%A Luo Changqing %T Literary Perception, Acceptance, and Production in the Age of Experience Economy: Examination of the LARP Games Hotspot Phenomenon as a Case Study %0 Journal Article %D 2022 %J JOURNAL OF ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY %R 10.3785/j.issn.1008-942X.CN33-6000/C.2022.03.07a %P 133-143 %V 52 %N 9 %U {https://www.zjujournals.com/soc/CN/abstract/article_133096.shtml} %8 2022-09-10 %X

Live Action Role Playing (LARP) games, also well known as Script Murder, is a social reasoning game that has recently become popular among young people in big cities. Against the backdrop of the “marginalization of literature”, LARP games stands out in the highly competitive entertainment market. Since it entails creation, script, study, and criticism, LARP games contains both literature and game attributes, however, there are not many current studies that analyze LARP games from a literary perspective. Following the transformation from industrial to the service economy, LARP games reflect the transmutation of literary perception, literary acceptance, and literary production in the context of the experience economy.From the standpoint of literary perception, LARP games strengthens the entertainment characteristics, consumption attributes, and social functions of literature. Following film-and-television literature as well as online literature, LARP games becomes a typical case of literary consumption and entertainment being strengthened. For specific players, script consumption is one-off and non-reusable, thus LARP games can be considered as a fast-moving consumer product in the cultural entertainment market. Under the trend that the emerging digital social networking is crushing the traditional live social networking, LARP games revitalizes the live social networking in the Post-Internet Era, promote offline communication among players, and relieves the loneliness as well as the anxiety of people in the digital era.From the viewpoint of literary acceptance, LARP games offers players a multi-role immersion experience. Players are not simply single readers or viewers, but a combination of readers, actors, viewers, critics, as well as a variety of other roles, thus LARP games can bring players a multi-role and role-switching experience. Live scenes, props, costumes, and music are used by LARP games to enhance the players’ sense of immersion, which eventually helps the players immerse themselves in the drama situation and the roles they are playing, creating a “player-first” immersive economy. The essence of LARP games is the experience economy with intellectual property as a core, which is a further extension following the transformation from the industrial economy to service economy with the characteristics of non-production, short period, and personalization.From the perspective of literary production, LARP games has developed a positive pattern of government attention, market operation, and player participation. Script creation comes under the category of creative writing, and script entertainment falls under cultural and creative industries, so it can enjoy the dividends of national development policies in the cultural and creative industry. The market-oriented operation methods such as capital entry, cross-field penetration, and industry chain expansion help in the development of LARP games, promote the coordinated development of the entire industry chain of upstream, midstream, and downstream while promoting the adjustment and optimization of industrial structure. The evaluation mechanism of LARP games is market-oriented, and players’ participation, experience, and feedback impact writers’ creation, publishers’ distribution, and stores’ purchase, and only works that are popular with players can receive a favorable or affirmative evaluation.As an entertaining cultural and fast-consuming product that can improve interpersonal communication, LARP games stands out against the background of the prevalence of “literary marginalization”. It has become a literary and cultural phenomenon that cannot be overlooked, with enlightening significance for writers’ creative writing and the development of creative industries. With the advent of the experience economy era, cultural as well as creative products and services will stand out in the fierce market competition. Only by supporting the concept of serving consumers and adhering to the pioneering and innovative spirit of keeping up with the times can we create cultural and creative products that are welcomed by the government, the market, and consumers.