According to the China Internet Network Information Center, as of June 2020, 540 million Chinese—57.4 percent of internet users in China—played digital games.Footnote ¹ Despite the remarkable growth in the number of digital gamers and the proliferation of scholarly monographs on the Chinese internet in recent years, little academic attention has been paid to digital gaming culture in China. Marcella Szablewicz's Mapping Digital Game Culture in China addresses this gap in the literature and traces the evolution of digital gaming culture in China from 2000 to 2019. Examining stories about gaming from the perspectives of gamers, journalists, and the author's participation in live events, this book makes a timely contribution to our understanding of the ever-evolving discursive constructions of gaming culture over the past two decades in China.

In chapter 1, Szablewicz outlines the book's analytical framework and methodological approaches. Aiming to delineate “the topography of digital gaming” through ethnographic work (p. 7), the book addresses the ways in which class and socioeconomic mobility have shaped a variety of narratives about digital game play in China. These narratives unfold in the five main chapters that follow. Chapter 2 focuses on the reflections of the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s and their experience of playing computer games in internet cafés as teenagers. While internet cafés symbolized a space for socialization with peers and a space of freedom—an escape from school and parental supervision—these early internet adopters’ fond memories of internet cafés do not necessarily imply a current desire to return. A change in their perception of internet cafés, now seen as a space associated with poor taste, illustrates the breathtaking sociocultural changes concomitant with rapid technological development.

Taking a departure from gamers’ recollections of their youthful experiences, chapters 3 and 4 focus on ambivalent media representations of digital gaming. Chapter 3 illustrates how mainstream media outlets, government policies, and public opinions have jointly shaped the prevailing negative portrayal of internet addiction, as reflected in the frequent use, in media coverage, of the metaphor “spiritual opium” (p. 54). In contrast with this negative portrayal of gaming, chapter 4 examines the circumstances in which games are framed as a source of “patriotic leisure” (p. 84). Drawing a distinction between internet gaming (wangluo youxi) and esports (dianzi jingji), this chapter addresses the ways in which esports are incorporated into the dominant discourses about nation building, ideal citizenship, and profit making. While esports enjoy a relatively good reputation and are perceived to have some social value, internet gaming continues to be associated with such negative characteristics as moral panic, mental illness, and unproductivity.

Chapters 5 and 6 analyze how young people's narratives about gaming challenge the binary oppositions of healthy versus unhealthy and productive versus unproductive leisure activities, as defined by both the state and mainstream discourses. Taking fan-made videos as case studies, chapter 5 spells out how gamers conceptualize the virtual realm as an egalitarian space—their “spiritual homeland” (p. 115)—that opens up alternative possibilities for social mobility that do not exist in their nondigital lives. Chapter 6 draws on memes, internet slang, and Szablewicz's on-site observations at China Joy, a well-known digital entertainment expo in China, to address how gamers challenge the heteronormative definitions of success, ideal citizenship, and relationships. Chapter 7, the concluding chapter, reiterates the major findings of the book.

Mapping Digital Game Culture in China advances the scholarship on internet studies in three important aspects. First, despite an abundance of article-length studies on digital gaming in China, the sociopolitical circumstances that shape the shifting narratives about Chinese gaming remain understudied. This book offers a number of much-needed long-term ethnographic accounts of gamers’ experiences as they navigate a constantly shifting sociopolitical landscape. These first-person accounts are nicely integrated into an analysis of the dominant and mainstream discourse about gaming, and the media representation of gaming in web series, fan videos, and television dramas. Taken together, these multilayered narratives insightfully delineate both the promises and perils that digital gaming has engendered over the past two decades in China.

Second, and relatedly, these narratives shed critical light on the state's ambivalent attitudes toward emerging leisure activities and platforms such as livestreaming, mobile applications, and short videos. For example, despite the emergence of moral discourses, media scandals, and state regulations concerning livestreaming, the industry continues to attract numerous aspiring individuals who embody the state's call for “mass entrepreneurship and mass innovation” (dazhong chuangye, wanzhong chuangxin) and yearn to become social influencers. Furthermore, during the global outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), governors in China experimented with live broadcasts to promote agricultural products, hoping to boost an economy that has been hit hard by the pandemic. The book's analysis of the ever-changing stances of the Chinese state deepens our current understanding of the resilience of authoritarianism, while highlighting the constant adjustments the state must make to cope with emerging social technologies.

Lastly, the book contains valuable insights for understanding the Chinese internet in a global context. While centering on the specificities of gaming culture in China, it also addresses the connectivity between cultures by employing a comparative lens. Referencing related cultural phenomena in the United States, such as techno-panic and nostalgia, the book illuminates the role that digital media play in inspiring popular imagination around the world.

In conclusion, Mapping Digital Game Culture in China is a welcome addition to the growing field of digital media studies, game studies, and cultural studies. This book would appeal to readers who are interested in youth culture, digital humanities, popular culture, and Asian studies. In addition, policy makers and internet industry practitioners would find the book useful and relevant.