Kapital Koopas: Send Your Kids The Mario-themed Hongbao This Spring Festival, Then Send Them to E-Sport Bootcamp
Press F to pay respects to all the fallen goombas. It's time for a deep dive into China's gaming culture in our column, Kapital Koopas.
Mario-themed hongbao on Wechat
For many people living and working in Beijing, this coming Spring Festival may not be able to serve one of the holiday's most important purposes, the reunion of family, due to the pandemic situation and travel restrictions that have resulted from it. However, that doesn’t mean that those with kids in their lives will be spared from the traditional giving out of hongbao during the holidays.
As one of Chinese biggest social media platforms, WeChat has witnessed billions of users transferring digital hongbao every year, so this year its parent company Tencent seized the opportunity to expand the influence of its collaboration with Nintendo by distributing Mario-themed hongbao on Wechat.
Amusingly, the cheerful and lovable design of this Italian plumper goes well with a hongbao, whose red cap and shirt match perfectly with the auspicious red color of the Spring Festival. On the cover, Mario holds a Super Star, an item from the game that will grant the player invincibility, which amounts to a wish that whoever receives the packet will become invincible in the year of Ox that is just around the corner. On the side of the cover, there is also a phrase that reads 任你花 rèn nǐ huā spend as you wish, which is also a play on the name Nintendo, which is written 任天堂 Rèntiāntáng in Chinese.
To get this hongbao, you'll need to follow the official account of the Nintendo Switch (Wechat ID: TX_Nintendo_Switch) and have your Wechat account linked with a Tencent Switch console. If you don’t possess one, try to ask your friend to let you register an account on their console or purchase something from Tencent Switch official Wechat store by searching “NintendoSwitch” in Wechat Games on the discover page. You can also reply to their official Wechat account with the word 红包 to get your Mario hongbao if you meet the eligibility. The daily limited distribution starts at 12pm from Jan 24 to Jan 27 and will expire after 3 months. So far it's been so popular that it crashed Tencent’s server at one point, so go grab one before they run out.
Do your kids have what it takes to graduate from esports boot camp?
Once upon a time, parents would say “you can't make a living by playing video games” when scolding their kids. My how times have changed. These days, good players can live a decent life by playing video games as their primary vocation. As an e-sport player especially, the pay can be quite handsome and often gain recognition from a worldwide community.
It is only natural for some teenagers who happen to find themselves attaining a certain level of skill in videogaming to dream about becoming a professional e-sport player and lead their team to conquer the tournaments on all continents. Some of them will even go as far as skipping classes, or, god forbid, dropping out of school only to stay out all night at an Internet cafe just to be one step closer to esport greatness.
In China, some parents will send their kids to a sort of rehab for videogame addiction, but recently, a new alternative gaming addiction-discouraging service has gained popularity among parents by bringing a brand new perspective to the issue. These boot camps will not isolate the kids from the games they love but rather let them experience the real difficulty and intensity of an e-sport player’s daily training.
While this may smack of the old, "Well, how about you smoke a whole pack of cigarettes!" technique, but in fact, there is a certain logic to it. When playing games suddenly replaces homework as one's primary obligation, many teenagers find that they rapidly lose interest. Even if the dreary, arduous training is not adequate to dissuade these young gamers from insisting on pursuing a career in gaming, there will be professional players arranged to match with them in order to strike a serious blow to their confidence by showing off the huge gap between their current abilities and what it takes to be a pro.
Ninety percent of the teenagers who joined these boot camps ended up realizing that they underestimated the brutal life of e-sport players. However, this kind of service exists is not only for crashing the dreams of eager players but also as a method to look for the talented young player who really do have the perseverance to endure the drills and who truly love e-sports even after realizing it may not be as fun as it appears to be. If an emerging star does come to the boot camp and passes all the tests successfully, the coach will negotiate with their parents for the possibility to foster their abilities as a professional player.
Read: Kapital Koopas: Steam Comes to China Alongside New Video Game Rating System
Images: Tencent, Nintendo, Zhihu
