Introduction

This chapter serves to introduce The Chinese Video Game Industry, a book intended to help outline and analyze the largest video game economy in the world. The chapter suggests seven spheres of influence that operate as principal industrial forces—state power, the nature of the development model, overall size, mobile gaming, exports, traditional cultural resources, and the esports market—and summarizes the ways in which the book’s contributors probe the effects of policy, explore the exigencies of economics, and analyze the appetites of players and producers to illustrate the complexity and depth of the Chinese video game industry.