Why Chinese gamers are ‘ruining’ Pokemon Go in Japan

Photo credit: AP via International Business Times

Well, that didn’t take long.

Less than a day after Niantic’s smash-hit AR game Pokemon Go launched in Japan, the Japanese servers have reportedly been flooded with Chinese players. A post that reached the top of Reddit’s massive Pokemon Go subreddit, for example, complained about high-level Chinese players monopolizing Japan’s Pokemon gyms.

Some are even using the game as a form of nationalist protest. A photo posted with the Reddit thread shows the gym at the Yasukuni Shrine being dominated by a player with a high-level Dragonite nicknamed “Long live China!”

As usual, there’s a lot of anger directed at Chinese gamers in the comments on Reddit, and in the next few weeks as the game becomes available in more Asian countries, I’d expect to see the arrival of Chinese players causing anger there as well.

So in the interest of mutual understanding, let’s answer some questions about why this happens and what Pokemon Go players elsewhere in Asia should expect.

Why are Chinese gamers playing Pokemon Go in Japan?

The primary reason Chinese gamers are playing Pokemon Go in Japan is that they just want to play Pokemon Go. The game isn’t available in China right now, so Chinese players who want to get in on the fun have to access some other country’s servers to play. As of this writing, Japan is the closest country to China where Pokemon Go servers are available.

Some players are also on Japan’s servers for nationalist reasons, but it seems probable that they are a small minority. Most Chinese Pokemon Go players are just there because they want to enjoy the game as best they can. Unfortunately, because China’s mobile gaming population is so massive, even a “small minority” can mean tens of thousands of people being jerks. And of course, because the jerks are the most visible Chinese players, many people assume that all Chinese players are on Japan’s servers to troll.

How is this related to nationalism?

Although I think most players are just playing for fun, there is a “patriotic” angle to playing the game in Japan too. Firstly, like many Asian countries, China suffered bitterly under the Japanese invasion during the second world war, and that’s still very much on the minds of China’s nationalists. Any kind of symbolic strike at Japan – and particularly at the Yasukuni Shrine, which enshrines many of Japan’s war dead, including more than 1,000 war criminals – seems appealing from a Chinese nationalist perspective.

But more important, probably, is the recent Hague decision in the South China Sea arbitration. Technically, the Dutch court’s ruling on a dispute between China and the Philippines isn’t really related to Japan, but in China the ruling has been interpreted as an American and Japanese power move aimed at controlling China and (in the view of many Chinese) stealing territory that is rightfully China’s. China’s nationalists are up in arms about this – they consider it an international insult – and taking over Japanese Pokemon gyms is a way of expressing their disapproval and frustration.

Again, though, it’s important to remember that most of the Chinese gamers playing Pokemon Go in Japan aren’t doing this sort of thing. They’re simply trying to play the game.

How are Chinese gamers playing Pokemon Go in Japan?

Will this happen when Pokemon launches in my country, too?

How long until China gets its own servers and they go away?

How is this related to Chinese gamers “ruining” other games, like MMOs?

Who is really to blame here?