Reconstructing History and Culture in Game Discourse: A Linguistic Analysis of Heroic Stories in Honor of Kings

History, Culture, and Game Discourse

History is an interpretation rather than a fixed record (Kappell and Elliot, 2013). It is the “curated representation of the past,” which is portrayed by historians through the selection of sources (McCall, 2020). It implies the subjectivity of history and the necessity of sources to interpret history. While written documents and speech are dominant forms of communication for representing history, they are not the only media to communicate the past (McCall, 2020). Games and digital media are becoming significant modes of exposure to present past, and they borrow ceaselessly from history, myths, and culture to constitute themselves, while influencing our relationship with the past (Hong, 2015; Huyssen, 2001). As Schut (2007) has argued, digital games can immerse gamers in history, bringing people to experience history visually and aurally, which has made it an ideal medium in building historical knowledge. Digital games, if used properly, can be effective educational tools. It is suggested that good digital games are able to “make meanings situated, to help create motivated, tailored, and incremental discoveries, and to encourage social sharing of knowledge, among other things” (Schut, 2007; Gee, 2003). The impact of digital games is a rather complicated question, which requires a critical view of their strengths and limitations.

Games have been rising to a culturally significant position in modern society (Hong, 2015). The emergent gaming culture is redefining the complex relationship among games, players, and developer (Pearce, 2009; Taylor, 2006). Historical game designers make meaning out of the past and their produced histories are referential evidence of the past (Chapman, 2016). Designing games requires not only imagination but also reconstruction/reappropriation of the past. Content is one main aspect in reconstruction, alongside with form and system (Gazzard and Peacock, 2011). The reconstruction at micro level is associated with the textual changes in the game stories (O’Hagan and Mangiron, 2013), while this micro-level research is still underexplored. Although rewriting game stories can be laborious, it is highly profitable (Dong and Mangiron, 2018) since the cultural and historical adaptation of games have positive influence on users’ game-playing experience and habitual acceptance.

While People’s Daily has used the term “content” not in a problematic way, it seems too ambiguous as “content” is a complicated and multifaceted concept. Game content involves many aspects such as storyline, music, colors, mechanics, and character design (Dong and Mangiron, 2018). So far, although HoK has become a hot social phenomenon and has achieved great success with its massive number of users, there has been very few academic research related to HoK. One particular study by He and Li (2020) has empirically explored whether HoK has affected players’ attitudes and understandings about historical figures through questionaries for 312 HoK players, claiming the impact on historical cognition is not significant. The methodological design, however, is questionable as it only considers players’ individual perceptions, while there is no in-depth analysis of the historical content in the game.

Language is the medium of communication between games and players, as well as the foundation of how in-game texts make meanings and reconstruct meanings. However, the discourse semantic dimension of game stories has been rarely examined in game studies. Therefore, this study conducts a micro-level analysis of the heroic stories reconstructed in HoK from a linguistic perspective. In order to seek for a balanced evaluation on the strengths and weaknesses associated with the construction and reconstruction of history and culture in HoK, this study scrutinizes the ideational and interpersonal meanings that have been reconstructed in HoK heroic stories through discourse semantic tools, including activities (events), circumstantial elements (space and time), attitudes, and social relationships among characters. Furthermore, based on the comparative analysis, it discusses the contextual factors and underlying motives that have brought about the reconstruction in game stories, and provides pertinent suggestions on future reconstructions in game discourse.

Theoretical Framework

Language is the fundamental medium in constructing and reconstructing meanings. To explore what have been reconstructed in heroic stories of game characters as well as the underlying motives, elucidation of the relation between language (discourse) and its social context is essentially required. Systemic Functional Linguistic (henceforth SFL) attaches great significance to the understanding of language and context. “Language as social semiotic” (Halliday, 1978) has demonstrated that language is embedded in social context, or, how meaning-making practices are strongly connected with social context. Eggins (2004) has characterized language use as “functional, semantic, contextual, and semiotic”. In SFL, language is a stratified system which comprises discourse semantics, lexicogrammar, and phonology. The relationship among the three strata is called realization, where discourse semantics that is, the highest stratum in the linguistic system is realized by the middle stratum lexicogrammar, which is further realized by the lowest stratum phonology.

Discourse semantics is the interface between language and context. Any texts simultaneously realize three strands of meanings—ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Ideational meaning is concerned with the representation of experience; interpersonal meaning deals with the enactments of social relationships; textual meaning is the organization of representations and enactments (Martin and Rose, 2007). This study particularly focuses on the ideational and interpersonal reconstruction of heroic stories in game discourse.

The ideation system at the discourse semantic level provides resources for analyzing participants, activity, and attendant circumstantial elements such as space and time. It offers the present study a framework for identifying what aspects have been reconstructed in heroic stories and what have been maintained from history, which further reveals the discourse patterns of game stories and how the trade-off between accuracy and creativity in constructing experiences might affect gamers’ historical view and cultural identity.

Systemic functional linguists have approached interpersonal meanings at discourse semantic level under the heading of appraisal (Martin and White, 2005; Martin and Rose, 2007). Appraisal is concerned with “the attitudes that are negotiated in a text, the strength of the feelings involved and the ways in which values are sourced, and readers aligned” (Martin and Rose, 2007, p. 25). Within the appraisal system, attitude involves three semantic regions: affect (the expression of emotion), judgement (the evaluation of human behavior), and appreciation (the evaluation of phenomena).

The comparison between HoK heroic stories and historical materials draws particularly on the systemic functional interpretation of ideation and appraisal at the discourse semantic level. The appraisal system is mainly concerned with the type of attitude embedded in texts, that is, positive or negative evaluation of things, people, and phenomenon. Evaluation is a crucial part of history discourse since historians often make evaluations on historical figures and historical events and this is often how future generations interpret the key characteristics of a historical figure. Appraisal analysis of heroic stories allows us to know whether game storywriters have made dissimilar evaluations on historical figures and how it might shape gamers’ evaluation on historical figures. Based on a comparative analysis of heroic stories and historical materials, the ensuing sections aims to identify the “changed” and “unchanged” representation and evaluation, exploring the contextual demands on the reconstruction of historical figures in game discourse.

Classification of Game Characters in HoK

As an MOBA game, the core game pattern of HoK is for gamers to choose a game character with specific abilities and enter the battlefield. Since the release of HoK in 2015, it has designed 104 game characters (also called “heroes”). The majority of game characters in HoK are originated from historical figures, mythological figures, and protagonist in literary works. In other words, they have respective prototype figures, while the rest of them are originally created by TiMi Studios. Specifically, the choices of HoK game characters largely derive from Chinese historical figures. Although it brings in a few western historical figures, it accounts for a very small proportion, and there are only 16 characters originated from mythological and literary works in total. Figure 1 shows the general composition of game characters in HoK and the proportion of Chinese and western historical figures.OPEN IN VIEWER

It can be seen that the choice of prototype characters is deeply rooted in Chinese history and culture, and it covers a wide range of classification such as famous Chinese warriors, emperors, thinkers, poets, and talented women. It not only adds familiarity for gamers but also creates emotional connection with the game. The game developer has written an exclusive heroic story for every character, which can be accessed through the official website of HoK and in-game interface.

Data Description

This study compares HoK heroic stories with historical information in terms of the experiences of historical figures and evaluations from historians and mainstream contemporary interpretation. Thus, the data used in this study involves heroic stories (written texts) collected from the HoK official website and historical materials drawn from primary sources such as ancient poems and annals, historiographical works including narratives and interpretations written by historians, and public history materials such as website articles produced for non-academic audience. As history is subjective interpretation, it is necessary to note that the terms used in this paper, “accurate” and “accuracy”, refer to mainstream-accepted information on Chinese history.

The database of our study is a collection of 104 heroic stories in HoK. However, due to the inter-similarities of the discourse patterns in reconstructing heroic stories, as well as the constraints of space, four heroic stories have been selected for a close and detailed examination and discussion. They include the heroic stories for Li Bai, Wu Zetian, Lian Po, and Lao Fuzi (Confucius). Furthermore, since it is unrealistic for a text to provide exhaustive accounts of and evaluations on a historical figure, our approach is to collect information from a variety of sources. In addition to academic interpretation of the Chinese past, the study compares the historical facts and evaluations presented by HoK with mainstream contemporary interpretation about the Chinese past (see this type of analysis in Kline, 2014; Houghton, 2021) which is a crucial way to form historical view and cultural memory.

A scrutinization of the data reveals that the heroic stories of game characters significantly reconstruct the activities/experiences of historical figures, largely maintained spatial circumstances in historical materials, and partly fabricated social relationships among characters and twisted timeline, while keeping the core judgements of historical figures unchanged in the reconstruction of game characters. The subsequent analysis focuses on how the ideational experiences of prototype figures in history have been reconstructed and how attitude and social relationships are presented in heroic stories.

Reconstructing Ideational Experience

Ideation is one of the key resources for a text to construct meaning and construe experience. It is concerned with the content of a discourse, which in particular, focusing on its specific activities and how participants involved in these activities are described and classified (Martin and Rose, 2007). Halliday (1994) suggests that the construal of experience is realized by various types of processes (e.g., happening, doing, sensing, and being), and these processes are organized as configurations of elements involving people and locations. From a discourse semantic perspective, the core elements in the model of experience are person/thing and process, that is, who did what; and the peripheral elements in an activity are circumstances including spatial locations (places) and temporal locations (time), that is, when and where did an activity happen. Table 1 illustrates activity analysis of a typical expression in history discourse: In 690 AD, Wu Zetian ascended the throne at Zetian Gate.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

An example of activity analysis.

In 690 AD	Wu Zetian	ascended the throne	at Zetian Gate
Temporal location	People	Process	Spatial location
Peripheral element	Nuclear element	Nuclear element	Peripheral element

In a sense, the composition of heroic story in HoK is essentially the combination of characters, processes, and locations (both temporal and spatial). When constructing and reconstructing heroic stories, one critical issue is how much accurate historical information should be remained and what kind of ideational content should be recreated to fit into gaming discourse. This trade-off between accuracy and creativity has a major impact on how gamers would emotionally react to the character they play and how they might shape understandings of Chinese history through reading the heroic story. It is thus significant to examine and compare what ideational experiences have been remained from historical materials and what have been adapted, in order to reveal potential positive and negative impacts and to propose crucial considerations in composing gaming stories in future practice. In terms of ideational content, the following sections are devoted to analyzing two aspects of the construction of an activity: (1) participant and process; (2) circumstantial elements.

The Reconstruction of Nuclear Elements: Participant and Process

The nuclear elements in constructing activities are participant (people/things) and process, that is, who did what. The participants in each heroic stories are its protagonist hero and a few other game characters. The reconstruction of processes is dramatic in HoK game discourse. The activities constructed in these stories are originally composed, having no connection with historical figures’ real experiences. In addition, there is a universal pattern throughout these stories that the activities in each plot are representing and shaping a magical world. The following paragraphs are extracts from the heroic story for Wu Zetian.

The original text in Chinese:

身为天才法师, 她在十四岁时暂露头角, 并被谄媚的地方官贡献给长安的宫廷˳ 但因为芈月的前车之鉴, 她的美貌以及破坏性法力引起了王室的警惕, 将她囚禁在寺院中˳

彼时天真的少女为不公平的待遇感到愤怒和痛苦˳ 然而寺院中无名的预言老人接近她, 向她揭示了未来的命运与古代魔道的奥秘˳ 武则天很快被前所未有的知识吸引˳ 老人要求她发誓运用力量和地位对抗魔种˳ 因他预知自己时日无多, 需要扶持一个傀儡来防止魔种卷土重来˳

Translated text in English:

As a genius mage, she temporarily emerged at the age of fourteen and was contributed to the court of Chang’an by a flattering magistrate. But because of Miyue’s lessons, her beauty and destructive power aroused the vigilance of the royal family and imprisoned her in the temple.

At that time, the innocent girl felt angry and pained for the unfair treatment. However, the unknown old prophet in the temple approached her, revealing to her the future fate and the mystery of the ancient magic. Wu Zetian was quickly attracted by unprecedented knowledge. The old man asked her to swear to use her strength and status to fight against the demons. Because he foresaw that he was running out of time, he needed to support a puppet to prevent the magic seed from coming back.

Clause by clause, we can sort out the activities of the game character Wu Zetian (see Table 2). None of the activities had taken place in the actual experiences of Wu Zetian in history. The plot is dedicated to creating a magical world where lexical choices such as magic, mystery, power, and strength frequently appear in our database. While the activities/events have been significantly reconstructed (or perhaps the term “made up” is more appropriate), these lexes make it obvious that the experiences of heroes/heroines are fictitious. Therefore, it is effortless for gamers to identify these activities as unrealistic, and it is unlikely for gamers to regard game characters’ experiences as identical to historical figures’ experiences. This kind of reconstruction on processes (activities) is unlikely to have negative impact on gamer’s historical view.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 2.

Activity analysis of the heroic story for Wu Zetian.

Actor	Activity	Circumstance
She	temporarily emerged	As a genius mage; at the age of fourteen
a flattering magistrate	contributed her to the court of Chang’an
her beauty and destructive power	aroused the vigilance of royal family	because of Miyue’s lessons;
(the royal family)	imprisoned her	in the temple
he innocent girl	felt angry and pained	At that time; for the unfair treatment
the unknown old prophet in the temple	approached her
(the unknown old prophet)	revealing to her the future fate and the mystery of the ancient magic
Wu Zetian	was quickly attracted by unprecedented knowledge
The old man	asked her to swear to use her strength and status
(her)	(in order) to fight against the demons
he	foresaw that he was running out of time
he	needed to support a puppet
(he)	(in order) to prevent the magic seed from coming back

The Reconstruction of Circumstantial Elements

While the nuclear processes (activities) are originally composed to feature a magical world, the circumstantial elements surrounding these activities are to some extent maintained from historical facts. Circumstance is concerned with the environment where an activity takes place. It not only involves spatial circumstance (place) but also temporal circumstance (time). Circumstantial elements are fundamental linguistic resources in constructing history discourse since a historical event is usually associated with time and space.

Heroic stories in HoK largely employ circumstantial elements to create space-time in a game world. Some of the circumstantial elements in HoK conform to historical information, while some are completely made up. This raises a serious issue for gamers (especially children and young adults) in acquiring historical knowledge and differentiating accurate information from inaccurate information. It is thus worthwhile to identify what circumstantial elements have been adapted or preserved through a detailed analysis of spatial and temporal locations in these heroic stories and compare them with historical materials.

Regarding the reconstruction of spatial circumstance, it is found that the core locations related to the historical figures are usually preserved in HoK’s heroic stories for game characters; meanwhile, a few fictitious locations have been created in the stories. Take the historical figure, Li Bai, one of the most renowned poets in Chinese history, for instance, HoK has included Li Bai as one of its game characters. In the heroic story for Li Bai, there are a series of spatial locations including Chang’an (长安), Chang’an City (长安城), the Yellow River (黄河), Zhu Que Gate (朱雀门), Yunzhong Modi (云中漠地), the Great Wall (长城), Chang Le Fang (长乐坊), Wu Ling (武陵), and Ganye Temple (感业寺). Most of these spatial locations are relevant to the historical figure Li Bai’s experiences. Table 3 shows the classification of the spatial locations that are relevant or irrelevant to Li Bai in history.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 3.

The classification of places in the heroic story for Li Bai.

Relevant Places	Irrelevant Places
Chang’an	Yunzhong Modi
Chang’an City the Yellow River	Ganye Temple
Zhu Que Gate the Great Wall
Chang Le Fang
Wu Ling

According to Wu’s study of Tang Dynasty poetry (1972) and Li Bai’s poetry anthology (see, e.g., Xue, 2017), the spatial locations related to Li Bai in history include place where Li Bai had lived in—Chang’an; place where he had traveled to—the Yellow River; and places which had appeared in his poems—for example, the Yellow River, Zhu Que Gate, the Great Wall, Wu Ling. Chang Le Fang was allegedly where Li Bai often went for liquor; although there is no historical record confirming the connection between Chang Le Fang and Li Bai, it is a popular historical conception among the public (Li, 2021). As for the two places irrelevant to Li Bai as historical figure, Yunzhong Modi is a fictitious space which never exists in reality. The other irrelevant place is Ganye Temple. While it exists in history and modern society, there is no historical information showing its connection with Li Bai. A further examination has explained the reason to include Ganye Temple in the heroic story for Li Bai. This particular spatial location aims to build ideational and interpersonal connection with another game character Wu Zetian, where Ganye Temple is a core spatial location in the heroic story for Wu Zetian.

Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history, is another historical figure who has been adapted into a game character in HoK. In the heroic story written for Wu Zetian, spatial locations include Chang’an City (长安城), Chang’an (长安), Temple (寺院), and imperial palace (皇宫). Based on verification from Zizhi Tongjian (Sima, 1084), a pioneering reference work in Chinese historiography, all these spatial locations in the heroic story for Wu Zetian are relevant to her experiences in history. It is noteworthy to mention that the temple here is essentially Ganye Temple where Wu Zetian had lived in for a few years. The reconstruction of spatial locations in HoK heroic stories is minimal, where historical locations related to the character are largely preserved. In addition, it is found that most spatial locations in HoK heroic stories are concrete sites rather than abstract sites. There are also a few special cases, for example, in the heroic story for Lao Fuzi (Confucius), there is only one abstract spatial circumstance, that is, “He was locked in an unknown corner”. No concrete places related to Lao Fuzi are represented in the game story, hence no reconstruction of spatial circumstance exists either. In general, it is a common practice for HoK game stories to include concrete places related to historical figures.

With respect to temporal circumstances in heroic stories, they are often abstract rather than specific. The presentation of specific timeline is a salient feature in historical texts, since it is used to introduce when an historical event happened. However, a common scenario in HoK game stories is found to avoid using concrete temporal circumstances such as year and date. Table 4 shows some of the temporal circumstances (in bold) in these four stories. These abstract temporal locations mainly function to unfold the storyline, directing readers’ gazes to subsequent events, rather than to deliver historical knowledge about temporal information. In other words, it contributes more to the textual organization of game discourse than to its ideational meanings. Although this kind of abstract temporal circumstance has nothing to do with affecting how gamers understand historical timeline, it does not mean the temporal information built in HoK heroic stories is harmless and unproblematic. On the contrary, the problem is difficult to discover from its surface. The distortion of timeline is hidden in the social relationships among characters reconstructed in these stories. For example, unrelated characters of different dynasties in history are sometimes forcibly put together to form certain social relationships. We will explore this phenomenon in detail in the reconstruction of social relationship below.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 4.

Examples of temporal circumstances in HoK heroic stories (in bold).

Lao Fuzi	Li Bai	Wu Zetian	Lian Po
Who won in the end?	Later, some people even regarded it as glory	She temporarily emerged at the age of fourteen	Lian Po met an opponent in his life for the first time
Finally, he bound himself and was betrayed by Wu Zetian	From then on, Li Bai…became the first person among the empire powerhouses;	Then on that day, she invited the old man to meet again	Since then, this name has been inscribed in the general’s heart: Zhong Wuyan

Reconstructing Interpersonal Meanings

The interpersonal meanings are concerned with using language to interact, to enact social relationships, to show attitudes, and to influence viewpoint and behavior. In this section, we will explore the attitudes expressed in the heroic stories, especially attitudes associated with evaluations on the game characters/historical characters, as well as the social relationships reconstructed in these texts. Appraisal is a discourse semantic system of negotiating evaluations in a text. It indicates the attitudes embedded in texts, which are often reflected in purposeful lexical choices. Attitudes include feelings about things and people (affect), judgements of people’s character and behavior (judgement), and evaluations on things or phenomenon (appreciation). The evaluations made in heroic texts will influence how gamers construe these characters and how they might develop understandings about historical figures and the historical events associated with them.

The Reconstruction of Attitude

In historical narratives, apart from ideational information of the historical figures’ experiences or activities, there are evaluations on them made by historians and mainstream contemporary media. Their evaluations are important sources for later generations to build historical views. The focus of attitude analysis is whether HoK heroic texts have reconstructed the evaluations on historical figures and their behaviors. Accordingly, the attitudes being investigated are mainly judgements of target characters. It does not suggest that there are no attitudes related to things/phenomena, on the contrary, affects showing the emotions of characters and appreciation demonstrating evaluations on things frequently appear in our database. In this section, attitude analysis will focus on the polarity of judgements (positive or negative) and target of judgements (who and what behaviors are judged).

In Martin and White (2005, p. 52), judgment is further classified into two kinds: social esteem and social sanction. Social esteem has to do with normality, capacity, and tenacity of people. Social sanction on the other hand deals with veracity and propriety—the behaviors society may praise or condemn. Sharing judgements is critical in forming social networks, and it influences how generations view historical figures and how they understand their own history and culture. Hence, it is necessary to examine the reconstruction in terms of attitudinal evaluations on historical figure. It is found that judgements of game characters are in accordance with mainstream contemporary evaluations (see Table 5). The judgements in game stories mainly fall into the category of the social esteem. Social sanction is rarely found in HoK heroic stories since it is not associated with judging whether these characters behave as surveilled by law or rules. HoK largely preserves the positive evaluations on the historical figures. It did not attempt to change the core evaluations, rather it maintained and utilized these evaluations as an inspiration in writing the heroic stories and building imaginary interpersonal meanings between gamers and historical figures.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 5.

Consistent appraising items in heroic stories and historical evaluations.

	Judgements in HoK Heroic Stories	Historical Evaluations
Li Bai	a true talent	“Poetic genius” (Liu, 2012)
Lian Po	Noble soldier with qualities such as integrity, loyalty, and courage	“Patriotic,” “brave,” “honest” (Xin, 2019)
Wu Zetian	a beautiful, powerful, and supreme Empress	“Beautiful,” “seeking for more political power” (Meng, 2021)

Discourse semantics is closely related to social context. Words are not isolated lexis, but meaningful choices based on context. The same lexis in different contexts may have differing meanings and opposite polarity. For example, Bednarek (2008) has noted the term “surprise” can be expressed as a negative or positive emotion based on corpus evidence, depending on the social context in which the word is embedded. It is also observed in our data, for instance, Lao Fuzi (Confucius) is described as perverted education freak. If examined without context, the word “perverted” and “freak” would be identified as negative judgements. However, knowing the identity of Confucius, one of the most renowned and respected educators of all time (Qi, 2019; Liu, 2009), these two adjectives only reflect his passion and rigor in education career, raising the intensity of positive judgements.

Discussion

This study has employed discourse semantic tools in exploring the reconstruction of history and culture in HoK heroic stories. The ideational and interpersonal reconstruction has resulted in the changes of processes (activities), circumstantial elements (space and time), and social relationships. Meanwhile, the stories have transferred core evaluations on the historical figure to its corresponding game character. They even retain most spatial locations related to the historical figure for the game character, as well as some textual organization mode. Detecting the “changed” and “unchanged” reconstruction in history is a prerequisite to explore more complex and meaningful questions. The mainstream criticism related to HoK as a historical media almost solely focuses on the accuracy issue in its historical representation; however, this factual accuracy is only one way to judge historical media. Games are sometimes decried for inaccuracy (Chapman, 2012; McCall, 2020), but it is more important to contemplate why a game deviates from historical records and what are the effects (Kappell and Elliot, 2013). The theoretical framework and analytical tools employed in the study provide a novel approach for game studies, particularly games with historical content. It effectively exhibits HoK’s reconstruction in ideational and interpersonal dimensions, furthermore, elucidating the contextual factors causing the reconstruction.

In essence, the rules and objectives of HoK are far from “historical”. It does not seek to simulate historical process or to achieve historical purpose, yet it largely borrows elements from Chinese history and culture. The underlying motives can be explained from at least three facets: entertainment, sociality, and cultural identity, which all contribute to broader user coverage and higher user stickiness. As game is entertainment media (Romera, Ojeda, & Velasco, 2018), in order to make gamers feel entertained and interested in playing the game, HoK has rewritten the heroic stories in a fascinating way, creating a magical world where power, magic, victory, and glory are the excitements players can easily acquire in the virtual battlefield. Although replacing the historical figures with completely fictional characters will not affect the plot, it will lose the opportunity of utilizing historical and cultural familiarity which creates strong emotional connection between gamers and the game. The design of HoK is deeply inspired by Chinese history and culture, it can be seen not only in the choices of game characters but also in music, art, and cosmetic skin design. The fact that HoK was quickly accepted by the public from its emergence and gained huge popularity in Chinese game market is closely related to the strong historical and cultural atmosphere in it (Zhao, 2018). These familiar and approachable elements enable Chinese gamers to easily fit into the game, which facilitates to understand the connotation of traditional Chinese culture in interactive scenes and strengthen cultural identity. In addition, it will potentially evoke a group of gamers’ interests in learning more about Chinese history and culture, which makes a positive educational impact. The imperative of sociality is also very relevant to account for the reconstruction in social relationships among game characters. Digital games have become a lifestyle of young users and one of the most important ways of socializing (Tian and Chi, 2018). HoK took the liberties to create intertwined character relation, which help build an intimate social circle within gamer community, strengthening its attribute as a new social media.

While traditional Chinese cultural and historical elements can be flexibly used in game contexts, there is some room for a better reconstruction. For instance, although there is barely any reconstruction in temporal locations, the heroic stories distort historical timeline through the fabrication in character relationships. It indicates that ideational and interpersonal meanings sometimes alternately overlap in discourse semantics, just as the temporal circumstances realizing ideational meanings are better understood in the examination of interpersonal relationships among characters. For future game story writing, our analysis suggests that HoK heroic stories could avoid distorted historical timeline through constructing correct social relationship between historical figures, replacing fabricated relationships with the accurate ones. It will not affect young gamers’ history knowledge; meanwhile, appropriate reconstruction of game stories reinforces the entertainment function of digital games, increasing its social media value in forming intimate gamer community. Furthermore, it has the potential to be powerful medium in building historical views and cultural identity.