From non-player characters to othered participants: Chinese women's gaming experience in the ‘free’ digital market

Liu, Tingting; Lai, Zishan

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2020.1791217

Cited by 36 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…We recognize that wide diversity exists relating to the term "game." The translation of gamerelated terms between the English and Mandarin languages also presents inaccuracies and interpretive openness (Liu & Lai, 2020). Throughout this study, we use "game" as an umbrella term to refer to the fun-led structured form of playful activities, containing roles of players, objectives, rules, and sequencing.…”

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gamifying Contentious Politics: Gaming Capital and Playful Resistance

Huang

Liu

2021

Games and Culture

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article uses the Bourdieusian tradition to examine the relationship between gameplay elements and contentious politics. When investigating Chinese progressive social movements, this study found that the development of local gaming industries has conditioned three ways in which gameplay elements are employed to organize “playful resistance”: game as an action tactic, game as the mechanism for critical pedagogics, and game as a tool for public education . Gaming capital has become a useful resource for organizing contentious activities and disseminating progressive political views. Two forms of gaming capital are identified: one is the technical competencies needed to design games; the other is the cultural capacity to imagine social movements through game design mechanisms. This article shows how playful resistance challenges both authoritarian governance and the capitalist logic of gaming, offering a glimpse into how the actual process of gamification has taken place in a non-Western context.

show abstract

Section: Declaration Of Conflicting Interestsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gamifying Contentious Politics: Gaming Capital and Playful Resistance

Huang

Liu

2021

Games and Culture

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Turkle’s (2011) ‘cold intimacies’ and ‘alone together’ and Azuma’s (2009) ‘animalised Otaku’ are just some examples frequently amplified by mainstream media in China for regulatory purposes and ethical concerns (Chen, 2018). Following the ‘agentic fan’ theorem, scholars have demonstrated online virtuality, such as Bilibili, can work as alternative spaces (Chen, 2018), function as a shield against interpellation and control (Yin & Fung, 2017) and serve as a field to negotiate with ‘gamified patriarchal order and normative romantic ideals’ (Liu & Lai, 2020, p. 14). Furthermore, Zhang and Cassany (2018) identified language learning participation on Bilibili as having great potential for intercultural competence through collective intelligence and re-contextualisation.…”

Section: Fans’ Multiple and Contested Identitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Slice of life in a live and wired masquerade: Playful prosumption as identity work and performance in an identity college Bilibili

Chen

2020

Global Media and China

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article investigates Chinese urban youth’s mediated ‘slice of life’ and playful encounters as part of their identity construction and performance work on Bilibili, one of China’s most influential video-sharing social media sites mediating anime, comics, games and novels. Using a mix-method approach of digital ethnography, participant observation, interviews and data visualisation, this article examines fans’ hermeneutic practices through anime, comic, game and novel prosumption, exemplified by danmaku: ‘bullet screen’, barrage-like comments overlaid on videos. This article argues that Bilibili works as an ‘identity college’ for fans to perform various roles and explore their hybrid identities in a social-hermeneutic engagement process. In particular, the function of anonymous danmaku comments will be closely analysed as it offers a quasi-real-time engagement experience for fans and helps shape fans’ social self. Following a symbolic interactionist tradition, Mead’s ‘generalised other’ and Goffman’s dramaturgical theory are contextualised in the Chinese socio-cultural milieu where fans’ identity performance is regarded as masquerade. Departing from the moral panic rhetoric that Generation Z is ‘amused to death’, becoming ‘infantile and animalised’, or even enslaved by their desires and capable only of ‘cold intimacies’, the findings of this explorative study present a more complex understanding of Chinese youth’s identity work through participatory social media use and networked fandom.

show abstract

“…MOBA gamessuch as DotA, League of Legends and Smitefocus on strategy and reaction, where a player controls a character and plays with a team of other players to achieve victory, mainly through killing players of the opposite team and taking objectives. MOBA often features 'powerful audiovisual designs, visually appealing characters with hypermasculine and hyperfeminine physical traits, dynamic background music, stunning lighting, and a central theme of group fighting' [3]. 'The game is marked by obvious depictions of violence and expressions of anger, callousness, and aggression, traits closely linked to 'hegemonic masculinity'' [4,5], exaggerating the glory of warfare to appeal to the stereotypical male audience.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…MOBA often features 'powerful audiovisual designs, visually appealing characters with hypermasculine and hyperfeminine physical traits, dynamic background music, stunning lighting, and a central theme of group fighting' [3]. 'The game is marked by obvious depictions of violence and expressions of anger, callousness, and aggression, traits closely linked to 'hegemonic masculinity'' [4,5], exaggerating the glory of warfare to appeal to the stereotypical male audience. However, MOBA games are important to analyse due to their large female player base.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Female Body and Experience in Chinese Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Zhang¹

2022

Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper sets out to discuss the implications of female representation in Chinese Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games for female players. Due to the sexist treatment of women in the gaming sphere, this paper hopes to open new discussions of how visual representation of women in games is harmful for female players. By examining a 2020 case study conducted by Tingting Liu and Zishan Lai on a top Chinese MOBA and applying various works by Judith Butler, Mary Ann Doane and Laikwan Pang, gaming is considered as a performance, masquerade or distorting mirror in which gender is explored. The visual representation of women in games puts forward a distorted view of female players and therefore influences the way male players view female players and how female players view themselves. Although it is a shame that this topic should be discussed from a cis-normative angle, perhaps through discussing the dynamics between cis-genders can this paper bring up new topics. Ultimately, this paper hopes to provide a more holistic view of the issue by pointing out possible links between the subjects and to better understand the possible gender bias present in mainstream MOBA games with a broad reach of audience.

show abstract

From non-player characters to othered participants: Chinese women's gaming experience in the ‘free’ digital market

Cited by 36 publications

References 58 publications

Gamifying Contentious Politics: Gaming Capital and Playful Resistance

Gamifying Contentious Politics: Gaming Capital and Playful Resistance

Slice of life in a live and wired masquerade: Playful prosumption as identity work and performance in an identity college Bilibili

The Female Body and Experience in Chinese Multiplayer Online Battle Arena Games

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About