Micro-Empowerment:Cultural Consumption And Cultural Production Of Online Game Players

This research is based on a case study about the players of JIANXIAQINGYUANIII, a martial-arts online game whose players’cultural consumption and production is very active. The research uses online ethnography which consists of online participatory observation and in-depth interview to focus on the community interaction and emotional experience, cultural consumption and production, and the resistance and empowerment of players in the sub-cultural practice of online games.The research argues:as the digital natives, online game players enter the virtual public-sphere which is constructed by online games freely and conduct social interaction which may be limited in actual life. Online games also provides players with emotional experience with practical utility:the online game is not only a kind of pastime, but also an excessive entertainment which offers excessive pleasure; the "flow’’belongingness of role-playing realizes the self-construction and self-identity of player in virtual social space; the emotional support from virtual community of online games is an important motivation to begin and continue an online game life.The cultural consumption activity in online games is a significant part of style performances of virtual subculture group of online games. Players reconstruct social identity and stratum in symbol consumption, realize symbolic resistance and obtain a kind of resistant pleasure.As incomplete "producerly text", online games set aside space for players’ significance production and culture creation. The subculture group of online games realizes technological empowerment and indigenous empowerment with the help of the acquisition of new technology and the practice of cultural production and promotion, so that they are able to change cultural status of this sub-cultural group.The carnival square of online games creates an E-topia where the fantasy of resistance can be practiced. The highly specialized cultural production of online game players makes their identity change between "text poachers" and "text watchers", and they achieve cultural empowerment in the outside space of culture industry. The cultural production of players provides them with productive pleasure, and the productive resistance against social power class increase the sense of empowerment of powerless youth groups. Then they could expand their social cultural space and resist the domination of cultural hegemony.The fantasy practice, cultural consumption and production of online game players give online game sub-cultural groups a kind of micro-power which has resistant significance and is different from macro-politics.