its content is designed as a doomed, repetitive, incomplete struggle narrative, exaggerating the flaws of the Great Sage, while minimizing his virtues. The work promotes individualism, heroism, pessimism, tragicism, and selfishness—this is actually a perfect reflection of petty bourgeois revolutionary ideals. The contradictions in the work mirror the various contradictions in our class struggle.
Of course, the creators of “Black Myth: Wukong” are much more progressive than their peers, but we hope they can be even more progressive【?】 (mainly in political aspects).… (additional praise and ideological distortions) …
- Hong Xiuquan: "Yuan Dao Salvation Song," "Selected Works of Hong Xiuquan," Guangdong People's Publishing House, 1976. ↑
- Refers to the four game companies headquartered in Shanghai, namely miHoYo, Lilith, Paper Games, and Elex, which are highly profitable and leading in fame and fortune, hence called "Shanghai F4." ↑
- Derived from the reactionary jargon and black notes of Lin Biao, a major capitalist roader, traitor, ambitious man, and conspirator in the history of the Chinese Communist Party. ↑
- An abbreviation of the English "Kill, Death, Assistant," with the Chinese meaning of "kill, death, assist." ↑
- The "ranking" system is a level system in "League of Legends." It divides players into several levels based on their wins and losses; higher-level players have more victories and generally higher skill levels. This reflects the bourgeois class hierarchy based on so-called "talent" in "League of Legends." ↑
- Marx: "Das Kapital," Volume One, in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 23, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- The so-called "Zuan" culture is named after the name of the telecom zone in the Chinese server of "League of Legends." Due to a curse war among petty-bourgeois players during a game in that server zone, their chat records were screenshot and widely circulated on the internet. As a result, "Zuan" has come to mean using foul language to insult others and acting shamelessly, making "Zuan" culture synonymous with hooligan culture. ↑
- The official "Azur Lane" deliberately set a backdoor in its game installation package to promote pornographic ideas, bypassing superficial censorship and preventing strong opposition from the public. Players can modify game files through this backdoor to display more erotic female characters. This covert behavior fully exposes the pornographic nature of "Azur Lane." ↑
- Due to its overly explicit sexual content, "Azur Lane" is nicknamed "Blue Kiln" by some petty-bourgeois players. ↑
- Engels: "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 21, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1965. ↑
- Lenin: "Anarchism and Socialism," in "Selected Works of Lenin," Volume 1, second Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1Cqz2YrEVp. ↑
- "Capital is not a thing, but a certain social relation of production... Capital is the transformed means of production into capital... The product of labor and the conditions of activity that are monopolized by a certain part of society, opposed to living labor and independent, personified in capital." (Marx: "Das Kapital," Volume 3, in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 25, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1974). The emphasis is added by the translator—translator's note. ↑
- Marx: "Letter to Friedrich Engels (November 23, 1870)," in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 33, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1973. ↑
- Historically, anarchists have always been fierce enemies of Marxism. From Proudhonists to Bakuninists, and to the anarchist bandits Makhno in the Russian Civil War and the "Fifth Column" of anarchist traitors in the Spanish Civil War of 1936, they have always been extremely hostile to revolution and repeatedly caused severe negative impacts during revolutions. For detailed accounts of anarchists' sabotage activities in the history of the international communist movement, see "History of the International Communist Movement," Peking University edition, 1976. ↑
- Marx and Engels: "Communist Manifesto," in "Selected Works of Marx and Engels," Volume 1, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- Regarding the reactionary nature of the game company "Game Science" and its two core leaders, Feng Ji and Yang Qi, see the illustrations and captions in the text. ↑
- Engels: "Speech at Marx's Tomb," in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 3, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- https://www.gameres.com/909773.html. ↑
- https://finance.sina.com.cn/china/gncj/2020-05-29/doc-iirczymk4111979.shtml. ↑
- Lenin: "Marxism and Revisionism," in "Selected Works of Lenin," Volume 2, second Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1972. ↑
- Refers to anarchism (anarchy), Trotskyism, Western Marxism, and revisionism collectively called "Anto-Revisionism." ↑
- Fenghuo Flame: "The Road to Future Revolution in China," second edition, third draft. ↑
- The "August Alliance" was an anti-Bolshevik alliance formed in 1912 by veteran opportunists like Trotsky in the history of the Russian Communist movement. They had no unified political ideas or programs; their only motivation for uniting was opposition to Lenin's Bolshevik revolutionary line. As a result, they lacked mass support and were highly isolated. Their "unity" was fragile, and within less than two years, the alliance disbanded due to internal disputes. ↑
- https://blog.cmlmuf.top/archives/dang-dai-zhong-guo-wen-hua-ling-yu-de-jie-ji-dou-zheng-jian-ping-hei-shen-hua-wu-kong. ↑
- Bolded, emphasized, and text within right-angled brackets are added by the translator—translator's note. ↑
- Refers to Feng Ji. ↑
- Refers to Yang Qi. ↑
- Marx: "Theses on Feuerbach," in "Marx and Engels Collected Works," Volume 3, first Chinese edition, People's Publishing House, 1960. ↑
- Fenghuo Flame: "The Road to Future Revolution in China," second edition, third draft. ↑