Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacifi c Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture 1. Cyberpop Digital Lifestyles and Commodity Culture Sidney Eve Matrix 2. The Internet in China Cyberspace and Civil Society Zixue Tai 3. Racing Cyberculture Minoritarian Art and Cultural Politics on the Internet Christopher L. McGahan 4. Decoding Liberation The Promise of Free and Open Source Software Samir Chopra and Scott D. Dexter 5. Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacifi c Edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan Gaming Cultures and Place in Asia-Pacifi c Edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan New York London First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade- marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Gaming cultures and place in Asia-Pacific / edited by Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan. p. cm. — (Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture ; 5) Includes index. 1. Computer games—Social aspects—Pacific Area. I. Hjorth, Larissa. II. Chan, Dean. GV1469.17.S63G36 2009 306.4'87—dc22 2008054181 ISBN 0-203-87595-8 Master e-book ISBN ISBN10: 0-415-99627-9 (hbk) ISBN10: 0-203-87595-8 (ebk) ISBN13: 978-0-415-99627-3 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-87595-7 (ebk) Photograph by David Prater Contents List of Figures xi List of Tables xiii Acknowledgments xv 1 Locating the Game: Gaming Cultures in/and the Asia-Pacifi c 1 LARISSA HJORTH AND DEAN CHAN PART I Industries 2 The Politics of Online Gaming 19 DAL YONG JIN AND FLORENCE CHEE 3 Gaming Nation: The Australian Game Development Industry 39 SAM HINTON 4 The Dynamics of New Media Globalization in Asia: A Comparative Study of the Online Gaming Industries in South Korea and Singapore 58 PEICHI CHUNG PART II Localities 5 Consuming and Localizing Japanese Combat Games in Hong Kong 83 BENJAMIN WAI-MING NG viii Contents 6 The “Bang” Where Korean Online Gaming Began: The Culture and Business of the PC bang in Korea 102 JUN-SOK HUHH 7 Lan Gaming Groups: Snapshots from an Australasian Case Study, 1999–2008 117 MELANIE SWALWELL PART III Genres and New Rubrics 8 Beyond the “Great Firewall”: The Case of In-game Protests in China 141 DEAN CHAN 9 Pokémon 151: Complicating kawaii 158 DAVID SURMAN 10 Watching StarCraft, Strategy and South Korea 179 CHRISTIAN MCCREA 11 The Re-presentation of Country as Virtual Artifact in Australian Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Using a Game Engine 194 THEODOR G. WYELD, BRETT LEAVY, AND PATRICK CROGAN 12 Sticky Games and Hybrid Worlds: A Post-Phenomenology of Mobile Phones, Mobile Gaming and the iPhone 213 INGRID RICHARDSON PART IV Players, Playing, and Virtual Communities 13 Managing Risks in Online Game Worlds: Networking Strategies Among Taiwanese Adolescent Players 237 HOLIN LIN AND CHUEN-TSAI SUN Contents ix 14 Games of Gender: A Case Study on Females Who Play Games in Seoul, South Korea 251 LARISSA HJORTH, BORA NA, AND JUN-SOK HUHH 15 Playing the Gender Game: The Performance of Japan, Gender and Gaming via Melbourne Female Cosplayers 273 LARISSA HJORTH Contributors 289 Index 293 Figures 3.1 Origins of Australian game developers. 41 3.2 Australian game development: Platform by number of titles, 1985–2008. 46 4.1 History of Korea online games. 63 5.1 Supergod Z: Cyber Weapon borrows the main characters from SF2. 85 5.2 Game players are trying SF4 with great interest. 86 5.3 Even now, some game centers in Hong Kong highlight KOF. 88 5.4 Challenging and competing with strangers in KOF is common. 91 5.5 Ryu creates a new fi st tactic in memory of Chun Li in the Hong Kong comic, Street Fighter 3 95 5.6 Fighting in the famous tourist spot, Golden Bauhinia Square, located in front of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. 97 11.1 Western Desert (Papunya) sand painting ceremony. 197 11.2 Vincent Serico painting embedded in DSL game interface and Country, near Carnarvon Gorge, South- West Queensland, Australia. 207 11.3 Aboriginal rock art at Mt. Moffatt, in the Carnarvon Gorge National Park, Queensland Australia. Camp fi res and tools dating back 19,400 years have been recorded here. 208 xii Figures 14.1 a and b Some examples of PC bangs in Shinchon area. 258 14.2 a and b The new phenomenon of PC “love” bangs in which couples date further legitimates the role of PC bang as a social space for heterosexual romance. 259 Tables 3.1 Acquisitions of Australian Developers 47 4.2 The Global Markets of Top Tier South Korean Online Game Companies 70 5.1 Cantonese Jargons Created or Adopted by SF and KOF Players in Hong Kong 90 5.2 Rules Set by the Players of Japanese Combat Games in Hong Kong 92 6.1 Trend of Game Developers and Publishers in Korea 1999–2004 105 6.2 Trend of PC Bang and Broadband Subscription in Korea 1998–2005 105 6.3 Revenue Profi le of NCsoft by Business Sector 2000–2004 111 14.1 The Percentage of Female Players in Mainstream Games 256 14.2 Game Industry Employment Statistics in 2007 257 Acknowledgments Dean would like to acknowledge the School of Communications and Arts, and the Faculty of Education and Arts, Edith Cowan University, for offer- ing him essential time out from teaching in the form of a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship between 2004 and 2007, which enabled him to get started on all things ludological. Larissa would like to acknowledge the support of the RMIT Univer- sity Games Programs, the CICC (Communication Interface and Culture Content) research group and the GRC (Games Research Centre) at Yonsei University for her fellowship in 2007. She would also like to thank the ARC Cultural Research Network and all the cosplayers and female gamers that opened up their hearts, computers and tactics of game play in the name of research. The editors would like to thank all the authors as well as a special thanks to Emma-Kate Dowdell for providing invaluable editorial assistance. 1 Locating the Game Gaming Cultures in/and the Asia-Pacifi c Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan The Asia-Pacifi c region is a geo-political and economic construct. Spanning East and South East Asia as well as countries in the southern Pacifi c Ocean and Pacifi c Rim, including Australia and New Zealand, the collectivizing of such disparate nations and cultures perhaps only largely makes sense as a post-World War II political and economic imaginary, as opposed to a purely geographic cartography. Yet, at the same time, the magnitudes of thinking through what Jen Webb characterizes as “the Asia-Pacifi c effect” is essential. Although created “in language by . national and geopolitical entities . there is an effect of Asia-Pacifi c which allows us to talk about it as a Real thing.”1 Webb argues that the space for agency created by the Asia-Pacifi c effect enables regional cultural producers and organizations to represent themselves, both individually and collectively, “rather than be represented by old colonialist patterns and practices” and they can thereby “claim a legitimated voice . and challenge the hegemony of ‘Eurameri- can’ narratives, values and aesthetics.”2 The Asia-Pacifi c effect provides a valid polemical and pedagogical framework to assess the production, circulation and consumption of gam- ing within the region. Specifi cally, we propose that any nuanced study of Asia-Pacifi c game cultures has the capacity to also disrupt and serve as a critique of the residual Techno-Orientalism3 in many Western approaches to understanding the region’s historical and contemporary prowess in post- industrial discourses such as gaming. With sites such as Tokyo fully placed in the global gaming imaginary and with locations such as Melbourne boasting one of the most active indepen- dent gaming scenes, the Asia-Pacifi c provides an exemplary case study on one of the most buoyant and yet culturally divergent regions in the world. Our aim in locating this study in the region is two-fold: fi rstly, to situate the depth and diversity of games culture (which we broadly defi ne to include games, game play, and gaming communities) in this region; and secondly, to consider how these gaming cultures in turn provide a lens to view and exam- ine salient geo-political and socio-cultural developments within the region. Such an approach to the study of gaming cultures provides acuity into the region’s reshaping in the imagery of global popular cultures. As Brian 2 Larissa Hjorth and Dean Chan Sutton-Smith observes, gaming cultures are social cultures, thus through the games we play we can learn much about the localized notions of play and community.4 The study of gaming cultures not only allows readers to gain new approaches to the region’s increasingly technological and eco- nomic power and how this has translated into global soft power, but also the various contested and transnational gaming communities in the region.