Conclusion: Mainstreaming and Marginalizing Digital Games

Abstract

The conclusion weaves the threads of the preceding chapters’ arguments together, emphasizing the diverse ways digital leisure culture enables young people to confront or escape from the challenges of contemporary urban life, both its successes and, more importantly, its failures. In particular, the concluding chapter considers the larger political implications and limitations of affective attachments to digital games and media, both within China and beyond. As games become more mainstream, and the marginalization felt by gamers bleeds into a general sense of dissatisfaction with China’s increasingly stratified society of winners and losers, have digital media also lost some of their efficacy as political tools? In answering this question, this chapter probes the dividing line between digital activities that push for change and those may make individuals more complacent in their everyday conditions.