In recent weeks, China has announced a series of measures to further regulate online entertainment, including a crackdown on so-called "fandom culture" and new curbs on online gaming.
But a push in the state media last week against a popular role-playing game may suggest that momentum is building for action against offline activities too."Script murder," or jubensha (剧本杀), is one of the latest obsessions of China's Gen Z. The murder mystery-like role-playing game requires only a room, a table and a host with a variety of storylines and scripts from which players can choose.
The excitement unfolds as each player is assigned a script with a different character, and must act out that character - either to the group or in private one-on-one conversations - until the original plot can be pieced together and the murderer unmasked.The jubensha craze was driven by the popularity of the Chinese variety program "
Who's The Murderer" (明星大侦探), released on Mango TV in 2016, in which groups of famous singers and actors were placed in murder mystery scenarios for the enjoyment of television audiences - with a celebrity culprit exposed in each episode. The game now has a huge market in China. Countless Jubensha shops have opened across the country since 2016, and the game saw
a sharp increase in popularity over the Spring Festival holiday earlier this year. A
2021 report by Meituan estimates that
there are currently around 9.41 million consumers of script murder products, over 70 percent of them under the age of 30, with total sales of 15.42 billion RMB.The rocketing growth of the jubensha industry has also come with problems. There have been complaints among various game publishers and shops about another sort of crime - the shameless pilfering of others' plot lines. And there have been some concerns about the use of more violent and explicit content. But negative press coverage of jubensha since September may be the first clue that the industry is facing increased pressure in the midst of the government's broader crackdown on the entertainment industry, and on youthful activities such as "fandom culture." Some jubensha fans have criticized coverage in the state media, saying that it unfairly distorts public perception of the game.
Comment: The pathocrats corrupting the US are clearly succeeding in their attempts to divide and conquer the American people: