I'll admit, some of the earliest context I had on Chinese gaming was that they had a lot of cheaters; that there was even a greedy, cultural belief that the ends justified the means, and that if you got the win screen, it didn't matter what you did to get there. Some game publishers even went so far as to block Chinese IP addresses/VPNs to keep them out of game servers.

I'm curious if you feel that was ever true, or whether that's changed over time.

Sad you all can’t play Battlefield 4

In China's Battlefield community, new players are called "French fries." Fresh, get eaten alive, but always show up in large numbers.

If the battlefield of tomorrow was to be waged through memes, China would wipe the floor with the rest of the world.

It's a shame I can't appreciate more of them because of language and the fact that even translated and explained memes only very rarely makes it out here.

Welcome Frenchfrynoob.

Funnily, my american friends do call me French Fry too, but because I'm French myself 😆. I call them freedom fries (a joke that dates back to France refusal to follow the US in Irak)

Welcome! Glad to have you! I think the etiquette is to take memes seriously and get in fights over trivial differences between definitions in words. If you have a sense of humor about yourself you should do fine.

Sup mate :)

You might notice no Battlefield 6 there. Truth is, my PC can barely run it smoothly, so I didn't buy it. That's the reality for a lot of us.

And yeah, you see all those games? We have a tradition in China: buy first on sale, think about playing later. 😅 It's a whole thing.

EA has a special pattern in China — either no discount at all, or suddenly 90% off. So we wait. We always wait. That's the "Pin Hao Bing" (Scrounged-Together Soldier) way.

"Pin Hao Bing" is a joke in the Chinese Battlefield community. It means someone whose rig is barely holding on, but they're still out there grinding, dying a lot, and telling their squad "I gave it my all."

That's me. That's the French Fry Noob way.

Thanks for reading the small print! 🍟

Welcome, and people are people everywhere you go. 😉

One more thing, kinda unique to Chinese players I think.

When a new Battlefield game drops at full price, and a new player buys it right away — unless they're a huge fan — we'll jokingly make fun of them a bit.

But honestly? We also feel bad for them. It's not that we're cheap or looking down on anyone. It's just that we really care about spending money wisely. Getting burned by a full-price game that flops? That hurts.

So the joke is also a way of looking out for each other.

And yeah, we complain about EA all the time. A lot. But that's because we genuinely want them to do better. To make something world-changing again. Like they used to.

That's the real talk. 🍟

Do you have a link to what you wrote? I’d be interested in reading it.

I don't work in games. I'm just a player.

With that backstory you worked to play games.