Mapping Digital Game Culture in China: From Internet Addicts to Esports Athletes (East Asian Popular Culture)

'Mapping Digital Game Culture in China brings refreshing cultural studies perspectives to China studies by analyzing competing narratives about digital gaming and the contested ideological forces that give rise to them. Szablewicz's innovative approach generates unique insights into a new media and popular cultural phenomenon with latent political implications. Her rich ethnography invites us to more critically reflect on a historical period of dramatic economic, cultural, and technological changes within China and beyond.' - Fan Yang, Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA In this book, Marcella Szablewicz traces what she calls the topography of digital game culture in urban China, drawing our attention to discourse and affect as they shape the popular imaginary surrounding digital games. Szablewicz argues that games are not mere sites of escape from Real Life but rather locations around which dominant notions about failure, success, and socioeconomic mobility are actively processed and challenged. Covering a range of issues including nostalgia for Internet cafés as sites of youth sociality, the media-driven Internet addiction moral panic, the professionalization of e-sports, and the rise of the self-proclaimed loser (diaosi), Mapping Digital Game Culture in China uses games as a lens onto youth culture and the politics of everyday life in contemporary China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2015 and first-hand observations spanning over two decades, the book is also a social history of urban China's shifting technological landscape. Marcella Szablewicz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Pace University in New York City and a former Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Preface Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction: Mapping China’s Digital Gaming Culture The Problematic Chinese Popular Culture and the State in the Era of Participatory Media A Topography of Digital Game Culture Youth Culture in China A Situational Analysis Approach to Culture Research Mechanics Chapter Overview Chapter 2: Internet Cafés: Nostalgia, Sociality, and Stigma Internet Cafés in China and Beyond: The Literature A Once-Rebellious Social Space: High-School Experience in the Wangba Leaving the Wangba Behind: Changing Perceptions and the Spatialization of Class Nostalgia for the Impossible Return Chapter 3: Spiritual Opium: The Internet Addiction Panic and the Spiritually Ailing Nation A Timeline of the Internet Addiction Moral Panic in the Chinese Press Visualizing Internet Addiction in the Chinese Press Spiritual Opium and Cultural Pollution Class Consciousness: The Double Discursive Construction of Opium/Internet Cultural Capital: Profiting from Opium/Internet Addiction Moral Panics and Their Consequences in the Era of Participatory Media Chapter 4: Patriotic Leisure: Internet Games, Esports, and the Discourse of Productivity Internet Games: What’s in a Name? Late Socialist Neoliberalism and Patriotic Professionalism From Patriotic Professionalism to Patriotic Leisure Healthy Dianzi Jingji in Official Discourse Wangluo Games and Danji Games in College Student Narratives Blurred Boundaries Exceptions and Ironies of Patriotic Leisure Transforming Affect into Capital Speaking Patriotic Leisure, Confronting Internet Addiction Chapter 5: Carving Out a Spiritual Homeland Online Videos: Extensions of the Game Space The War of Internet Addiction Belonging, Friendship, and Equality Residence and Mobility in a Beautiful World Sideways Mobility and Nostalgic Longing Chapter 6: “Losers” “Acting Gay”: Internet Slang, Memes, and Affective Intensities Affective Intensities Glossing the Terms: Diaosi and Jiyou Diaosi (Loser; Literally: Penis Hair) Gaoji/Jiyou (to Act Gay/Gaming Buddy; Literally: Gay Friend) Toying with the Heteronormative in Game-Related Web Series Heteronormative Failure and the Crisis of Masculinity The Loser Transformed? The Internet and the Circulation of Affective Intensity The Semiotic Openness of Diaosi and Jiyou The Potential/Danger of Loser Affect Chapter 7: Conclusion: Mainstreaming and Marginalizing Digital Games Protests of the Imagination Precarity, Privilege, and Affective Deficit Problematizing Escape Finding Space A Changing China and the Enduring Panic Glossary of Chinese Terms with English Equivalents Bibliography Index "In this book, Marcella Szablewicz traces what she calls the topography of digital game culture in urban China, drawing our attention to discourse and affect as they shape the popular imaginary surrounding digital games. Szablewicz argues that games are not mere sites of escape from Real Life, but rather locations around which dominant notions about failure, success, and socioeconomic mobility are actively processed and challenged. Covering a range of issues including nostalgia for Internet cafés as sites of youth sociality, the media-driven Internet addiction moral panic, the professionalization of e-sports, and the rise of the self-proclaimed loser (diaosi), Mapping Digital Game Culture in China uses games as a lens onto youth culture and the politics of everyday life in contemporary China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2009 and 2015 and first-hand observations spanning over two decades, the book is also a social history of urban China's shifting technological landscape." -- Provided by publisher "En este libro, Marcella Szablewicz traza lo que ella llama la topografía de la cultura del juego digital en la China urbana. Szablewicz sostiene que los juegos no son meros lugares de escape de la vida real, sino lugares alrededor de los cuales se crean las nociones sobre el fracaso, el éxito y la movilidad socioeconómica. La investigación, cubre una gran número de temas que incluyen la nostalgia de los cibercafés como sitios de sociabilidad juvenil, el pánico moral de la adicción a Internet impulsado por los medios, la profesionalización de los deportes electrónicos y el ascenso del autoproclamado perdedor (diaosi). Mapping Digital Game Culture in China utiliza los juegos como una lente para observar la cultura juvenil y la política de la vida cotidiana en la China contemporánea. Basado en un trabajo de campo etnográfico realizado entre 2009 y 2015 y observaciones que abarcan más de dos décadas, el libro también es una historia social del cambiante panorama tecnológico urbano de China ". -- Editor