The Digital Game Research Association now has a Chinese branch. A couple of weeks ago the inaugural event of Chinese DiGRA took place at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. This event – the ‘(Chinese) Game Studies Conference’ – attracted scholars with an interest in developing game research on Chinese games and gaming cultures from all over the Chinese-speaking world as well as from Europe and North America. The conference began with a PhD consortium led by Espen Aarseth, involving candidates working in Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China. The two day conference took in papers running the gamut of Chinese game studies, including work on the history of digital games in China, Chinese gaming cultures, and discourses around Chinese games.
The conference’s two keynotes set the tone for the development of Chinese game studies. Espen Aarseth (ITU Copenhagen) reflected on the establishment and development of game studies as an academic field, and Gino Yu (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) gave a fascinating review of the development of digital games in China.
The event marked the launch of Chinese DiGRA, an effort on the one hand to develop DiGRA as a truly international organisation and on the other to give game scholars working in and on China a research network, to support teaching and PhD development in the region, and to disseminate and promote Chinese game scholarship around the world.
We would welcome anyone who is interested to subscribe to the Chinese DiGRA mailing list, which you can do here: http://mail.digra-old-site.local/mailman/listinfo/chinesedigra. Our website (http://www.chinesedigra-old-site.local/) is currently a bit bare but we are working on it and it will soon have information on getting involved in Chinese DiGRA, upcoming events, projects and other news. In the meantime please feel free to contact me with any inquiries or comments on the initiative.
Paul Martin,
Secretary, Chinese DiGRA