Chinese anti-game activist Tao Hongkai attacks League of Legends players

If you live in China and you play games, you’ve probably heard of Tao Hongkai. He’s a professor and self-styled internet addiction expert who has made a name for himself in the public by denouncing video games as harmful. Late last year, for example, he wrote an article that said the damage video games do the brains of players is similar to the havoc wrought on the brain by opium addiction.

(See: Attention Tao Hongkai: shut the hell up and sit down)

Since then, Tao had seemed to be lightening up a bit, even admitting that “games have some [psychological benefits”, but late last week he posted another shocker to his Weibo account. As is typical for him, it starts off logical and then suddenly veers into crazytown:

I saw an article with the headline “League of Legends players complain: the in-game teammates that are just like pigs” and I couldn’t help but sigh. Aren’t these complaining players just insulting themselves? Actually, they are more “pig” than the teammates they are insulting for being like pigs! Of course, this also made me understand on a deeper level why playing of these opium games makes people gradually lose rationality, makes their tempers worse, makes their speech more vulgar, and makes the quality of their character worse and worse—they are poisoned by these harmful games.

And that’s not all. He made a couple of other posts about League of Legends:

Games should be a normal part of life outside of school and work, and an entertainment format that has benefits to health. Using this standard, we can split up games into three types: (1) games that are good for health and entertaining; (2) casual games; and (3) harmful games—these games are full of violence, pornography, and the gameplay easily makes people get caught up in it and addicted. Many facts prove that League of Legends is a very harmful game.

And:

In the past many college students were harmed by League of Legends and had problems; this opium game not only makes youth hate studying, many middle school students have committed violent crimes after being influenced by the bloody violence and other unharmful elements of League of Legends.

Where to even begin? It is deeply concerning that a professor at a relatively respected university is so vehemently anti-game that he is willing to lie to get his point across. And make no mistake, Tao is lying. Many middle school students have committed violent crimes as a result of playing League of Legends? I’ve covered plenty of gaming related violence over the past few years and I look for cases like that daily. I can’t recall encountering a single one.

And, as I noted the last time Tao said something moronic, his continued comparison of game addiction and opium addiction is not only hugely misleading, it is a clear and blatant attempt to exploit the fears of the Chinese populace, who by and large have something of an aversion to opium these days as a result of quasi-recent history.