User:Mche5174/sandbox

= Chinese Parents (video game) =

Chinese Parents is a life simulation game developed by Moyuwan Games and published by Coconut Island Games. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS on September 29, 2018.

In this game, players are able to raise their virtual children from being toddlers all the way up to the national college entrance exam in China, which is also known as gaokao in Mandarin. Eventually, the virtual child finds a partner, marries and has her/his child as a new round of the game. Throughout 48 rounds of the game, players can improve the status of their children, which includes intelligence, emotional intelligence, physical fitness, imagination, memory and charm, via arranging school and entertainment activities.

The game provides Chinese language version, but on 26th April, the officials announced that English and Japanese localization is on the progress and over 90% of the texts had been translated.

Gameplay
As a life simulation game, Chinese parents contains abundant texts and several mini games. To improve the stats of the virtual chid, players need to collect gems on a color-coded map, which is called the process of digging brain holes. Every colored gem represents a certain stat and players prioritize which stats increase to meet the challenges in the game. Every time players collect the gems, it consumes action, which can be restored at the beginning of every round. In every round, players can make maximum 6 activities. Every activity is divided into studies and recreations and different activities boost various stats. Each arrangement affects the pressure of the virtual child and satisfaction of the parents, which is shown in the game as a green bar and orange bar respectively. For example, if the child studies too hard without any leisure arrangement, although the parents are content with the situation, with the area of psychological shadow increasing, the child will be labelled as self-abused and eventually become a psychopath, which also leads bad ending in the game where the child runs away from home, punishing tiger parents too eager to cram the schedule full with studying activities. However, at the beginning of every round, the virtual child will receive pocket money, which can be used in a shop. Via buying various items, it not only reduces the pressure of the child like buying candies and toys, but also increases the satisfaction of parents. In addition, players can use the money to boost the stats of child by purchasing self-help book like "Learn to Speak With Jack Ma", or buy entertainment items to rich leisure arrangements. The pocket money can be also gained by doing house, taking part-time jobs and receive red envelops in special scenarios. Players encounter elder relatives in special occasions such as birthday and Lunar New Year, who will give red pockets to the virtual child. In this situation, a marker will appear and players need to control it to stay within a certain portion of a bar which can be seen at the bottom of the screen. Once player manage to control the marker within 15 seconds, the money will go in the pockets, or the child loses the chance to gain a large amount of pocket money.

Face is another important score in the game. Face can be increased all the way until the university through face battlements, arranging the child to attend different study activities, having high-distinct grades in school exams and winning in talent shows. While most entertainment will decrease face. In face battlements, parents encounter different relatives and peers. To keep good self-image, players need to show off the skills of that child that is randomly learned in the arranged activities in a one-on-one duel. Some rare skills can be gained by defeating other powerful adults in face challenges. After defeating the strong adults, not only will the face increases dramatically, but also some stats will be promoted. The higher the face, the more skills the child can acquire and additionally has more opportunities to ask for more entertainment contents from the parents.

Comprehension is in great demand when the child needs to learn new courses. It can be gained by clicking on the gem map, doing exam revisions, attending composition competitions, talent shows and class monitor elections. Except the gem map, the other 4 scenarios take place in certain round. The exam revision is a small puzzle game, which requires players to figure out how to consume action properly and place colored gems in order corresponding to exam questions. The composition competitions requires to select proper writing style and inspiration according to the title given. Skills learnt in the activities and face challenges are the only judgement in the talent show. In the class monitor election, players are required to choose appropriate options that please teachers and classmates so that the win rate will increase.

As the game goes by, the child may gradually encounter peers who can build relationships with. There are different characters depending on the sex of the virtual child. Each character has her/his own story line. Players can consume action to interact with them, such as giving gifts or doing after-class activities. Once the intimacy with a certain character reaches 100, at the end of the game there will be high possibilities for the child to marry her/him. The character will pass unique stats to the next generation.

Plot
The story of the game takes place in modern China, where urban middle-class Chinese parents are attempting to a child in a safe, happy and productive way. The player will witness a realistic process of raising a normal Chinese child spanning infancy to college. As parents, every arrangement in every round leads the changes in stats of the child. Whether to win in the face battlement or the talent show, it all depends on how the players raise the child. As a child, the player needs to figure out how to increase win rate in class election, how to choose a appropriate style to write an article in competitions and how to build the relationship with peers. The decisions made will directly influence the game ending, which includes the Child's grade of Gaokao, occupation and marriage partner.

Besides Gaokao, the game contains many little moments that many Chinese have encountered in their childhoods. For example, the virtual child may forge a fake parents' signature on a bad report card to prevent parents from seeing it or the arrival of visiting relatives sit around comparing their children's grades in order to gain "face". There are more than 40 little moments that are contributed by players via investigation. Players will encounter these scenes randomly in the game and every moment has either positive or negative effects on the stats of the child.

Setting
After decades of developing since 1978 reform, China has experienced dramatic social, economic, educational and demographic changes. Modern Chinese parents are aiming at earning money as possible as they can to foster a safe, happy and productive child, who can give them stable life in return after their retirement. However, the environment of employment and education is becoming more and more competitive in recent years. After the transition from a planned economy, where people might be employed in a government-sponsored enterprise with guaranteed lifetime occupations and welfare, the socialist market economy makes careers more merit-based in both state-owned enterprises or private enterprises. Also, there are less opportunities in employment for those who do not have a college degree because the society becomes more modern and technologically sophisticated and the demand for educational human resources is increasing. Therefore, entering college is regarded as the single bridge and first step toward success. Both parents and their children give high emphasis on gaining admission to the prestigious universities. This is one of the reasons why the entrance college exam is set as the ultimate goal in the game.

Pressure is one of the important stats of the virtual child, which reflects the fact that the psychological well-being has turned out to be one of the centers of Chinese parenting. Many parents view raising children who are happy and healthy as their primary goals. In the beginning of the game, the scene is pretty heartwarming where the baby is surrounded by the family beaming at her/himself. The player will find the virtual father is looking at the baby with pride and joyful tears. Although this scene only lasts a short moment, it indicates the love and care from the parent toward the child and they want the child being emotionally well-adjusted. Several factors may contribute to this situation. One is due to Chinese one-child policy, which may lead an increase in emotional investment in the parent-child relationship. Another is that since 1980s, the exposure to Western media and values makes Chinese citizens to reevaluate some traditional cultural values. Scoring well in Gaokao is still important, but at present parents want to figure out whether unhealthy amounts of stress are making their children emotionally dampened automatons.

In Chinese parents, players could encounter several peers who can build relationships with their virtual children after the child enters secondary schools. However, there are limited times to date with them because the parents are supervising their children to prevent so-called "early love", in Chinese pinyin "Zaolian". In China, Zaolian is regarded as a serious social problem for adolescents. To protect children's moral, hygiene and promising future, it is believed that families, schools and even governments should take measures to control zaolian. There are two possible reasons that could contribute to this phenomenon, sex norms of traditional Confucian beliefs and the sexual repressive policies of the Chinese Communist Party. According to the Neo-Confucian doctrine, contacts between males and females should be strictly conducted and hidden from public view. Although this idea has partly taken placed by new cultural concepts, it still plays an important role in Chinese society. To prevent early love and early marriage, since 1949, the community party continuously updated policies and laws. Medias such as the leading journal of education in China, Renmin jiaoyu, in 1953 claimed that teachers were supposed to tell their students to avoid early love and early marriage. Therefore, zaolian gradually becomes a social problem in China and is strictly forbidden by the parents and schools.

Development
On 29th September 2018, Chinese parents video game is launched on Steam and Wegame. There are slight differences on the game content between Steam and Wegame. Players who pre-ordered the game on Wegame would receive a small amount of pocket money and there are three exclusive storylines about comprehension on Wegame.

From 13th December 2018 to 28th December 2018, players could provide ideas of plots in terms of "daughter version". The game developers would choose some of the representative stories and add them into the game.

On 29th January 2019, Moyuwan Games launched "Daughter version", which is a free content update. Players can raise a female virtual child in the game. New characters, items, careers and storylines were added.

On 20th March 2019, Moyuwan Games announced that they were working on the English and Japanese localization. Face challenge, which was more difficult than face battle, was added into the game.

On 24th April 2019, eSports and broadcasting were added into the game as new careers. The English and Japanese localization was 90% finished.

On 27th May 2019, Moyuwan Games announced that the English localization shall be launched in late June 2019.