Genshin Impact: Cultural hybridisation, localisation and contra-flow of cultural production in China's open-world role-playing game

Abstract

This paper investigates how Genshin Impact, China's most successful global game export, employs cultural hybridisation and localisation to challenge the longstanding US - Japanese dominance of the global games industry. Drawing on a multi-method qualitative framework—including participant observation, textual analysis, and thematic analysis of game reviews and social media discourse—the study examines both the pre- localisation cultural hybridity embedded in the Chinese version and the post-localisation reception of the English-language release. Findings show that miHoYo strategically fuses Chinese cultural motifs with Japanese anime aesthetics, global mythologies, and hybrid monetisation models to support a cultural and economic contra-flow. However, localisation controversies related to race, cultural representation, and translation reveal tensions between commercial ambition and cultural sensitivity. The paper contributes to DiGRA scholarship by offering an empirically grounded account of how transnational game development practices, and their contested receptions, shape emerging digital cultural flows from the Global South.