InGAME International Conference: Games in/between China and the West

Welcome

The Chinese gaming market is known as a global powerhouse, generating billions of pounds of revenue and interacting with nearly 700 million gamers. The rapid growth of the Chinese gaming industry has drawn the attention of scholars and game producers alike, both eager to understand the political, social, and commercial side of the Chinese games market and gaming culture. Increasingly, UK games companies have been looking to ‘break into’ the Chinese market, but have been met with challenges including cultural differences, the language barrier, regulatory issues, and a lack of knowledge of the Chinese gaming culture.

This conference invited talks from researchers in China, the UK/Europe, and beyond, with a focus on cross-cultural (China-West) research in games. We aimed to bring together researchers from different regions to build a better understanding of the opportunities and barriers to academic and industry collaboration. 

About InGAME International

InGAME International is a consortium of transnational games industry stakeholders brought together from industry, agencies and universities to investigate the challenges to, and deliver solutions that support, international collaboration between the videogames sectors in the UK and China.

The Games in/between China and the West conference provides a platform for academics from both East and West to share their research, knowledge, and insights, contributing to the overarching aims of the InGAME International programme.

This hybrid conference is supported by our partners in the UK and China. InGAME has provided the web hosting for the conference for international audiences. Perfect World has provided support in China by making all videos available for access within mainland China on Bilbili.

InGAME International is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research council (Grant reference: AH/T011491/1)

Attending

Our live conference will be hosted online April 12th-13th 2022, from 09.00 – 10.30 BST (16.00 -17.30 CST) each day.

To attend you are required to sign up using the Eventbrite links below. The conference will be hosted on Zoom, and Attendance is free.

Sign up for Day 1: Tuesday April 12th 2022, 09.00-10.30 BST

Sign up for Day 2: Wednesday April 13th 2022, 09.00-10.30 BST

All talks have been prepared in advance by speakers and are provided in the sections below. Conference attendees are advised to take the time to watch the talks in advance of attending the live event. Visitors from China can follow the links under each talk to view the video hosted on Bilibili.

Programme of talks

The following talks were accepted for presentation at the conference. 

1. The Aesthetics of Xuanhuan Games and Chinese Cultural Heritage Between East and West  –  Dr Gabriele Aroni
2. Video Games, Historical Representation and Soft Power  –  Dr Iain Donald; Dr Nick Webber; Dr Esther Wright
3. The Racialization of Creativity from Outsourced to Platformed Game Production in China  –  Dr Aleena Chia
4. Realism or Myth? Translating Chinese Parents into Growing Up for the West  –  Luo Haoxi
5. More Than Just Kung Fu and Steamed Buns – Representing Contemporary Chinese Pop Culture through the Indie Video Game ‘Chinese Parents’  –  Dr Xiyuan Tan
6. Video Games with National Characteristics: Understanding British and Chinese Video Games  –  Sam, Li Mengqi; Dr Nick Webber
7. Intellectual Property Protection for Video Games  –  Dr Jia Wang; Dr Robin Sloan
8. What are the Odds? Lower Compliance with Western Loot Box Probability Disclosure Industry Self-Regulation than Chinese Legal Regulation  –  Leon Y. Xiao; Laura L. Henderson; Philip W.S. Newall
9. Self/Censorship: Transmedial Regulations Across The East/West  –  Dr Hailey Austin
10. Video Game Streaming and their Communities of Play in the UK And China  –  Dr Lynn Love; Xiaoxiong Xiong
11. Regulatory Responses and Emerging Regulatory Debates of Digital Game Live-Streaming Influencers: A Comparative Analysis  –  Dr Yowei Kang; Dr Kenneth C.C. Yang;
12. The Graying of Digital Game Market: A Computational Framing Analysis of China-West Media Representations of Senior Gameplayers  –  Dr Kenneth C.C. Yang; Dr Yowei Kang
13. The Double Edge Sword: Digital Game Design Publication Policies’ Effect on the Preference of Chinese Game Design and Market  –  Yigang Liu

All talks are presented in the sections below.

Abstracts for all talks are provided in the Conference Proceedings.