Identity, agency, and uncertainty: exploring dynamic mobile gaming practices within the regulatory context of China

This project examines the mobile game Onmyoji and gamers’ practices within the media regulatory context of China. It explores the values and qualities expressed by gamers and relates to issues of processes of identity construction and identification, agency negotiation, and the concept of uncertainty, which underpins gameplay, transmedia gaming, and broader socio-cultural contexts of this project. This project employs Formal Analysis, Digital Diaries, In-depth Interviews, and Discourse Analysis to complement each other. It formally analyses the narrative structure, character representation, and sources of uncertainty within Onmyoji as a game system and then contrasts these with gamers’ comments from digital diaries via a custom WeChat mini-programme. Individual diary-related interviews add depth to these diary entries. These methods maintain constantly iterative in operation to respond to changing research dynamics. My study draws upon narrative identity and identification theory (e.g. Hall,1989, 1994; Yuval-Davis, 2010; Taylor, 2006; Shaw, 2013, 2015) to examine how gamers constructed and expressed identities and how these resonated with characters and narratives in the game. Gamer-game agency negotiation discussed by Malaby (2007), Davis (2012), and Muriel and Crawford (2020) also underpin my exploration of how gamers exercise their agency and interact with the game system within regulated contexts. Finally, arguments around uncertainty by Costikyan (2013), Power et al. (2019), and Kumari et al. (2019) facilitate the investigation of gamers’ attitudes and strategies toward uncertainty in gaming and how uncertainty affected their discourse practices. Building on empirical research, I ultimately argue that video games should be understood as an important cultural form in which gamers actively engage with and influence the in-game value systems; in which un/conscious power relations are lived; and through which uncertainty is always being felt at an embodied level, negotiated at a discursive level, and lived at a political level.