Recent research conducted by ScienceDaily shows that playing cooperative video games, as opposed to playing competitive or solo games, elicits a host of social benefits among players of different backgrounds. The evidence suggests that it encourages teammates to see helpful, collaborative behaviors as both valuable and commonplace.

China is taking this cultural war seriously, on both domestic and international fronts. Beginning Jan. 1, two-thirds of entertainment programs on China’s 34 satellite channels, including game shows, dating shows and celebrity talk shows, were deemed “vulgar” and cut, making way for programs that “promote traditional virtues and socialist core values.”

The Chinese government, determined to build the country’s soft power by projecting a better image abroad through culture and to maintain control at home through censorship, is strongly supporting the local industry and restricting foreign rivals.

Senior party members agreed at their annual meeting in October to boost the nation's cultural soft power, a move analysts said was partly to ensure the media galvanised patriotic sentiment ahead of a leadership transition in 2012.

How did Seoul become Asia's capital of cool? Even here in the Philippines, once an undisputed bastion of American pop and Hollywood movies, South Korean pop music, soap operas and fashion are now all the rage.

How do you sell a movie called “Captain America” to an overseas market? In South Korea, Russia and the Ukraine, apparently, the answer is you don’t even try... Those involved in the decision are being careful to frame the move as a matter of brand management and consumer awareness and not as a decision tilted by cultural or political winds.

Critics say little has been done to protect young talent after actress Jang Ja-yeon's 2009 suicide and her details of sexual abuse roiled the TV, film and music industries.