forthcoming
Transnational Galatea: Racializing Anime-Esque Character Design in Genshin Impact
Book Chapter – [Forthcoming]
Author: Yasheng She.
Editors: TreaAndrea M. Russworm and Soraya Murray
Publisher: Duke University Press
Abstract: The myth of Galatea tells a story about a sculptor named Pygmalion, who falls in love with his creation. Pygmalion names the statue Galatea, which means “she who is milk white.” Touched by his love, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, brings Galatea to life and unites the couple in a marriage. Though Aphrodite testifies to his love, how could Pygmalion love a statue who cannot speak? Galatea’s ivory body is an empty set on which the artist projects his desires. I borrow the tale of Galatea to frame the anime character design as a transnational Galatea, whose racially empty body allows any entity to self-represent in front of the global audience and ask what the author sees when they gaze upon this body.
published
Examining the Interplay between Roleplay and Hybridity through Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game.
Journal Article
Authors: Laijana Braun, Mirek Stolee, Yasheng She, and Devi Acharya.
Publisher: PAIDIA
Abstract: This paper proposes a theoretical framework called “distance levels” for analyzing the shifting relationships between players and in-game characters in board games. It builds on Britta Nietzel’s Points of Action, used initially to examine digital avatars, and Erving Goffman’s concept of role distance. Using the board game Detective: A Modern Crime Board Game as a case study, we show how hybridity in board games creates differences in distance levels and how changes between these levels are most visible in analog-digital hybrid games. Distance levels are helpful for scholars and critics aiming to analyze board games and for board game designers seeking to manipulate players’ distance from in-game characters.
Designing the Global Body: Japan’s Postwar Modernity in Death Stranding
Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us
Book Chapter – 2024
Author: Yasheng She.
Editors: Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle
Publisher: Duke University Press
Abstract: Chapter 5 expands on the dissonance between Asian labors and Asian bodies through a close reading of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding (2019), a game produced by Japanese developers but with a mostly white cast and set in a fictional United States. This close reading sheds light on the game’s racial double speaks, where those who are familiar with the context can easily spot the hidden Japanese discourse and find some level of catharsis, while others can enjoy the game for its more universal and hopeful message about finding comfort in unity when facing future precarity. The chapter also argues that this practice of embodying and conveying Asian discourse stunts the progress of direct representations.
Finding the Post-Postwar Japan in Death Stranding’s Sublime Ruins
Conference Paper – 2023
Author: Yasheng She
Publisher: DiGRA International Conference 2023
Abstract: This paper uses the sublime as an aesthetic condition and a political apparatus to locate echoes of Japan’s post-postwar modernity reverberating throughout Death Stranding‘s story about unifying the postapocalyptic United States and struggling against the end of the world. It will first establish qualities of the sublime and explore how the game stages the sublime through its ruins and encounters. It then considers the political affordance of the sublime, namely its potency in disrupting official narratives, by exploring how the game meditates on themes intimately linked to Japan’s post-postwar modernity, a blend between reflections on Japan’s wartime trauma and anxieties towards future precarity. Closely reading encounters with the sublime in Death Stranding, this paper dwells on the ruins’ frightful pleasure and dreadful allure and frames the sublime as a visual and political framework.
The Death of Aerith: Traumatic Femininity and Japan’s Postwar Modernity
The World of Final Fantasy VII Essays on the Game and Its Legacy
Book Chapter – 2023
Author: Yasheng She
Editors: Jason C. Cash and Craig T. Olsen
Publisher: McFarland
Abstract: This paper frames femininity as a medium for trauma narrative while thinking through the fictional death of Aerith Gainsborough in the Japanese video game Final Fantasy VII. She symbolizes a loss of innocence for both the male protagonist and the assumed male audience. Upon closer examination, it is clear the game positions Aerith in both the nostalgic past and the ideal future. As one of the last of the Ancients, Aerith symbolizes an ideal past to which there is no return; with her power to grow flowers on barren land, she promises an ideal future. Furthermore, as the bearer and the consequence of the ersatz phallic exercise between the male protagonist and his male foil, Aerith’s death is emblematic of not only the culture industry’s patriarchal subconscious but also issues around Japan’s global identity.
What is Lost Moving from “Shanzhai” to Global: On the Video Game Genshin Impact
Short Essay – 2022
Author: Yasheng She
Publisher: Association for Chinese Animation Studies (ACAS)
Abstract: What does it take to transcend a national border to be globally recognized, and what are the responsibilities of being on the global stage? I will attempt to answer these two questions in my analysis of three incidents surrounding the open-world roleplaying game Genshin Impact (2020). While video game is distinct from animation, it relies on animation to visualize and communicate the system to the player. Beyond the technical aspects of animation, video games can leverage animation as a cultural currency to reach a broader audience. Genshin takes advantage of the Japanese animation style, or the anime-esque style, to create its global identity and elevate Chinese cultural elements to the global stage.
Argument Box
Conference Paper – 2021
Author: Al Jammaz, Rehaf, Yasheng She, and Michael Mateas
Publisher: Experimental AI in Games 2021 Workshop
Abstract: Games currently feature simple models of morality and moral reasoning. These typically take the form of a simple binary opposition between good and evil, in which game actions are sorted into these categories, and reputation systems that track the reputation of players (and sometimes NPCs) with in-game factions based on the actions taken. This paper presents a more sophisticated model of moral reasoning based on Lakoff’s metaphorical family models: the strict father and nurturant parent morality. This model is used in the experimental prototype Argument Box (AB), a social argument simulator where the player argues with clients visiting the shop. This paper presents the current architecture, discussing its technical details.
A Cure for Woundless Pain: Consumption of Innocence in Japanese Idol Culture
Journal of Asian Pacific Communication 33(1)
Journal Article – 2021
Author: Yasheng She
Editors: Kikuko Omori and Hiroshi Ota
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Abstract: As a cultural construct, the idol is a consumer product created to “heal” in the age of exhaustion. Layering a “guardian” aspect onto Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze,” this paper contextualizes the commodification and consumption of innocence. This paper brings the documentary Tokyo Idols (2017) and the animated film Perfect Blue (1997) into a conversation to theorize how femininity is constructed and commodified in Japan’s pop idol industry. The idol culture consumes innocence only to create more trauma for women by stressing the arbitrary importance of innocence and sacrificing female agency in the process.
Melancholic Vortex and Postwar Pacifism in NieR: Automata
REPLAYING JAPAN 2
Journal Article – 2020
Author: Yasheng She
Publisher: 立命館大学ゲーム研究センター Ritsumeikan Center for Game Studies
Abstract: The 2017 videogame NieR: Automata introduces philosophies into its gameplay through its extensive references to philosophers such as Blaise Pascal, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. What makes Automata distinctive is, however, its tactics of embodying philosophies. Automata “recaptures” gameplay elements such as gameplay loops, menu interfaces, and save files to recruit the player into the in-game discourse. Automata is a game about humanity told in a posthuman fashion. It is, therefore, imperative to note that Automata’s posthuman setting is allegorical to Japan’s postwar double consciousness.
Working Through Weightlessness in Postwar Japanese Tactical Wargames
Conference Paper – 2020
Author: Yasheng She
Publisher: DiGRA International Conference 2020
Abstract: The pleasure of wargame relies on faithful embodiments of military history. Scenario-based tactical wargames balance realism against playability. That said, wargame realism claims fidelity only to the form of the war, not its discourse. It is, therefore, significant to interrogate different approaches to realism in order to understand the cultural implications of wargames. This paper examines the embodiments and descriptions of the Pacific War in both U.S. and Japanese wargames. Through close readings of War in the Pacific (1978) by Simulations Publications, Inc. and Battle of Pearl Harbor (1984) by Epoch, this paper explores how the board wargame medium operates as a space for coping with traumatic past, materialization of history, and sublimation of forbidden colonial desire.