The video game Chinese parents and Its political potentials

Abstract

Digital politics in China are frequently analysed through the lens of ‘hard’ issues related to power, policy, and collective action. And yet, Digital China is also full of playful activities. If we are to understand what politics emerge out of Chinese digital networks, we’d be well advised to take the seemingly ‘soft’ issue of digital play seriously. Videogames for the personal computer (PC), and the gaming cultures that surround them, are a particularly exciting place to explore these politics of play in contemporary China, and this is visible in a relatively new phenomenon: the arrival of Chinese-designed independent games on transnational gaming platforms like Steam. What is the political relevance of such independent digital games, and what should we make of attempts by their designers to speak to, and intervene in, socio-cultural debates through the transnational gaming platform Steam? To answer this question, this project will turn the 2018 Chinese-language game Chinese Parents (中国式家长), which asks players to raise a child and prepare them for the dreaded ‘gaokao’ university entrance exam. By analyzing this game’s content, interface, and algorithmic interactions, and by exploring its reception among commentators on the Steam platform, this chapter provides a much-needed reality-check about the politics of play in contemporary Chinese-language contexts, and about the way that these politics extend to transnational digital networks.