From the main-melody story to gaming experience: is the Chinese digital game arena a potential counterpublic sphere?

Abstract

This article interrogates the possibility that the digital game arena plays a role as a ‘counterpublic sphere’ where alternative voices that violate the hegemonic narratives in the mainstream media culture can be expressed. Exemplified by The Invisible Guardian, a Chinese interactive role-playing game, we present the first study to bring political perspective into the Chinese digital game studies, combining narrative analysis and players’ experience to provide a comprehensive understanding of political engagement in China’s digital game arena. We argue that the digital game uses various strategies to portray figures from different political parties in a way that subverts mainstream main-melody dramas and sheds light on sensitive historical movements. This implies the potential of Chinese digital games to become a counterpublic sphere, delivering alternative voices that challenge the mainstream media discourse and stimulate gamers’ political introspection.

Keywords

Chinese digital game counterpublic main-melody narrative analysis interview

Introduction

Media narratives have long been considered to be ideology-driven and to act as an important political instrument for propaganda. This is particularly true in Chinese mainstream dramas, such as films (Su, 2016) and TV shows (Bai and Song, 2014), which are often viewed as an audio-visual tool for educating the masses (Bao, 2014). One of the typical cases is main-melody stories, which comprise a significant proportion of both films and TV in China. The term ‘main-melody’ comes from ‘main-melody film’ which was first coined by the Chinese Film Bureau. The term was later adopted by the Chinese government to produce state-sponsored films that delivered ‘the official rhetoric of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, as well as socialism, patriotism, and collectivism’ (Su, 2016: 20–21). Teo (2019) has defined main-melody films as those ‘extolling the virtues of the state, military and the Communist Party of China’ (p. 321). The predominant idea of China’s main-melody stories is to propagate what the Chinese see as their own mainstream values, which are primarily determined by the party-state and the history of the country. Bearing this feature, this genre usually adopts a past-oriented perspective that propagates national spirit, pride, and cohesion. This is achieved through depictions of China’s past suffering, the Chinese peoples’ resistance to foreign invasion, and by praising the glorious deeds and sacrifices of China’s first-generation Communist Party (CCP) leaders (Guan and Hu, 2021). Nowadays, China’s main-melody stories have become more market-oriented, like most Chinese media outlets, and must now serve two ‘masters’ – the government and the market– acting as both state propaganda apparatus and profit-driven enterprise (Yeh and Davis, 2008).

If mainstream media narratives have universally glorified the CCP members’ virtues and heroism, contrasted against demonic images of the Japanese and Kuomintang (KMT) members, we are interested in whether this kind of binary representation is applied in subcultural narratives in the Chinese media context, such as digital games. The prevalence of digital games in China has been founded on the rise of various digital platforms as dominant infrastructural and economic models of entertainment (Keane and Yu, 2019), and by ‘the penetration of economic and infrastructural extensions of online platforms into the web, affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of cultural content’ (Nieborg and Helmond, 2019: 4275). Despite their large number of players, storytelling in digital games, and especially in narrative-orientated role-play games, may enjoy relatively more censorial freedom than films and TV dramas, as they usually have multiple stories paths, in which some controversial plots can be hidden from the censors. Thus, we aim to detect to what extent the Chinese narrative-orientated role-playing game is allowed space to counter the traditionally dichotomous representations of the CCP and its rivals in mainstream media narratives.

To achieve this goal, we have chosen The Invisible Guardian (TIG, 隐形守护者) as a case study through which to explore the ways in which the main-melody story in Chinese role-playing games can transgress the scripted narrative of the CCP as supreme. Defined as ‘interactive drama’, TIG was produced by the Chinese indie developer New One Studio. It was first released on Steam on 1 January 2019, then on Wegame – a competing gaming platform from industry giant Tencent– on 3 March 2019. The story was adapted from the text reasoning game Red Journey (赤途), written by Fantasia, and provides several different storylines for its protagonist, with each one representing a different political alliance and life trajectory. The player follows the perspective of Xiao Tu, a young male intellectual who joins the underground resistance against the Japanese in 1930s Shanghai by working undercover as a journalist for a pro-Japanese newspaper. The storytelling is processed through still frames and video clips with dubbed voice-overs, similar to Netflix’s Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (2018). At key freeze-frame moments, players decide what Xiao should do or say – but one errant word can spell an untimely demise. If the story concludes early, players can rewind to an earlier chapter and rethink their life choices (Davis, 2019).

TIG made a remarkable commercial gross through its adaptation of a main-melody spy story, attracting gamers through its immersive decision-making and its suitability for live-streaming, where audiences could enjoy both the cinematic experiences and the streamer’s comical reactions when they end up dying (Wang, cited in Davis, 2019). Concerning the structure of storytelling and gamers’ playing experience, we ask: Is the main-melody narrative in the Chinese digital role-playing games, exemplified by TIG, able to subvert/violate the prescriptive CCP-supreme narrative format in the mainstream media? If so, how is the subversion represented in this narrative? When gamers dedicate themselves to unpacking the storylines, how do they perceive or interpret these subversions?

In what follows, we will first provide a literature review, contextualizing the representations of the main-melody spy genre in Chinese media and the research foci of digital game studies in the Chinese context, followed by the theoretical framework. After a brief account of the research methods, we present our research data and analysis, followed by the concluding marks.

Literature review

Contextualizing the spy genre in Chinese media

TIG adopts a spy-themed story – a genre that has gained a great prevalence in Chinese mainstream media, particularly in TV dramas. These stories are usually set in the historical period around the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the subsequent Civil War (1945–1949), and feature clever, strong-willed Communist agents who circulate among several political parties to gather information and outsmart their enemies (e.g. Ansuan 2005; Lurk, 2009; The Brink, 2012; The Disguiser, 2015; Kite, 2017 etc.). As Wang and Hu (2021) have contended, the espionage thriller tends to be ideologically defined and commercially successful, while the genre’s prevailing status in Chinese media has some historical and political particularities. Historically, spy and counterspy narratives are the heritage of Socialist revolutionary classics produced in the 1950s to 1970s. Typically, they depict a Communist hero going underground to fight the Japanese invaders and the Nationalists, or a Communist hero vigilantly uncovering a spy sent by Japanese or Nationalist enemies. These highly conventional narratives unhesitatingly advocate patriotic sentiment, class struggle, and Communist values through their stereotypical characterizations, their depictions of binary opposition between heroes and villains, and their stylized and operatic performances.

Nevertheless, Chinese espionage TV series in the new millennium show an obvious distancing from the revolutionary idealism manifested in Red classics produced at the height of the Socialist era. The good/evil dichotomy in new TV dramas is less clear-cut, and the heroes and villains are more humanized (Yang, 2018). For instance, a hero may choose to protect his lover over the Party, while a villain may choose not to kill an enemy who saves his family. Moreover, modern spy series actively embrace generic characteristics from other commercial genres, such as mystery, horror, and action, in an attempt to make them more entertaining for a market-driven industry. As such, this revised genre can be seen as the product of subtle negotiation between the commercial and political forces of Chinese media. Since other commercial and action-oriented genres, such as supernatural/fantasy and police/crime dramas, are frequently censored by the Chinese media authorities for their unscientific and superstitious worldviews, and their portrayals of official bribery and corruption (Bai, 2014; Pang, 2011), the ideologically correct spy-themed drama becomes a safe choice (Kong, 2012: 8). At this point, as battle games are facing more pressure from censors due to their integration of violence, main-melody spy stories can be seen as a smart choice for Chinese game studios, balancing commerciality, accessibility, and playability.

Digital game studies in the Chinese contexts

Digital game studies as an emerging field in the Chinese context have not yet fully developed, with most current game research having been conducted in European and North American settings (Liu, 2021). In the current literature, many Chinese game researchers have adopted quantitative methods, employing a psychological focus to study how gameplay may affect players’ mental health (Peng and Liu, 2010) or how digital games can be used in class learning (Deng et al., 2020). Anthropologists have paid attention to Chinese gamers’ playing experience through interviews (Liu and Lai, 2020), and paid particular attention to digital intimacies (Liu, 2019) and in-game marriage (Wu et al., 2007) with a gendered focus. Further, Szablewicz (2020) has discussed the discourse and effect of digital games on the popular imagination in urban China. While political communication has long been a research focus in the studies on Chinese mainstream media, game researchers, so far, seem to be apolitical. As such, a comprehensive study that combines the analysis of political meanings in Chinese digital games and how gamers interpret these meanings remains lacking.

This study attempts to fill this gap by examining whether the main-melody narrative in the Chinese digital game can counter the prescribed mainstream media narratives that glorify the CCP, and further explores whether digital games have the potential to act as an alternative media to disrupt the dominant media discourse. Specifically, we investigate how the main-melody story is narrated in the Chinese digital game and how gamers perceive the narrative in the process of adventuring through the multiple story paths. In doing so, we offer the first study to bring political perspective into the Chinese digital game studies, combining narrative analysis and players’ experience to obtain a comprehensive understanding of political engagement in China’s digital game arena.

Theoretical framework: public and counterpublic spheres

This article draws on the theories of public and counterpublic spheres rooted in Habermas (1962) notion of the public sphere, which refers to a realm of the social lift, where people discuss social issues and generate public opinion that affects political agendas, which in turn influences democratic polity. Conversely, by criticizing the privilege of the bourgeois class in Habermas’ ‘ideal’ public sphere, Fraser (1990) and Warner (2005) developed the notion and introduced the concept of the counterpublic sphere. Fraser (1990) believes that society has multiple public spheres, including a dominant one and several other realms that she defines as ‘subaltern counterpublics’: the ‘parallel discursive arenas’ where marginalized groups develop ‘oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (p. 81). These realms increase the discursive space in order to respond to exclusion from the dominant public. Similar to Fraser, Warner (2005) refers to the subdued people in a society as counterpublics, defined as a public body of people who have awareness of their subordinate status. As counterpublics are able to play the dual roles of criticizing the dominant public and challenging the hegemonic discourse, counterpublics tend to move beyond the rational-critical discourse and adapt diversified forms of expression and practices.

In this article, we refer to the public sphere as the space where people express their support of and agreement with the dominant narrative forms of the Chinese media discourse. Thus, comparatively, the counterpublic sphere in the present research refers to a space where game producers, designers or players, who are dissenters and discontent with the dominant ideas, express their alternative voices through gaming engagement. As the mainstream media fail to provide a truly diverse range of viewpoints to the public and often ignore (and even suppress) marginal groups’ voices (Dahlberg, 2007), alternative media constitute alternative public realms (Downing, 1988) or subaltern public spheres (Squires, 2002), assisting the organization of counterpublics (Warner, 2005). With awareness of the multiplicity and coexistence of publics (Squires, 2002), we shed light on Downey and Fenton’s (2003) elaborative conceptualization of the ‘counterpublic sphere’, which challenges the hegemonic public sphere by including new voices of dissent, in order to discover the extent to which the Chinese digital game arena can be a potential counterpublic sphere, and the degree that people in Chinese digital game communities are able to present dissenting or alternative voices.

Research design

Our investigation adopts multiple methods of observation and participation, in-depth narrative analysis, and qualitative interviews. First, for identifying the virtual field site, we initially conducted small-sample interviews with Chinese game players, who regularly played domestic-made video games no less than 6 hours per week, in Wuhan in 2019 and 2020 (sample size = 5). TIG predominantly caught our attention not only because of the strong recommendation from all our initial interviewees, but also due to its uniqueness as an interactive drama role-play video game with a main-melody story. It has achieved a high Douban score of 9.6¹ and several prestigious awards.² Hence, the authors decided to play TIG by ourselves and participate in the online fan communities (e.g. Baidu BBS, Sina weibo), canvassing the most heated player discussions, and examining how players interpreted the narrative and the representations of different characters and political parties in the context of war.

Second, we conduct an in-depth narrative analysis to investigate how the story of TIG counters the mainstream narratives. Narrative always reveals the speaker’s identity (Bamberg, 2004). In TIG, Xiao is the only playable character; thus, Xiao plays the role of the speaker, forcing players to experience the story world from his perspective. In TIG, characters are designed to have their own plans and goals while interacting with other characters, which creates a social world of protagonists versus antagonists, of allies against enemies. Therefore, we look particularly into the ways in which the male player character, Xiao, and the five female non-player characters, are positioned and interacted with, while Xiao makes choices that ally him with different parties under various circumstances, despite his true identity as a CCP spy.

Third, 22 players of TIG (10 females and 12 males) aged between 19 and 33 were recruited for qualitative interviews. While the interview design largely corresponded to topics discussed in the fan communities that we participated in, interviews were conducted either face-to-face or online. Twelve of the interviewees were students, and the rest were white-collar workers whose monthly income ranged between RMB8000 and 25,000 (USD1241 and 3878). Our open-ended, semi-structured questions were constituted around two themes. The first established general background information, with a focus on how the players evaluate the male and female roles and their relationships in different political parties. The second theme concerned the gamers’ immersive sensation and how they felt about the different storylines. Here it is important to note that we do not attempt to be exhaustive, nor do we generalize these interviewees’ thoughts as collective deliberation. As our own participation in discussion forums may be subjective, our analysis is part of the point: the representative gamers gesture to a set of networked cultures, rather than to a special political mechanism. Together, they comprise a lens through which we can see a reflection and interpretation of the Chinese main-melody video game. In other words, our interviewees are not characterized by their specificity or uniqueness, but rather by how they form a contemporary perception – a perception that on the one hand relates to broad Chinese political narratives, but on the other represents a shift happening now.

Findings and discussion

Through our in-depth narrative analysis, we found that the five female characters each represent different political parties. While the history teacher Muto Junko is the daughter of Muto Dargerven (the Japanese Consul in Shanghai), Zhuang Xiaoman works for the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics – one of the KMT’s intelligence agencies. Lu Wangshi is a CCP agent who works with Xiao as an ally and lover. Fang Min, Xiao’s childhood sweetheart, is also represented as a CCP spy who has multiple life tracks throughout the storylines. Gu Junru, who works for the Wang Jingwei Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China,³ also has affective interaction with Xiao, so we take her into the examination as well.

Chinese main-melody stories have long depicted male and female soldiers in revolutionary struggles in wars. In this genre, the female image has been used in socialist fiction to signify either a certain class or socio-political group, or the authority of the Communist Party itself (Meng, 1994). TIG, on the one hand, maintains the main-melody tradition of centrally positioning the CCP member (Xiao); on the other, it depicts different political parties (including Japanese, KMT and the Wang Reorganized National Government) through their respective female characters as a strategy to avoid censorship. As Xiao interacts with these characters in various ways, his story takes different directions depending on his choices, which create implications concerning the different relationships between the CCP members and other political parties under the cover of Xiao’s interactions with women.

In the following sections, we will specifically analyze how Xiao’s interactions with the five female characters are narrated, hoping to ascertain the implications of CCP members’ relationships with both its own members and with other political parties. This will be followed by an analysis of how our interviewees perceived these male-female political relationships in the game. We argue that TIG has used various strategies to portray figures from different political parties in a manner counter to the mainstream main-melody tropes, including the neutral and innocent Japanese anti-war activist, the upright and professional KMT agent, the cheating CCP members, as well as the naïve and sacrificial collaborator. By relating some of the characters to real historical figures and movements, TIG not only breaks the longstanding tradition of main-melody stories portraying CCP members’ fate as either living on happily or dying for the country, but also encourages the players to associate the characters’ struggle with the given period in China’s history. Therefore, it can be seen that the Chinese digital game, exemplified by TIG, has the potential to become a media sphere that disseminates voices counter to the mainstream discourse, and to stimulate gamers’ political discussion and introspection.

The CCP versus Japanese

TIG’s story represents one of its lead female roles – the Japanese history teacher Muto Junko – as an anti-war activist dedicated to revealing the imperialist disposition of the Japanese military, which counters the perennial depiction of the Japanese as demonic in mainstream main-melody narratives. According to her profile in the game, Junko has actively participated in the anti-war movements after going back to Japan from China, and even received warnings from her school.⁴ The relationship between Junko and Xiao is presented as an obscure romance. They first meet in Chapter 1, wherein Xiao works for Junko’s father as the CCP’s undercover informant. Here, the game offers a choice (from Xiao’s perspective): reveal to Junko the truth about the Japanese military’s slaughter of the Chinese people or don’t. Choosing to tell Junko the truth is a necessary condition for the player to pass through Chapters 8 The Game Rules and Chapter 10 Outrage, both of which reveal the ways in which Junko gets to more know about the war.

Further, it is also a condition for TIG’s first ending (Fusang Requiem in Chapter 5⁵), where Xiao flees to Japan and meets Junko while pretending to be a Japanese officer. In this ending, Junko diligently searches for the truth of Xiao’s words, and even reveals them publicly, leading directly to Xiao’s death. The ending mentions that Junko publishes a book in Japan, called The Lies of the Times, which exposes the invasive nature of the war by telling Xiao’s story.

Junko’s portrait as a positive and compassionate anti-war activist was widely recognized by our interviewees. Her representation encouraged them to move their attention away from the demonized Japanese soldiers of mainstream main-melody shows, and toward the innocent Japanese victims of the war. Modern historical consciousness in China is largely characterized by the ‘one hundred years of humiliation’ from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, when China was attacked, bullied, and torn asunder by imperialists. This memory has been reinforced by the current regime’s educational socialization, and particularly through the national Patriotic Education Campaign started in 1991 (Wang, 2008). Thus, main-melody stories have predominantly demonized Japanese people as cold-blooded war hawks, while ignoring those friendly to China, though they exist in the historical archives. For instance, as a Japanese progressive writer, Lou Jigen (1903–1982) became friends with some reputable Chinese left-wing writers such as Lu Xun, and organized a group of Japanese anti-war activists in Shanghai to disseminate anti-war propaganda to the Japanese military (Sun and Yang, 2006).

The interviewees were also able to identify the unusual portrayals of the Japanese in TIG, and they believed that the Japanese characters were drawn from a relatively objective perspective, rather than the usual blind defamation. In this way, TIG contributes to delivering an alternative voice that counters the long-standing mainstream narrative stereotype. GF (female, 23) believed that TIG presented varied images of the Japanese, including the monstrous war hawk, the ambitious careerist, and the innocent girl, each with different political positions. For instance, while Junko is relatively neutral, Dargerven, Junko’s father, is represented as an ambitious Japanese officer, who is loyal to the Emperor and faithful to militarism. He sincerely appreciates Xiao, regards him as a friend and also protects him when he is in danger; however, when Xiao threatens his career, he kills him without hesitation. Although Dargerven is callous on the battlefield, he also loves his daughter and tries everything to protect her, showing his humanistic side (JX, male, 19). These representations are not binary, which is far different from main-melody TV shows (XY, female, 18). However, some players still persistently treat Japanese characters as invaders although they are aware that the Japanese are not purely evil. According to ZY (male, 27):

In the beginning, I had a good feeling for Dargerven because he is kind to Xiao (me). But, beyond this game, the Japanese military was indeed an invader of China, so I won’t be brainwashed by them. . . Even though Dargerven takes care of Xiao (me), I cannot be obedient to him. I need to be loyal to myself. No matter how good he treats Xiao (me), if I make the wrong choice, he can still kill me.

Thus, we see TIG’s diversified representations of Japanese characters as a kind of alternative voice that may encourage gamers to see things differently to the mainstream media discourse; however, an ineradicable sense of antagonism toward the Japanese remains.

The CCP versus the KMT

Unlike the traditional main-melody dramas, which tend to depict KMT agents as cool-blooded collaborationists torturing CCP members, Zhuang Xiaoman is represented as Xiao’s lover, and as support in his undercover operation – quite counter to hegemonic practice. They get to know each other’s true identities romantically (Chapter 2 Hunters) and start to cooperate, rather than being enemies (Chapter 3 Life and Death). The symbiosis between Xiao and Zhuang reaches its peak in Chapter 6 The Dark Choices, in which both attempt to assassinate a Japanese military officer on a train, under orders from the CCP and KMT, respectively. In the storyline where they survive, Zhuang is framed by her own team and put in mortal danger. Under Xiao’s protection, they escape and are saved by the CCP agent ‘No. 2’. To keep Zhuang protected, Xiao gives Zhuang his own code name ‘Wasp’ and claims that he is Zhuang’s subordinate. Betrayed by the KMT and influenced by Xiao, Zhuang completes her transition between political parties and stands beside Xiao. Further, in the Finale, Zhuang is sent to another undercover operation, playing double agent against the KMT. However, she only takes the job because she wants to protect Xiao, rather than supporting the CCP’s ideology. In the Ending Marks, the game shows a letter from Zhuang to Xiao:

Mr Xiao is my alternative existence in this world. . .What you brought to me is not extermination but hope, which has changed my life track, and makes me know what is precious and worth expecting in life. . .To me, this world is black and white, while you are the colors of my life’ (translated by the first author).

Although TIG adopts a similar strategy to mainstream main-melody dramas in presenting romance between the female KMT agent and the male CCP one, the interaction between Xiao and Zhuang still expresses an alternative voice in this subcultural narrative. To be specific, instead of carrying on the legacy of main-melody dramas in recruiting the KMT’s women through ideological cultivation, Zhuang is loyal to Xiao himself rather than the Party, making their romance personal, and violating the CCP-advocated idea of collectivism over individuality.

Moreover, Zhuang is never shown as bloodthirsty, and in the end, she survives, which is far different from the traditional portrait of the female KMT agent as femme fatale in main-melody TV shows. For instance, in the highly acclaimed spy-genre TV show The Disguiser (2015), Wang Manchun, the female KMT spy, is depicted as an unpatriotic traitor, a sadistic perpetrator who gains pleasure from torturing prisoners in brutal inquisitions and has a pathological affection for the male leading role, Ming Lou, the CCP’s undercover spy. However, after she becomes a traitor to the nation, Ming forgets his feelings for her, even though she is still blindly in love with him. In the end, she is killed by male CCP agents. Compared with Wang in The Disguiser, Zhuang seems to be more humanized and has a happier ending. In the fourth ending Red Youth (Finale), she not only survives, but deviates from both political parties and escapes to the US. As Brubaker (2001) has suggested, while assimilation in the specific and organic sense implies complete absorption, it designates a direction of change in the general, abstract sense. From this perspective, while the stereotypical main-melody narrative frame either assimilates politically heterogeneous elements by recruitment or kills them, Zhuang’s happy ending away from the political arena seems largely counter to the mainstream media discourse.

For our interviewees, Zhuang’s representation as a righteous female KMT agent was widely received. The gamers described her as upright, cooperative (JY, male, 21), skillful (LH, female, 23), faithful (YY, female, 23), and as patriotic and Xiao’s soul mate (JX, male, 19). According to LX (female, 22), ‘Zhuang is the most suitable lover for Xiao. And she is even more decisive and sophisticated than Xiao. I thought they could be together for a long time and have a bright future’. However, Zhuang’s happy ending in the US, which we see as a counter to the mainstream narrative, is a hidden ending, and only two of our interviewees repeatedly played through the multiple storylines enough to find it. JY (male, 21) contended that:

In Zhuang’s only happy ending, she chose an independent lifestyle. I think it was very hard for women at that time. I think they (Zhuang and Xiao) love each other, but that their relationship cannot take a further step forward because they are still in different positions (Xiao keeps working for the CCP, while Zhuang chooses to deviate from both Parties).

ZM (female, 22) illustrated that she could understand Zhuang’s choice of going to the US as she has to survive first. ‘This might be a way to live her own life without betraying the nation’. Based on the two gamers’ responses, we may notice that, for passing the censor, TIG adopts a self-preservation strategy of integrating the counter-culture narratives in the Ending Marks that are not easily found. This alternative voice is still captured by actively engaged gamers, which can be considered an example of careful compromise between the government’s main-melody hegemonic political discourse and players’ demand for more diverse storyline development. This correlates with LY’s (male, 25) comments that spy-genre stories usually dichotomize romance and loyalty to the nation in order to create dramatic conflicts. Conversely, Zhuang in TIG chooses personal emotions over ideological faith, which manifests a more humanized character than the mainstream spy shows.

The CCP versus its members

TIG’s longest storyline with the major ending Red Youth focuses on the relationship between Xiao and Lu Wangshu, the female CCP spy. Here, TIG adopts the idiomatic strategy of mainstream spy-genre TV dramas (e.g. Lurk, 2009 and The Brink, 2012), presenting Xiao saving Lu first, then having them pretend to be a couple as a cover, then finally both surviving and becoming a true couple in the end. However, this seemingly happy ending in TIG is not as happy as in mainstream TV shows, which further suggests the game’s counter-hegemonic practice of touching upon a sensitive time frame and challenging the mainstream stereotype of CCP members as simple, flawless and glorious saints.

Xiao and Lu both survive because Dargerven saves them as a favor for Xiao saving his daughter. But, while not unveiling his true identity as a Communist agent, Xiao is still sent to prison on the charge of being a traitor (Chapter 10 Outrage). Meanwhile, Lu returns to a rural area away from the battlefields and waits for Xiao until he is released in 1949 when the CCP’s army has occupied Shanghai at the end of the Civil War (Ending Marks), implying he has spent around 4 years in the prison. Although Xiao is eventually freed, his identity cannot be retrieved, and his contribution cannot be recognized as his undercover profile is destroyed by his previous supervisor Sun Changqing. In 1982, the Party finally finds the substitute materials to prove his identity. During this period, Xiao and Lu both suffer through multiple revolutionary movements and live a hard life due to Xiao’s status as an ex- ‘traitor’ and ‘prisoner’.

The period from 1949 to 1976 has long been a sensitive time frame in the CCP’s history, full of revolutionary movements focused on ‘class struggles’, and as such, mainstream TV shows and films rarely mention the period. During this period, 17.5% of national public servants were convicted as political prisoners. These wrongful convictions were re-investigated and rehabilitated between 1978 and 1982.⁶ A typical case is the Purge Counter-revolutionary Movement (1955–1959) which was targeting ‘counter-revolutionists’⁷ who were considered to threaten the CCP’s regime. Since the definition of ‘counter-revolutionist’ was extremely vague, there were many wrongful convictions (Li, 2011). Some game critics relate the characters in TIG to real historical figures; for instance, the prototype of ‘No. 2’, Lu’s supervisor, is believed to be Pan Hannian (1906–1977), a sophisticated CCP agent during the war.⁸ Pan was asserted to be a counter-revolutionist as he hid secrets from the Party. Without further investigation, Pan was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment in 1963 after 8 years in custody (Yin, 1998), while his subordinate Guan Lu, who is considered to be the prototype of Lu, was also implicated and sent to prison (Liu, 1996).

Although TIG does not explicitly depict Lu and Xiao’s hard life during this period, enough clues are shown for the players to connect the historical background to the characters’ circumstances. In this way, TIG effectively arouses the memory of buried history and encourages players to reconsider the one-sidedness of mainstream narratives. When our interviewees talked about the CCP’s undercover agents’ experience in the ‘sensitive’ historical periods, most expressed their feelings of sorrow and regret. As FY (male, 23) said, ‘they have dedicated too much, because their tasks were much harder and more dangerous than others, but some of them were not treated fairly’. WL (male, 22) believed that this was a loophole of internal management. Although WL did not further specify the meaning of loophole he meant here, he referred to the ways in which undercover agents had experienced unfair treatment, which can be regarded as a subtle criticism.

Apart from touching upon a sensitive time frame, TIG also subverts the mainstream stereotype of CCP members as simple, flawless and glorious saints by depicting CCP members negatively in some plotlines. A typical example is Sun, Xiao’s supervisor, who sets Xiao up, destroys his undercover profile, and attempts to kill Xiao when Sun’s son is taken hostage (Chapter 4 The Killing Field). Represented as hostile to Xiao, damaging his career and putting him in great danger, Sun is far from the faithful and unquestionably loyal senior CCP member of hegemony. Sun’s image was widely recognized by our interviewees, most of whom believed that TIG does not simply glorify CCP members, but depicts them as humans, who bear a selfish side and may not be flawless. Sun may not be perfect, but at least he is not a blind and loyal machine of the Party (FY, male, 23). As YY (female, 22) indicated,

Sun’s behavior of destroying Xiao’s profile makes me think that not all the CCP members at that time were upright. Or perhaps different people have different choices, which makes me think the Party had recruited so many members and there was no guarantee that all of them were purely noble. . . I think the game still hides this content to present these unjust people while passing the censors. And this content can be seen as a kind of projection of reality.

The CCP versus collaborators/hanjian

The last female character who has meaningful interactions with Xiao is Gu Junru, who is born into a bourgeoisie family. Her parents are representatives of the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce and financially support the Japanese army. Gu is arranged to work for the Wang Government by her family, and as such, the entire family is regarded as collaborators, who are labeled as hanjian⁹ (汉奸, literally, traitors to the Han Chinese, Xia, 2018) by both the CCP and KMT. In TIG, Gu is represented as a naïve and harmless girl, who has admired Xiao since they studied at the same university. Unlike the traitors in mainstream dramas, who are frequently depicted as simply bad and stupid, Gu is well educated, has progressive thoughts and also participates in some students’ social movements during the study. Working for the Wang Government is not her own choice, and she has profound internal conflicts about it. Thus, Gu’s unusual representation also suggests TIG’s counter-hegemonic practice, particularly in depicting collaborators.

Chapter 2 has a particular focus on presenting interaction between Xiao and Gu, and takes place while Xiao is on a mission to kill a former leader of KMT’s Bureau of Investigation and Statistics Shanghai branch, apostatized to work for the Japanese. In the middle of the assassination, when Gu escorts the target to escape, Xiao catches them up and discloses his true identity as a CCP agent to Gu. She chooses not to protect the target anymore and forwardly asks Xiao to kill her in order to avoid Xiao’s identity exposure. Although Gu begs Xiao to keep her parents alive, they are eventually murdered by the KMT’s assassins. This plot explicitly narrates the intensive assassinations during the war, particularly both CCP’s and KMT’s actions against collaborators, which stays consistent with the mainstream discourse of both Parties’ competition in enhancing the nationalism and the legitimacy of their regimes. However, unlike the mainstream dramas, which frequently portray hideous collaborators, TIG shows a different side; they do not voluntarily throw themselves into the lap of the Japanese, but either have no choice or are seeking survival, which is close to the truth of ordinary people’s circumstances during the war. As Rigby (2001) has argued, the boundary between collaboration and resistance blurs when people have to decide either to comply or repel the occupying force. While this is largely erased in Chinese mainstream dramas, it has been brought up again in the game narrative as an alternative voice.

Besides Gu, TIG also represents another Wang Government agent – Li Feng, who is a professional agent and not completely against Xiao. Our interviewees believed that despite being the villain of the story, Li is depicted as smart and having sophisticated skills (GF, female, 23). He may not be willing to work for the Wang Government, but is forced to under special conditions (FY, male, 23). WL (male, 22) contended that the Wang regime was placed in a dilemma, in that it was neither Nationalist nor Communist, making its standpoint weak and unstable. But WL did not think the characters on the side of the Wang regime were national traitors, so much as going with the stream without a firm faith. However, LY (male, 25) did not agree. He believed that some non-Communist agents, such as Li, also had a strong faith in their own political party, similar to that of the Communists’ faith in the CCP – they just had different ideological beliefs. The mainstream dramas tend to depict non-Communists in other political parties as devils or speculators, with these parties’ loss of power being due to their members’ disloyalty or bad natures, contrasted against the CCP’s success being based on the dedication and loyalty of its members. In this sense, although TIG does not specifically explore the issues of ideological beliefs, it humanizes non-Communists as not entirely negative and irredeemable figures.

TIG’s achievement has been influenced by the unique digital game regulation system in mainland China, which regulates digital games in the same way it does books. When China’s digital games emerged in the 1990s, their distribution through floppy or compact disks was controlled by the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), as they were defined as ‘digital publications’, in the same way as it deals with books. This meant that digital games needed an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) to be legally distributed. While this policy continues to this day, in 2003 the Ministry of Culture proposed a regulation that required commercial digital games to also apply for the Network Culture Operation License, meaning that commercial digital games in mainland China confronted dual censors.¹⁰ The two departments faced numerous conflicts in regards to what constituted correct game censorship. After a series of policy changes in 2018, the GAPP was brought into the Propaganda Department of Central Committee (PDCC), where it continued to exercise its function in game censorship, while the Ministry of Culture lost its authority.¹¹ However, the release from dual censorship by no means guaranteed the relaxation of digital game regulation, as both the GAPP and the PDCC specialize in promoting ideological messages. Meanwhile, the Chinese authorities never gave up utilizing digital games as tools for propaganda. Some typical main-melody games include Anti-Japanese Online (2007, an online game by Zhongqingbao, a Shenzhen-based game studio), Connect (2019, a reasoning game by Orange Light Game) and Restore Our Lost territories (2021, a shooting single-player game by Ziyouhudong Studio), and all of which follow the traditional main-melody narratives. However, based on the above discussion, we can see that, due to the highly interactive feature of role-playing digital games, TIG’s strategies of articulating counter-hegemonic representations with romanticized male-female interaction and hiding clues in the Ending Marks and characters’ profiles might be a feasible way to escape from censors and express alternative voices.

Conclusion

This article examined main-melody narration in Chinese digital games by canvassing the ways in which TIG is narrated and how gamers perceive this story in the process of adventuring through its multiple story paths. With a focus on the representations of nontraditional characters from different political parties, we contribute to achieving the first study to bring political perspective into the Chinese digital game studies, combining narrative analysis and players’ experience to provide a comprehensive understanding of political engagement in China’s digital game arena. Our research shows that TIG uses various strategies to portray figures from different political parties in a way that subverts mainstream main-melody dramas and explores sensitive historical movements. To be specific, while TIG’s image of the compassionate Japanese history teacher subverts the demonic Japanese soldiers in main-melody TV dramas, the righteous KMT female agent to some extent rectifies the mainstream stereotype of KMT villains. Moreover, TIG’s CCP members are no longer purely sacrificial and unquestionably loyal, but cheat and frame their comrades. Collaborators are not simple cowards, but humans doing what they can to survive. By unveiling the CCP agents’ struggle, TIG touches upon the sensitive time frame of various revolutionary movements after the establishment of the PRC, which has long been regarded as a forbidden zone for mainstream dramas. In this way, TIG stimulates engaged players to see these characters of different political allegiances in an alternative way, and encourages gamers to associate the characters’ struggle with a given period in China’s history. Therefore, we argue that the Chinese digital game, exemplified by TIG, has the potential to become a media sphere that disseminates diverse voices counter to the mainstream media discourse, and to stimulate its players’ discussions and introspection.

In the Chinese context, while mainstream media narratives are framed within a narrow and stereotypical range under the pressure of censorship, Chinese digital games, as a highly popular and commercial media form, show the potential to grow to a counterpublic sphere that enjoys relatively more freedom of expression and delivers alternative voices of dissent that challenge the hegemonic public sphere. Nonetheless, in 2021 authorities have recently launched a ‘clean-up’ web campaign, with digital games as one of the main targets, and a majority of regulations focus particularly on juveniles. While this seems to herald a new age of tightened video game control, games featuring multiple storylines and hidden clues may still allow some negotiable space, where spy-genre stories may yet survive and continue to provide spaces for alternative voices.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Tingting Hu

Notes

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