Chinese Cultivation Games and the Cosmotechnics

This paper examines Chinese cultivation games, a fantasy genre drawn from Daoist practice, alchemy, and traditional Chinese mythology in which players pursue supernatural powers and immortality through martial and mystical arts. It traces the genre's roots to cultivation novels, which gained popularity in the Republic of China period and were later revived online in the 2000s under the influence of Western fantasy such as Tolkien and Rowling. The authors argue that the genre's religious and political origins, shaped by state restrictions on practices like qigong, are largely absent from mainstream cultivation games, which are often criticized as superficial reskins of Western RPG mechanics.

The central case study is Project Search, an online multiplayer visual novel set in Linhai, Zhejiang Province, developed by a government-supported cultural group in collaboration with the China Academy of Art. The development process combined site analysis, meetings with local Daoist cultivators, cultivation novel writing, 3D scanning of the old town, and 3D object design. The authors also report ethnographic fieldwork in Daoist temples and local art communities, which informed the game's design decisions.

Analytically, the paper uses the concept of cosmotechnics, which unifies cosmic and moral orders through technical activity, to argue that Chinese cultivation games cannot be evaluated straightforwardly against Western game studies frameworks because of differences in epistemology and philosophy. Project Search embodies this through non-normative design features such as non-collision, mistiness, incompleteness, imperfection, and picturesqueness, which the authors frame as a retrofuturist alternative to singular narratives of technological progress. The authors conclude that prioritizing affective and cultural immersion over linear progression and precise mechanics demonstrates the value of cosmotechnics in game design.