Video Games as Dating Platforms: Exploring Digital Intimacies through a Chinese Online Dancing Video Game

In the relatively young field of new media studies, both video games and online dating platforms are identified as being important and popular genres of digital products, which are often discussed separately. This article argues that these two genres of digital products are not so much separate but entangled elements of the same processes of technological shifts in media industry, development of people's online leisure activities, and the convergence of digital genres. To provide empirical evidence, this article examines a Chinese dancing video game, QQ Dazzling Dance (QQ Xuan Wu), which creatively juxtaposes these two genres of participatory digital culture and recognizes the analytical and critical values in doing so.