Virtual-World Unrest and the Gamer Rights Protection Movement in China

This essay documents and analyzes the activism of online gamers in the PRC.  In contrast to gamers elsewhere, Chinese gamers have since 2003 been carrying out numerous forms of real-world and online protests, litigations, petitions, and insurgencies in large scale and with high frequency.  This activism may be seen as an incipient ‘gamer rights protection’ (wanjia weiquan) movement of China.  Based on online data of major virtual-world unrests in the past five years, I explore: 1) what is causing Chinese gamers to protest so vigorously and frequently? 2) what are the tactics, frames, resources, organizational basis, and political background that have enabled gamers to carry out activism?  I find that game corporations’ profit imperatives have led them to rule virtual-worlds in authoritarian, ruthless, and corrupt ways that strangely parallel the worst excesses of local governments, and that gamers utilize online resources as well as ally with the game media, sympathetic government bureaus, and legal professionals to fight for their cause.

For Slideshow of Presentation Click Here http://www.slideshare.net/CIRC/chewmattewthe-gamer-rights-protection-movement-in-china-2