Whilst there are a fair few people who live up to the aforementioned shut-in PC gamer, in fact the majority of that ludicrous amount of online play isn't done at home. Much like South Korea and its preoccupation with competitive play, the majority of that gaming is done at internet cafés which line the streets of Chinese cities, rivalling even the arcades for their ubiquity. The reason why is a little different from Korea's, mind. Whilst the country's booming economy has seen China essentially established as a world superpower (in terms of industry at the very least), there's been very little of that trickling down to the general population. Their economic prospects have vastly improved, but computers, consoles and internet connections remain prohibitively expensive for most. All of which means it's way more cost-effective to go play a game in a café, with computers pre-loaded with certain titles and the chance to play for set amount of times at a set price. Not only does that dovetail nicely with the anti-addiction stuff the government put in place, but also continues their reach of censorship by prohibiting what users can do on their computers (as well as imposing age limits to protect minors).
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
