Public opinion towards video gaming have been mixed in China. It has been a sensitive topic among Chinese parents, who fear their children might fall victim to the digital equivalent of "drug addiction." 

Discussions on video games often take place in an archive that Liu Mengfei founded five years ago. The room, occupying only about 40 square meters in the basement of Beijing Normal University (BNU), has received a variety of game makers and researchers during the past several years.

Known as Homo Ludens Archive (HLA), the small room houses a great ambition – to preserve the history of games and gamers in China. Liu named the archive after Homo Ludens, a book written by Dutch historian and linguist Johan Huizinga. Published in 1938, the book highlighted the importance games played in the development of culture and society. 

While preparing for an exhibition about China's history of video games in 2018, Liu realized that the time-tested works and crafts in the gaming industry are part of the digital cultural heritage, which should be preserved before being totally lost.

"Without 'memory,' an industry can neither last long, nor can it really serve the function of conveying culture," said the 37-year-old, who is both a well-trained historian and an avid gamer.

The idea of building a games archive hit Liu. Her friends in the video gaming industry not only donated their collections of game machines and magazines, but also provided a spot in a base of game developers in Hangzhou, east China's Zhejiang Province. Liu moved the archive to Beijing when she started to work as a lecturer at BNU in 2019. From the first issue of China's game magazine Popsoft, to the historic Chinese role-playing game series Sword and Fairy, Liu has all the details about how these "treasures" arrived at the archive.

"Open access to the archive is crucial as it was built on goodwill, with a vast majority of its collections coming as donations," said Liu.

Since 2020, volunteers who help manage the archive, mostly university students, have been digitizing paper materials and making interview videos of Chinese game makers, which are open to the public on HLA's official website.

"Functioning like what China Film Archive is to the film industry, we hope that HLA can serve as an infrastructure in the gaming industry," said Liu.

A powerful cultural medium

Having grown up in China's capital Beijing, video games came early into Liu's life, around the age of five. From military tactics, geography to history, her father used video games to teach her things few other methods could achieve. In her eyes, video games stand as the most powerful medium which could incorporate all media came before it, such as text, image, sound and video.

"I think that if traditional intellectuals ignore video games as a medium of expression, it is very likely that we will lose in most cultural fronts," Liu said.

To gain some ground in the scientific study of video games, Liu embarked on a tour of discovering connections between games, history and culture, leaving footprints in cities of Hong Kong, Chicago and Durham.

Speaking of the reason why she finally decided to do game research at China's Tsinghua University as a PhD student, Liu said the university has the most open-minded history department and she also wanted to keep abreast of the dynamics of the Chinese game industry.

In 2019, Liu organized China's first international conference on game research in Beijing. Since then, Liu has frequently been invited as a game scholar to speak at universities and conferences, offering her perspective of understanding the new medium of expression.

Shaping the future

As the cohort of underage gamers balloons, the battle to limit their gaming exposure intensified in China. The voice for controlling video games became louder after the World Health Organization listed gaming disorder as a disease in 2019.

In 2021, China introduced the "strictest-ever" regulations targeting online gaming, under which minors can only play for three hours every week.

Liu pointed out that most popular games that minors currently play are not developed for them, which thus exposing them to trap-like mechanisms that lure them to spend money and get them hooked.

"Minors shouldn't be playing these kinds of games. I am in favor of measures to limit their access to such games," said Liu, noting that minors also need to be given more guidance and be equipped with skills to use video games as a powerful tool.

In April, Liu held activities in Dandelion School in Beijing, introducing the history of games, the game literacy that players should have, and how games can assist in teaching activities. Game literacy, she said, includes both the ability to distinguish good and bad games, and the sense of responsibility in managing playtime.

The students, around age ten, were very excited about the topic. However, most teachers remained skeptical about the potential of video games in school education. They knew too well how video games eat away their students' free time.

To help minors find appropriate games, Liu said, parents and schools can recommend good games that are verified through time, just like how they recommend reading lists of good books.

"I think it's very important for minors to know that we are on their side when it comes to playing video games," she said. "Otherwise, parents or teachers can't provide assistance in time when something negative happens to the minors in the game."

China's game industry also need to take both social responsibility and culture into account, she noted, adding that Chinese gamers are looking forward to high-quality games that express Chinese culture.

(Cover: Liu Mengfei sits on a sofa in the Homo Ludens Archive, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, May 4, 2023. /CGTN)

Written by Du Junzhi

Video edited by Yang Yiren

Video shot by Zhang Hengrui, Zhong Xia

Cover designed by Li Yueyun