单选题   Para. 1 ①Moral panics over new media are old hat. ②The social effects of novels, films, comic books and pop music were condemned by the grumpy reactionaries of the time. ③In recent years video games have been a popular villain. ④Exasperated parents and opportunistic politicians have long fretted that they make players lazy and listless, or else unpredictable and violent. ⑤Those concerns turned out to be largely misplaced.
    Para. 2 ①But new worries about the addictiveness of games, and the danger that poses to children in particular, have more substance to them and are already prompting a regulatory crackdown. ②The industry would be wise to get ahead of the problem.
    Para. 3 ①Japan and South Korea have passed laws designed to regulate a video-gaming industry whose products are increasingly seen as addictive and harmful. ②And as business models refined in Asia have come to the West, lawmakers in Europe and America are becoming more concerned, too.
    Para. 4 ①Such concerns feel more credible than prior panics, for two reasons. ②The first is that much gaming now happens online, and generates reams of behavioral data. ③This allows publishers to monitor exactly how customers are playing games, and fine-tune them to make them as compelling as possible.
    Para. 5 ①The second is the realization that players will happily pay real money for virtual goods. ②These can be upgrades, costumes or weapons for their in-game characters, or (more cynically) a lottery-style 'loot box' whose contents are unknown in advance, but might prove valuable enough to resell to other players. ③Since the marginal cost of creating virtual items is zero, they are very profitable for developers. ④That has given rise to a 'freemium' business model whereby games are given away cheaply or free but players are constantly nagged to spend money on in-game items. ⑤All this has been supercharged by smartphones, which mean people can keep playing—and paying—at all hours of the day.
    Para. 6 ①The result is an unhealthy loop. ②Firms strive to keep players hooked, because the more time they spend in a game, the more money they will spend on baubles within it. ③Whizzy data analytics let developers tweak their products to do just that, using psychological tricks and nudges familiar from social-networking sites and the gambling industry. ④All this can be extremely lucrative. ⑤Sensor Tower, an analysis firm, reckons that 'Candy Crush Saga', a popular game in the West, made $930m last year.
    Para. 7 The keenest gamers, known as 'whales' (a term coined by casinos to describe high-rolling customers), can spend thousands of dollars a year.
    Para. 8 ①Video games now rival the film industry for clout. ②Gaming is thought to be worth around $140bn annually worldwide, and is growing at 13% a year. ③But society's attitude towards technology is hardening. ④In a world of fake news and hyper-targeted advertising, voters and politicians have awoken to the danger that devices and data may be manipulating people in harmful ways. ⑤A little voluntary forbearance now could save a lot of regulatory pain later.