Avatar-based affective narratives in Chinese role-playing games: Genshin Impact and Black Myth: Wukong
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines how avatar-based affective narrative generates meaning in contemporary Chinese RPGs, using Genshin Impact and Black Myth: Wukong as case studies. Existing research on RPG narrative has often focused on player choice, branching structures, decision points, and consequential feedback. Building on this choice–consequence path, the article proposes an accumulative mode of avatar-based affective narrative and explains it through a four-layer framework: avatarial entry, avatarial translation, affective narrative sedimentation, and Yijing -oriented meaning-making. Within this framework, the avatar functions as an affective narrative mediator. It anchors a possible experiential position for the player, structures avatar-character encounters as player-borne situations, and shows how affective intensity may build through repeated exposure, processual recurrence, and ego-investment. Genshin Impact organizes affective experience through a relational network centered on the Traveler , producing an extensive world shaped by return, attachment, and memory. Black Myth: Wukong organizes affective experience through trial-based exposure centered on the Destined One , producing an intensive world shaped by combat, failure, endurance, and mythic pursuit. By connecting avatar theory, affective narrative, and Yijing -oriented aesthetics, the article shows that RPG meaning can emerge from accumulated avatarial experience and take shape as a culturally resonant felt world.
Authors: Rui Zhou, Yiming Huang, Qiaohe Zhang
Institutions: Shanghai Theatre Academy, Peking University
Language: English
Topic: Digital Games and Media
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,890
OpenAlex ID: W7204266166
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: