Welcome

The fourth iteration of the interdisciplinary seminar "Current Perspectives in Game Studies" brings together game studies scholars to discuss their recent research. This seminar serves a forum for exploring diverse perspectives, ranging from theoretical analyses to empirical studies, all centered on the multifaceted nature of games as cultural, social, and artistic phenomena. The seminar is free of charge and open to students and researchers interested in the study of games. However, seats are limited so pre-registration is strictly required. Please register early, latest by noon of April 3rd, via this link: https://forms.gle/aR95Yd78oYWgVKyv6

Program

Abstracts

How to build a game exhibition that doesn’t fall apart two days later
Espen AARSETH. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Player-Based Play, a New Form of Play in the Paid Co-Playing Practice
Yahui CAO. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

The paid co-playing practice is a novel phenomenon that has emerged in the video game industry, particularly prevalent in China. This practice involves players being paid to play video games alongside other players as teammates in games. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews with both service providers and customers, the emotional labor (Hochschild, 1983) has been observed in the service, with co-players strategically suppressing their feelings, game expertise and performance to accommodate customer preferences. However, the co-player’ emotional work extends beyond personal emotion dynamic and interpersonal interactions to utilizing the game design elements to create new game experience for customers. For example, co-players leverage emotion design features in games like Sky: Children of Light to enhance customers’ emotional experiences—transcending designers’ intentions and constituting a form of transgressive play (Aarseth, 2007). This manipulation of design elements reflects how paid co-playing reshapes intended gameplay experiences. From the customers' perspective, rather than passively accepting game design and personal game skill level, these typically standard players (Tekinbas & Zimmerman, 2003) actively transform their gameplay environment. This process demonstrates a manifestation of player agency among average gamers, as they reshape their gaming experiences through introducing co-players into games. Both co-players and customers engaged in paid co-playing exemplify what I have termed “player-based play,” a phenomenon where co-present players become the critical elements shaping others' gaming experiences. This presentation moves beyond traditional discussions of co-playing as merely cheating or sexual service, focusing instead on how average players exercise agency in shaping their gaming experiences. I examine how paid co-playing provides a platform for players to exert this agency, concluding with an introduction to the concept of “player-shaped play” as a new form of play inherent in the paid co-playing practice.

Digital Labor and Computational Gaming in Esports
Peichi CHUNG. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

The presentation traces the evolving concept of digital labor in video game studies. It discusses the idea of datafied labor in the gaming environment of esports. The presentation refers to the term, “human-machine hybridization”, to investigate the formation of worker autonomy under the impact of computational technology. The first part of the presentation examines three developments of automation that create immersive gaming environments powered by automation. The three developments include enhancement of player immersion, datafication of player engagement, and self-enterprising data analytic business. The second part of the presentation analyses how AI training software changes the playing style of competitive players and improves their practicing skills. It elaborates a new state of labor productivity mediated through the mathematic computation of large-scale player data. This paper concludes with a discussion on digital labor that emerges at the intersection between computer datafication, high-tech labor subjectivity, and corporation commodification in esports.

Speaker: Peichi Chung is an associate professor in the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research focuses on the political economy of video game industries in Asia, Asian popular culture, independent game distribution, and East Asia’s esports culture in the time of artificial intelligence.

Zoopoetics in Play: Rethinking In-Game Animals
Yu HAO. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

This presentation applies the literary concept of “zoopoetics” as an alternative framework for examining the presence and representation of animals in video games. First brought up by Derrida in The Animal That Therefore I Am (2008 [1997]) to describe the abundance of animal traces in Kafka’s work, the notion of “zoopoetics” has been further developed by Anne Simon (2018; 2020) and Aaron Moe (2014) to emphasize animals as active makers of texts, rather than mere objects of observation. The notion of “zoopoetics” propels us to rethink the animality of in-game animals and take into account the material aspects of the ludic animal’s body and the computational systems that represent them. How are in-game animals constituted through the rules, procedurals, codes, and even glitches of the game system? How are their bodily experiences simulated and represented through the game’s materiality, such as through sound, visual effects, or haptic feedback? How does the materiality of in-game animals relate to their representation as creatures with agency and subjectivity? Exploring these questions through the lens of zoopoetics allows for a deeper understanding of the complex relationship between meaning, materiality, and agency within video games.

Speaker: Morgan Yu HAO is a postdoctoral fellow and part-time lecturer at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, where she also earned her PhD. Her research explores the intersections of digital games, media philosophy, and posthumanism. Her work investigates how digital games mediate human and non-human relationships and challenge traditional notions of play and interactivity. Morgan has presented her research at leading international conferences, including CHI PLAY (2021), DiGRA (2022; 2023), the International Society for Intermedial Studies Conference (2022), CEEGS (2024), and ISEA (upcoming). She is also an active board member of Chinese DiGRA.
 

Regionalising Board Game Research
Johnathan HARRINGTON. Hong Kong Baptist University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

In this presentation, I argue that modern board games in East / Southeast Asia are significantly different from the western market. I will present some of my research findings from ongoing research to show how play spaces, language dependency, and community formation influence which modern board games make it onto shop shelves. Through this I will argue for area-based research beyond the Eurogame and Amerigame biased dichotomy (Woods, 2012). One core reason is play-spaces: western board game shops lean heavily towards hobby games (such as Warhammer) and trading card games (such as Magic: the Gathering), which creates an audience that skews mechanically heavier and leans thematically towards fantasy motifs (Peaker, 2019). However, board game cafés in East Asia follow in internet cafes’ footsteps (Deplaedt, 2021; Konieczny, 2019; Wang, 2017), serving as popular activities after work or school for youth (Liu, 2020), which in turn support lighter games and bigger groups. Language dependency also plays a significant part. In previous research (Harrington, 2023) I found that within 47 games played within a specific Hong Kong based community, only one was neither translated into Chinese nor had no language dependency. Even in a globalised world in a bilingual region, playing in English loaded the mental stack in unsavoury ways. Finally, board game hobbyism is still regionally specific. Board game projects on popular crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter still have majority US backing. This is not only because of language dependency, but also because of shipping concerns, expensive prices for Southeast Asia, and because the board gamer mythology (Calleja, 2022; Tyni, 2020; Werning, 2017) presented on Kickstarter does not align with the distinct mythology being formed in East / Southeast Asia, created through local influencing channels, regional tastes, as well as different entries into the world of modern board games.

Speaker: Johnathan Harrington is an assistant professor currently based at Hong Kong Baptist University. He researches player communities, player-based design practices, as well as the globalized role of both digital and analogue play. He also designs and develops both digital games and board games, cataloguing and publishing research on design processes.

Designing meaningful play with predictive processing
Jussi HOLOPAINEN. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Game design is fundamentally about structuring expectation, uncertainty, and adaptation, a process that aligns closely with the predictive processing (PP) framework in cognitive science. Predictive processing claims that the brain is a prediction engine, constantly modeling the world and minimizing prediction errors through perception and action. This talk explores how predictive processing principles can serve as a generative framework for game design, particularly in crafting experiences of agency, challenge, and emergent meaning.
I introduce a set of principles that use the PP framework to offer insights into common game design situations. These include Meaningful Prediction Loops (clear but evolving action-consequence relationships), Embodied Predictive Tuning (skill-based play refines motor models), and Situated Uncertainty (structuring meaningful ambiguity). I demonstrate the use of these principles by analysing aspects of various videogames, from well-known commercial ones (Hollow Knight, Journey) to game poems (Loneliness, Queers in Love at the End of the World). Finally, I will briefly discuss meaningful and reflexive play, where subverting predictive habits fosters philosophical or ethical reflection, through the lens of the proposed framework.'

A Discussion of Ludic Comestibles
Benjamin HORN. The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Arts, School of English

This talk offers a discussion of food and drink culture as it is represented in digital games. Waszkiewicz (2022) writes, in “Asian countries, food’s presentation and aesthetics are intrinsic parts of their cultures” (102). But surely the same might be said for any country: food aesthetics, and food and drink more broadly, are often woven into the cultural fabric of a nation's identity. Therefore, the author is currently pursuing a program of ongoing research related to the study of the symbolic and cultural analysis of food in digital games, particularly as it pertains to food and drinks' narrative representation.

Speaker: Benjamin Horn received his PhD in Creative Media from the City University of Hong Kong in 2021. A recipient of the Hong Kong PhD Fellowship Scheme, his thesis presented a new model for the analysis of narrative games. His research interests are interdisciplinary, including the interpretation of games, the study of ludonarrative artifacts, and issues of cultural localization and translation. He has previously worked as chief writer for a Hong Kong independent game studio.

Vitality Structures
Veli-Matti KARHULAHTI. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies

For decades, the ‘hard problem’ of game studies has been to explain how ontological elements of design connect to player phenomenology. In this talk, I present vitality structures as a solution to the problem. With reference to the forms of vitality in enactivist psychiatry, vitality structures are a design-phenomenological framework where ‘bonds’ between entities of game design and corresponding player phenomenology emerge. Vitality structures are not natural kinds but pragmatic constructs, which remain useful as long as they communicate what is both experientially identifiable and empirically prevalent. 

Speaker: Veli-Matti Karhulahti is a senior researcher in University of Jyväskylä and runs the ERC-funded project Ontological Reconstruction of Gaming Disorder (2022-27). He is interested in how play and technology relate to human living and, methodologically, how such questions can be studied to begin with. As a hobby, Matti does meta-science.

Conceptual Organisation of Randomness in Games
Valtteri KAURAOJA. University of Jyväskylä, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies

This presentation aims to clarify the conversation around randomness in game design. This is done by identifying weaknesses in contemporary conceptualizations of randomness and contrasting them against the idea of uncertainty. Randomness appears as a designed structural element that incorporates randomization, whereas uncertainty describes player phenomenology and the experience that emerges from the interaction between player and design. A preliminary categorization of randomness identifies three separate layers of game design where randomness appears: Rewards, People, and Environment, with each category offering different case examples of implementing both randomness and uncertainty.

Speaker: Valtteri Kauraoja is a doctoral student at the Department of Music, Art and Culture studies at the University of Jyväskylä. As part of the project Ontological Reconstruction of Gaming Disorder, his thesis will consider the relationship between game design structures and problematic gaming through game analysis and collaborative ethnography.

Capital Games: A Marxist Analysis of How Videogame Production Industrialises
Brendan KEOGH. Queensland University of Technology, School of Communication 

The videogame industry has never been sustainable. The last two years in particular have revealed extreme contradictions between the ever-extending popularity of videogames themselves and the marvellous technologies underpinning them, and the extreme conditions of both precarity and monopolisation that define their production. These contradictions, however, are not exceptional, but are easily explained through the basic laws of capitalism discovered by Karl Marx in the middle of the 19th Century. My previous book, The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist, strived to denaturalise and situate videogame industrialisation both geographically and historically to reveal the broader field of videogame production such an industry industrialises from. Now, the task remains to scrutinise these de-naturalised processes of industrialisation more closely to understand what a capitalist organisation of production does to videogames. This presentation will propose a new project that strives to do just this. It will provide an overview of a new book I am planning that strives to make Marx’s economic theories explicable through videogames, and to make videogames explicable through Marx’s economic theory. The presentation will provide an overview of the goals and justification for the project, explain how it differs from existing Marxist work in game studies, and provide a tentative early chapter outline for feedback and criticism.

Speaker: Brendan Keogh is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology, and a Chief Investigator of the Digital Media Research Centre. He is a researcher of videogame play and production cultures and has written several books including A Play of Bodies: How We Perceive Videogames and The Videogame Industry Does Not Exist.

Toward a Phenomenology of Gameplay (as) Performance
Olli Tapio LEINO. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media
Yu HAO. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Game History as the Technological and Cultural History of a Transitional Society: A Chinese Perspective, Historical Materials, and Issues
Yahuai LU. Yangtze University, School of Marxism.

In game history research, there is a dual challenge: firstly, to extend local inquiries to breakthrough the dominant narratives centered around the US and Japan; and secondly, to avoid the traps of exceptionalism to encourage a more integrated dialogue among different national gaming histories. This examination of recent progress in global game history research illustrates how individual nations reconstruct their early gaming histories to narrate their transformation into "nations of games", a process deeply interwoven with broader societal shifts. Methodologically, this requires a rigorous technical understanding alongside an expansive cultural perspective. For China, the reform-and-opening-up not only initiated the history of video games in China, but also mirrored the profound social transformations that are central to the contemporary studies in Chinese humanities and social sciences. This paper posits that the Chinese video game history serves as a critical lens through which to view the technological and cultural history of a society in transition. It provides insights into key issues such as public spaces, self-organization, censorship, the interplay between tradition and modernity, market dynamics, and the autonomy of technology and culture in socialist countries. Regarding sources, the study underscores the challenges of documenting the digital age within the constraints of archival control and platform control, suggesting a path forward for humanities scholars to engage more directly with the public, undertake hands-on research, and manage interactions and co-authorships with laypeople.

Speaker: Lu Yahuai, an Associate Professor at the School of Marxism, Yangtze University, earned her PhD in World History from Peking University, where she was honored with the PKU History Department's 2021 Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. She is the author of An Introduction to Contemporary Western Environmentalism (2020) and focuses her research on game history, media politics, the media memory of China's reform and opening up, and Patristics. Her research integrates philosophical and historical perspectives to explore the dynamics between mass media and societal transformations.

AI Aesthetics and Modding Culture
Peter NELSON. Hong Kong Baptist University, School of Creative Arts
Dino ZHANG. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media
Royce NG. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Behind the popular commercial interfaces of AI image generation lies a vast network of open-source community-driven modification, where AI models are fine-tuned and shared. In this paper, we argue that studies of computer game modification (modding) offer a highly relevant precedent for analysing the structure and aesthetics of AI image generation. We have previously argued (Nelson 2023) that game software, usage agreements and patterns of community production in modding offer a rich subject for contemporary aesthetic analysis. Using existing studies on the motivations, technical affordances and community dynamics of modding (Küchlich 2005, Newman 2008, Sotamaa 2010), combined with Azuma’s formulation of ‘database animals’ (2009) and Ngai’s contemporary aesthetic categories (2012), we showed how distinct aesthetic features can be identified within the large-scale creative production of modding. This paper on AI image generation starts with two initial observations. First, the dynamics of AI fine-tuning are highly analogous to those of modding. First, the iterative fine-tuning and sharing of AI models is essentially a form of modding. Second, the aesthetic predilections of popular machine learning forms such as civit.ai strongly resemble those described by Azuma. From here, we will combine approaches from modding, digital ethnography and visual studies to first build the argument that AI fine-tuning is a form of modding, then we will construct a theory of practice and aesthetics for what is rapidly becoming a highly significant mechanism driving contemporary computer graphics and contemporary visual culture.

Speaker: Peter Nelson is an assistant professor of fine art, media studies, computer games, and creative technology, with a career as a practising artist spanning over 20 years. His first book ‘Computer Games as Landscape Art’ (Palgrave Macmillan 2023) considers how first-person shooter computer games can be understood through the art historical lens of landscape, and his recent papers examine questions such as realism in the age of computer-simulated images, and the role of AI in digital creative processes. Royce Ng is a virtual reality researcher, from both technical and theoretical perspectives with a PhD from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong and currently a part-time lecturer at the Academy of Visual Art at HKBU. He is also as a practicing artist working in digital media in the collective Zheng Mahler. Dino ge Zhang is a media anthropologist and non-fiction writer. Grounded in long-term ethnographic work in a multitude of fieldsites and medium-specific digital methods, his current research primarily focuses on socio-technics, aesthetics, and affective ecologies of contemporary streaming media/platforms in the Sinophone world. 

Characterizing a highly excited and sustained brain response activity during gaming
Guang OUYANG. The University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Education

Few laboratory-based task paradigms or stimulus types can consistently elicit strong brain responses over repeated exposures due to the brain's inherent tendency toward adaptation. Drawing inspiration from the high engagement and sustained excitement outwardly observed in players of video games, we hypothesized the existence of highly excited and sustained (i.e., non-adapting) brain responses during gaming. In a study involving a large cohort of participants, we identified a surprisingly distinct pattern of brain responses to key events during video game play. This pattern exhibited a clear and definite temporospatial structure and, most notably, displayed atypically large magnitudes and non-adapting features over repeated events, in contrast to the observed neural response to lab-based tasks carrying seemingly similar information. The discovery of this response component may inspire further research into fundamental cognitive systems, such as drive, motivation, the reward system, and emotion.

Speaker: Dr. Ouyang received a bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University (Physics) and a PhD from Hong Kong Baptist University (Physics and Cognitive Neuroscience). He is currently an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on developing signal processing methods to exploit information from complex neural signals related to cognition and learning. Dr. Ouyang’s EEG-based research has been published in more than 35 peer-reviewed journal papers in cognitive neuroscience.

Exploring Transgressive Play in Game Streaming: A Study of Tears of the Kingdom
Xin PAN. University of Nottingham Ningbo China, School of International Communications

Exploring different play styles is where the distinct pleasure of videogames lies. This presentation explores the game streams about transgressive play in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Through a mixed-methods approach comprising online observation and content analysis, this research examines around three hundred game streams across multiple platforms including Bilibili, Weibo, Twitter and Reddit. The analysis identifies a spectrum of transgressive play streams—ranging from creative play, to metagaming without cheating, and outright cheating. These different forms of streams reveal how the enjoyment derived from violating gameplay rules and from creatively exploring ludic possibilities converges to generate a novel pleasure unique to stream spectatorship.

Speaker: Xin Pan is a PhD candidate at the School of International Communications, the University of Nottingham Ningbo China, whose research interests gravitate around the intersectionality of metagaming, game streaming, media phenomenology, and the study of play. Xin is currently a board member of Chinese Digital Games Research Association.

Cheating and the Logic of Being Human: A Case Study of Macro Users
Samson TANG. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Department of Cultural and Religious Studies

This paper examines the use of macros as a form of cheating in competitive games, relying on self-play, personal observation, and interviews. The application of macros as macro software dates from the 1950s, but in their modern incarnation, macros are registered as automated tools, commands or scripts enabling players to execute complex sequences of actions with a single button press. This paper first outlines the interlocking forces of the competitive structure and technologisation of gaming in shaping competitive game culture. After reviewing three types of external technological aids, this paper posits that whether a player is cast as a cheater correlates strongly with the perceived “humanness” associated with his/her in-game movements. The findings indicate that non-macro players (ordinary players) interpret gaming as a fundamentally human/corporeal experience, showing disdain for macro users (cheaters), whose use of macros is considered synonymous with total reliance on technological automation. The paper concludes by discussing the conceptual binaries formed around the informants’ narratives, suggesting that they reflect fear and anxiety that can be aptly described as technophobia rooted in today’s meritocratic gaming culture.

Speaker: Samson Tang is a PhD candidate researching on battle royale games at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He completed his MPhil on film studies and ecocinema. His research interests encompass a variety of topics, including alternative play practices, intermediality, transgression in games, and China’s gaming industry.

Dreamcore as Nostalgia in Chinese Videogames: Liminal Space, Analog Horror, and Millennium Sentiment
Yuhui WANG. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Emerging from the surrealist aesthetic of the "GlassBeetles" YouTube channel in 2012, dreamcore blends media nostalgia and weird fetishism, manifesting in videogames as a horror genre marked by liminal spaces, analog visuality, and Y2K trends. This study explores dreamcore’s cultural significance in contemporary Chinese videogames, focusing on "Nobody" (Wuren, 2024) and "Wrap" (Shaqing, 2024). These titles focus on three key elements: liminal spaces reflecting 1990s Chinese family housing facilities, analog horror gameplay and visual style evoked by the aesthetics of mockumentary during the mid-1990s, and a millennium nostalgia materialized through mediums like old TVs and DVDs. Drawing on the defamiliarization of a surrealist legacy, these games construct uncanny universes, intertwining collective memories with playable escapism. This research reveals how liminal spaces mirror repetitive nostalgic architecture, analog horror bridges past and present via blurred found footage, and technical relics rebuild a lost early 21st-century China. Unlike history-themed games with a grand narrative tone, "Nobody" and "Wrap" embed private memories into the game mechanics, offering a nuanced lens on everyday history. This paper argues that Chinese dreamcore videogames serve as a digital chronotope, merging medium specificity with media history to craft a sentimental post-pandemic world, where micro cultural trends resonate with broader historical narratives.

Speaker: Yuhui Wang is a PhD candidate at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media. Her research interests include media culture, film history and videogame history. She particularly pays attention to the dynamic interplay between film and videogame.

Esports Diplomacy: when digital games & Olympic sports power collide
Emma WITKOWSKI. RMIT University, School of Design

In this talk, Dr, Witkowski will explore how digital games, and specifically esports cultures, are entrenched in sports diplomacy transformations locally, regionally, and globally. While national esports federations have become common-place worldwide, it is the decade long wrangling with esports by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) that informs this case on esports diplomacy when media sports and digital game cultures collide. With the IOC’s recently rescheduled Esports Olympic Games—a stand-alone Olympic branded event set for Riyadh, 2027— this case discusses digital game cultures under Olympic stewardship from a sociological standpoint, and considers how the Olympics as a sports mega-platform, a brand, and an entrenched power-laden entity, are contributing to future worlds of digital play.

Bio: Dr. Emma Witkowski is a Senior Lecturer in the game design program at RMIT University, specialising in the intersection of esports, digital culture, and networked media sports. A phenomenologically informed sociologist and digital ethnographer, Dr. Witkowski has delivered keynote addresses at events such as the Esports Research Network Conference, University of Staffordshire, and the International Symposium on Talent Training in the E-sports Industry in Shanghai, hosted by the Shanghai University of Sport and Perfect World Education. Her most recent publications are on esports associationalism and esports at mega-sports events. She is an academic consultant across government departments and a board member of the Australian Esports Association.

Scrutinising video game advertising using social media ad repositories enabled by the EU Digital Services Act
Leon XIAO. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

Abstract: Stakeholders are concerned about the harms of video game advertising, particularly on social media due to their wide reach, including to young people. For example, misleading ads might show gameplay that cannot be found within the game, thus fooling players into downloading the game and playing a game they otherwise would not have. Various regulatory approaches have also been adopted to regulate the advertising of video games containing gambling-like mechanics, such as loot boxes, due to concerns surrounding overspending. In the UK and all EU and EEA countries, any advertising for video games with loot boxes must disclose their presence; however, this is enforced on the basis of industry self-regulation only with punishments being, at worst, public chastisement. In contrast, South Korea requires loot box presence disclosures by law and imposes criminal penalties for non-compliance, including fines and custodial sentences. In Belgium, any advertising of games with loot boxes constitutes the illegal advertising of illegal gambling. The recently adopted EU Digital Services Act requires social media platforms (e.g., Facebook) to provide a repository of all advertising published, including audience demographic details. We used Meta’s ad repository to assess compliance with video game advertising-related regulatory rules. We reviewed thousands of ads for popular games with loot boxes. In the UK, less than 10% disclosed loot box presence, and many of the disclosures were not sufficiently visually prominent. In South Korea, 58.2% of Korean language ads disclosed. In Belgium, many popular games constituting illegal gambling were illegal advertised. We studied 1,574 illegal advertisements, which were viewed over 4.5 million times by Belgian users, including 1.26 million times by under-21s. Better enforced regulation leads to better compliance. Required by the Digital Services Act, social media advertising repositories allow compliance to be studied and monitored in a novelly objective way. Academic researchers should take full advantage of this data access channel. The Digital Services Act also allows regulators to more easily monitor and enforce laws: the evidence we produced has been fed directly to gambling and advertising regulators, who expressed their appreciation. Policymakers, particularly beyond the EU, should legally require more such data access opportunities.

Gamergate Round 2: Cross-Cultural Circulation of Anti-“DEI” Discourses on YouTube and Reddit
Dino ZHANG. City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media

This presentation results from long-term observations of Asmongold’s Twitch livestreams and various Chinese-language subreddits leading to Trump’s second term. It always seemed obvious that electoral politics and videogame discourses are intertwined, not even implicitly but explicitly reinforcing each other’s opinions. During this period between mid-2024 to early 2025, many events took place in the intervening period: the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Trump assassination attempt in July 2024, followed by Elon Musk’s endorsement of Trump, Black Myth: Wukong and Concord released in August 2024, Trump winning the US election in November 2024, Path of Exile 2 released in December 2024, Marvel Heroes released in December 2024, Elon Musk exposed as a fraudulent gamer in January 2025, Trump ending all government-funded DEI programs in March 2025. Gamergate has always been political, and now this does not need to be debated. What is new, however, is the active translations and discussions of right-wing discourses in both directions—from English to Chinese and Chinese into English. This deliberate partial/decontextualized readings of the Other results in a bizarre reactionary circuit—for instance, the MAGA gamers were celebrating the success of Black Myth: Wukong with the Chinese nationalists; Chinese discussions used their MAGA echoes as validation for even more explicit misogyny.

Speaker: Dino ge Zhang is a media anthropologist and non-fiction writer. Grounded in long-term ethnographic work in a multitude of fieldsites and medium-specific digital methods, his current research primarily focuses on socio-technics, aesthetics, and affective ecologies of contemporary streaming media/platforms in the Sinophone world. His recent works include co-editing a special issue on livestreaming studies in Asiascape: Digital Asia, a non-fiction title (UN)LOCKED: Memories of Wuhan published by Scale, and a translated volume of Esports scholarship The Global Esports Reader forthcoming by East China Normal University. His essays have appeared in Visual Studies, SFRA Review, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, China Perspectives, Convergence, and Games and Culture, among others. He holds a PhD from the Digital Ethnography Research Centre at RMIT, an MPhil from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and a BA from the University of Melbourne. Previously he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Zhejiang University, and a teaching fellow at Monash.