Symbolic Narratives of Chinese Traditional Culture in Overseas Games: A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Image Construction

Abstract

In the context of globalization, video games have emerged as significant media for cross-cultural communication and image construction. From a cross-cultural perspective, this paper develops a three-layer theoretical model of "symbol-narrative-image" to examine the traditional symbolic narrative mechanisms in 22 major Chinese overseas games from 2013 to 2026. The study finds that Chinese overseas games primarily convey China's material, national, and value-based images through the cross-cultural interpretation of three types of symbols: artifacts, behaviors, and concepts. At the narrative level, four strategies—genre translation, perspective selection, interactive storytelling, and localization adaptation—collectively constitute the practical pathways for cross-cultural communication, enabling overseas players to internalize cultural meanings through participatory experiences. This research reveals the unique mechanism of games as interactive media in image construction—distinct from the observational cognition of traditional media—providing a new analytical tool for cross-cultural communication studies in the digital age and offering practical insights for Chinese game companies' overseas strategies.