27 research outputs found
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What's in a Game? Transmedia Storytelling and the Web-Game Genre of Online Chinese Popular Fiction
This paper uses a genre of online Chinese popular fiction known as Web-Game ction as an entry point for exploring the influence of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) on linear narrative fiction. By offering a thick description of MMORPG gameplay and of gamersâ movements between online and offline worlds, Web-Game fiction narrates and âdeinteractivatesâ the subjective experiences of players as they progress through the levels of online role-playing games. This essay proposes that the genre offers an alternative perspective on transmedia production strategies in Chinese popular culture and on the nature of immersion in online environments, often viewed in negative terms by Chinese critics who employ vocabulary such as youxihua (âgamificationâ or âludificationâ), âYYâ (yiyin, or âmental masturbationâ), and chenmi (absorption or addiction) to warn of the dangers of allowing oneâs imagination to run wild in mediated fictional worlds. By reading one novel from the perspectives of transmedia storytelling, remediation, and affective involvement in digital games, I suggest that Web-Game fiction is emblematic of Chinese netizensâ desire to take control of their own stories within a larger contemporary reality, the rules and parameters of which lie beyond any individual control
Review. Voices in Revolution: Poetry and the Auditory Imagination in Modern China, by John A. Crespi
Multimedia quake poetry: Convergence culture after the Sichuan earthquake
AbstractThis article examines a wave of Chinese poetry sparked by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. âQuake Poetryâ was published online before being re-circulated through digital, print and live media. Multimedia adaptations of one poem are examined to investigate the relationship between the authors of Quake Poetry, the different media platforms, and the people and institutions involved in its proliferation. Media convergence enabled Quake Poetry to fulfil several functions in the aftermath of the earthquake. Most prominently, it served as an emotional outlet for those affected by the quake, while giving its netizen-producers a sense of creative agency as they engaged in participatory cultural production. Members of the contemporary poetry scene cited Quake Poetry as evidence of poetry's ongoing hold over the Chinese national consciousness. Finally, certain poems were appropriated and promoted by China's state-controlled media to propagate a politically expedient image of Chinese unity in the face of tragedy.</jats:p