A Chinese Father's Novel Approach to His Son's Unemployment and Gaming

Parenting has never been a simple task, but the digital age has introduced challenges previous generations could scarcely have imagined. The line between a healthy hobby and a compulsive habit can seem blurry, especially when it involves the vibrant, all-consuming worlds of online video games. In 2013, one father in China, identified only as Mr. Feng, decided to tackle his son's perceived gaming addiction with a solution born from the very world he was trying to pull his son away from: he hired virtual assassins.

A Desperate Digital-Age Solution

Mr. Feng was deeply concerned about his 23-year-old son, Xiao Feng. After years of schooling, his son was unemployed and, in his father's eyes, wasting his life away inside online role-playing games. Frustrated and feeling powerless, Mr. Feng devised an unconventional plan. He reached out to other players within his son's favorite game and offered them money. Their mission was simple but relentless: find Xiao Feng's character and kill him, over and over again. The logic was that constant failure and the inability to progress would strip the game of its fun, forcing his son to log off and re-engage with the real world, specifically the task of finding a job.

The Unintended Confrontation

The plan did not unfold as Mr. Feng had hoped. Initially, Xiao Feng was likely just annoyed by the constant attacks, a common occurrence in player-versus-player games. But the persistence and coordination of his digital assailants made him suspicious. These weren't random encounters; he was being systematically targeted. Instead of quitting in frustration, his curiosity was piqued. He began to investigate, eventually communicating with his in-game pursuers, who admitted they had been hired by his own father. The discovery led not to a quiet logging off, but to a direct confrontation. When Xiao Feng asked his father why he had resorted to such a measure, the father's desperate plea came out. However, the son's response was not one of a chastened addict. He reportedly told his father:

I can play or not, it doesn’t bother me. I just don’t want to work, I want to take some time to find a job that suits me.

More Than a Game: A Generational Divide

The story of Mr. Feng and his son is more than just a bizarre anecdote; it's a perfect encapsulation of a modern generational and cultural divide. For Mr. Feng, his son's actions represented a failure to launch, a shirking of responsibility in favor of digital fantasy. But for Xiao Feng, the situation was more nuanced. He didn't see himself as an addict, but as someone being selective about his future in a competitive job market. The game was a pastime, not the central pillar of his existence. The father's drastic action, while born of love and concern, showed a fundamental misunderstanding of his son's mindset and the role of gaming in his life. It was a failure of communication, where a conversation was replaced by a digital contract killing.

The Gig Economy of Virtual Worlds

What makes Mr. Feng's strategy particularly fascinating is that it utilized a pre-existing, if niche, aspect of online gaming culture. Hiring other players for in-game services, known as 'gold farming' or 'power-leveling,' has been a part of massive multiplayer online games for years. Players in lower-income regions often earn real-world money by performing tedious in-game tasks for wealthier players. Mr. Feng simply repurposed this virtual gig economy for a parental objective. He saw a system within the game and cleverly, if misguidedly, used its own mechanics to try and break his son's immersion in it. Ultimately, the story serves as a peculiar cautionary tale. While parents navigate the new frontiers of digital life, the oldest tools in their arsenal—communication and understanding—remain far more effective than even the most creative digital solutions.

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