(Re)Play the Beginning of the End: 1988 as Prequel to Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong

This study examines 1988, a 2015 alternative history game by Hong Kong designer Cheng Lap, as a form of digital activism in the aftermath of Hong Kong's 2014 Umbrella Movement. Set a decade before the 1997 handover to China, the game places a teenage immigrant from mainland China in a reimagined Hong Kong where players confront a hegemonic alliance of the Chinese Communist Party and real estate interests. The author argues that the game functions both as a cultural artifact and as the seed of an engaged social community, and that it actively constructs and circulates "Hong Kong local" identity as an emerging nationality within a highly politicized society.

The analysis proceeds through a close reading of the game's textual, visual, and level-design elements, combined with the author's own gameplay experience and the broadcast play of Hong Kong YouTubers. It is further supported by a discourse analysis of user-generated conversation on the game's Facebook page and official website forum, as well as an examination of how the development team incorporated player suggestions and contributed resources into subsequent updates. This multi-layered approach allows the study to distinguish two dimensions of "Hong Kongness": the fictional, richly detailed Hong Kong constructed within the game, and the online community that treats playing and discussing the game as a progressive political act.

The central finding is that 1988 captures the anxieties and aspirations of Hong Kong youth toward past, present, and future through the affordances of alternative history. By counterfactually rewriting the city's golden age, the game offers a space where political imagination can be rehearsed, and where the act of play itself becomes a means of asserting civic belonging. The author concludes that video games, and alternative history in particular, constitute an overlooked yet significant vehicle for digital activism, one that operates effectively in private spheres where direct political expression is increasingly constrained.