This week’s reading were by far the most difficult we have had to read thus far. Wei Yao’s Disquisition on Boyi was the most difficult for me to understand however that was most likely because it, like all of the other reading, was talking about a culture that I haven’t ever really understood and the way that the writing intermixed Chinese characters threw me off at first and made it hard to follow. What I got out of it in the end, along with other readings, was that as games provide an incredible opportunity for people to express themselves depending on what game they play and that, something that we have discussed previously, cultures change games but games can also change cultures.
Self-expression in games is prevalent in many different ways including what game you’re playing (i.e. physical, drinking, strategy etc.) why you are playing it (for competitive reasons or just to relax) and how you are playing it (aggressively, defensively, strategically). For example I believe that it was in The Art of Black and White where a political man in exile used to watch his son and some other local man play weiqi frequently and this expresses himself as a fan of strategic games (which I believe weiqi is) who also is just watching the game for leisurely reasons. This is a form of self-expression where he isn’t even playing the game, he just acts as a bystander. I feel as though self-expression is a lot more prevalent in modern video games though especially in Super Smash Bros. Melee where you choose a different character but also each person plays that character differently. An easy example is Marth who can be played really defensively or aggressively to relative success but a few people’s Marth’s are considered really pretty when they are playing due to how they move around and follow up certain moves. Others aren’t ugly but when you watch them play you can tell that they aren’t a player who is having fun, they tend to be playing more to win or overly aggressively.
The image that got my attention was from the Art of Contest-Weiqi, The Double Screen, Emperor Li Jing Watching his brothers play Weiqi. This image got my attention since the Emperor is only watching his brothers play but in the description of the image they say that many Emperors were ”Weiqi aficionados” so I assume that an Emperor would want to be portrayed as winning a game as opposed to just watching a game. This actually kinda ties into the self-expression though since Emperor Li Jing was only an observer in a painting that he no doubt allowed to be painted tells us what kind of Emperor he wanted to be seen as.