The Journey To Victory

Focusing on Chinese video games,this dissertation,named as The Journey To Victory: The Politics of Chinese Video Game Characters,begins with studies on game characters,discussing the politics of Chinese video game characters.It is the characters that represent gamers to fulfill interactivity inside the game world,to develop game story,and to mark game franchise,which could be regarded as the important images linking game developers,gamers,game world and game industry.Therefore,game characters could be regarded as the key concept revealing micro power relations of games and the politics of Chinese video game characters.The Introduction discusses video game's relations to character politics,explaining three key concepts,that is,video games,video game character and character politics.Then it analyzes both domestic and foreign researches about video games from a synchronic and a diachronic viewpoint before suggesting its creativity on both research subject and methodology,which studies game characters in a allegory critical paradigm.Finally,it expands the research structure of this dissertation.Chapter One dates back origin and development of role playing games before introducing game genres,then analyzes the classification and stereotypes of Chinese games,and finally suggests a new approach to game characters,that is,the allegory game critical paradigm,by which the politics of video game characters could be presented.Focusing on Chinese style game Chinese Paladin,Chapter Two introduces the genres of adventure games and Chinese style games,explaining how game world constructs a flaneur space by game signs and narrative.Labeling its gamer character as a Flaneur,it puts this character back to Chinese historical and cultural context in 1990 s,revealing a flaneur allegory,that is,game character Li Xiaoyao,as a flaneur,provides cultural identities to both Chinese industry workers and Chinese gamers in an imaginative way.Finally,this chapter further develops the politics of the game flaneur: on the one hand,gamers get an illusion of success on the level of identity;on the other hand,the gamers' ability to imagine identity has been restrained by the game.Citing The Semi Gods and Semi Devils series as an example,Chapter Three discusses the key characteristic of MMORPGs,that is,the game blockbusters with both Chinese and western fantasies,explaining how game world constructs a tourist space by fascinating signs and complicated social systems.Then it names its gamer characters as game tourists,revealing a tourist allegory which means that those characters offer game tours to gamers,letting them escape from daily life occasionally and conquer the world imaginatively.Finally,this chapter expands the politics of the game tourist: on the one hand,gamers get an illusion of subject on the level of self-consciousness;on the other hand,gamers' ability to imagine themselves has been restrained by the game.Centering on Find Something,Chapter Four introduces the origin and development of casual games and puzzle games,and analyzes the core mechanism of Find Something before discussing how game suture a space full of pieces by game mechanism and mock signs.Regarding its gamer characters as the one who sutures in the game,it relates to the loser culture in contemporary China,revealing a suture allegory which indicates that those gamer characters provide them with a loser identity in a loser space,facing realistic difficulties with a mocking attitude and suturing a complete loser landscape by the game.Finally,this chapter explores the politics of the suture character: on the one hand,gamers get an illusion of creativity on the level of ability;on the other hand,gamers' ability to imagine ability has been constrained by the game.Focusing on “66RPGs”,Chapter Five explains the nature and meanings on levels of the game design tool,the interactive game platform,light browser games and interactive fictions,defining 66 RPGs as a Boy's Love Space for gamers to practice deviant activities and tracing how Boy's Love culture develops to a Chinese mass cultural trend from a select subculture genre.Then it labels its gamer characters as game deviants,revealing a deviant allegory on levels of game industry and gender discourse,that is,those gamer characters not only provide female a chance to design games,but also challenge traditional heterosexual and masculine discourse by boy's love stories.Finally,this chapter explains the politics of game deviants: on the one hand,gamers get an illusion of dominance on the level of social status;on the other hand,gamers' ability to imagine social status has been restrained by the game.In term of Conclusion,this dissertation aims to develop an allegory critical paradigm to approach video game characters,by which to reveal the historical reality experiences and the politics of game characters.Although this critical paradigm has been used to analyze Chinese video games in this dissertation,it also could be applied to foreign video game culture.