Upon moving to a new city for a new position, you look for places to meet new friends. Much to your dismay, however, you find the churches have been locked, the local bars are dry of conversation and drink, the cinema is empty, and all your coworkers are too shallow to be worth befriending. Forging meaningful relationships and deepening current ones proves difficult or impossible in the modern world. China, however, may have found a solution. Jubensha (剧本杀), a board game utterly unheard of in the Western world, has captured living room tables, street corners, TV channels, online forums, and the hearts of millions. In China, 84% of 20-35-year-olds have played jubensha, a game where three males and three females gather around a table with game booklets, clues, a storyline, and a Game Master. They assume character roles, engage in live-action role-play (LARP), and collectively unravel the story guided by the Game Master. They use clues, intellect, and charm to unravel the mystery and discover the murderer amongst them. This is not simply a knockoff of Clue or a remake of Mafia; jubensha is a multi-billion dollar industry that has become a staple for China's Generation Z or Zoomers to play with friends, romantic partners, and people they have never met. If appropriately localized for a Western audience, jubensha could bolster deeper social connections and help alleviate societal issues like shallow personalities and a lack of meaningful social interaction.
In 2008, French game designer Guillaume Montiage released Death Wears White, a murder mystery game where a doctor is found dead in a Detroit hospital. The game comes with booklets for the nine players, a game organizer, 25 clue cards, and pictures of ballistic evidence. In the mid-2010s, the game was translated and imported to the People's Republic of China, introducing the murder mystery gaming style to board game lovers from all over the country. The game sold well and was adored especially by China's younger generation due to its ability to fully capture their imagination and emotions. Jubensha only wholly exploded in popularity after the variety show Who's the Murderer was released, where celebrities played the jubensha murder mystery game live to viewers. The loyal audience of the program created new versions of the game, writing original Murder Mystery game scripts, hence the name "Script Kill."
Over time, Chinese Script Killing amassed a large online following, then swiftly expanded to in-person game venues. In 2018, the top two jubensha mobile apps, I'm the Mystery (我是谜) and The Great Detective (百变大侦探), received Series A funding from well-known Chinese VCs. Jubensha shops grew 400% from 2018 to 2021, reaching a peak of 45,000 venues in China. The industry is estimated to grow to nearly 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in revenue in 2021. The industry started with people writing and selling their scripts; then, shops opened where players could play in a unique environment led by employees with their friends or random players. Once the shops were everywhere, they expanded in size, and jubensha hotels and even villages opened where people were fully immersed in the experience, wearing full costumes and live-action role-playing with dozens of employee actors in a vast space. One Jubensha Experience is called Qingtianjian: Peace in Chang'an, a 4000 square meter town set in the Tang Dynasty era where players act out the script with live actors for a full two days and one night! These pieces of jubensha culture culminate in a marketplace of artists to create scripts, draw illustrations, build props, design costumes, and host narration for the games. Digital game studios also joined in with many mobile apps, allowing people to play scripts with their friends in their homes.
The explosion in the popularity of this game is exceptionally beneficial for Chinese players and the country as a whole. The closest thing the United States has to jubensha shops is Escape Rooms, where players work together to find clues, unlock rooms, and eventually complete enough tasks within a time limit. Script Killing and Escape Rooms are socially parallel opposites. In jubensha shops, all players face inward to act through the script and discuss who the killer might be; in contrast, Escape Room games are outwardly facing, with everyone turning away from each other and searching the room for clues and things to interact with. Not only do inward-facing games help people connect on a deep level, but jubensha forces people to use their full personalities as they act out the character assigned to them. Zoomers in America have become so shallow, unserious, and cynical that they either do not have a personality or are so afraid to show it that they make fun of everything around them as a defense mechanism, hiding behind a veneer of irony instead of sharing their true selves. A game so gritty and personal as jubensha forces the walls built around young Americans' hearts and souls to open up. When you are acting out a character, you cannot make fun of it; you have to try honestly, and even if your acting skills are terrible, you can bring out your personality and share your true self with the people sitting around you. When these psychological barriers are lowered healthily among close friends, the relationships will strengthen, and the friendships can grow to a new, more profound level. You can learn so much about other people when using wit to uncover a mystery in a game. How do they go about collecting information? Do they use deceit or charm? Will they do whatever it takes to win, or are they more interested in teamwork? In a game of jubensha, you can truly appreciate and learn the personality traits and qualities of the other players in the harmless environment of a game venue or living room.
In addition to growing one's relationships and connections with one's friends, jubensha is quite famous for meeting new people. 拼车 (pronounced pīnchē), or 'car sharing,' is a term used when people join another group to make a complete game. In the United States, the most common place for people to meet each other outside of work or school is at a bar or on a dating app. A random bar is not the finest place to meet other high-quality individuals worth developing life-long relationships with, romantic or platonic. There are exceptions to the rule, but there are far too few places for people in the Western world to make friends or find the person they want to marry. Churches are closing or fading away, movie theaters are being rendered obsolete by streaming services, social media is draining away people's spare time, and dating apps are only used to satisfy high-time preference needs. Chinese players do not get addicted because of the mystery; they love the story and the connections made. Jubensha fans get excited if they find out the story they are playing could make them cry.
Although dating apps like Tinder and Hinge are common in the West, they are not a large part of Chinese dating culture. In China, most millennials and Zoomers prefer dates arranged by family and friends. Among those using "self-arranged" dating methods, most of these young citizens prefer offline activities like jubensha or frisbee to meet and connect with their dates, with only 21% choosing WeChat, 20.9% using matchmakers, and a measly 13% using dating apps. A jubensha shop owner from Jinan said, "Ordinary dates are just awkward conversations over coffee or a meal, but the games can help players break the ice and grow closer." Another jubensha business owner claimed that many of his customers began dating one another after script-killing, and some have even gotten married (inviting the shop owner to the wedding). Jubensha is a great way to meet, further friendships, or even fall in love, but is this only the case for those living in China?
After live streams of jubensha sponsored by furniture companies where viewers can purchase the couch the murderer is sitting on, what might be next for the Script-Killing craze? Much like its American counterpart across the ocean, China, too, is imperfect. Jubensha sees regulations of game scripts with especially violent storylines so that gameplay is more in line with the morals of the CCP. Some Chinese sources say that the craze has gone too far and that this type of game is too much for the weaker minds of its younger audience. One official Chinese reporter posted to Weibo that the increasingly violent scripts needed "correct value guidance" and the need for "positive energy" (正能量), quoting these were opinions of unnamed psychology experts. One reporter visited several 'immersive jubensha shops' in some cities in central regions. One shop owner led the reporter into several live-action rooms decorated as farmhouses, cemeteries, and other scenes. The cemetery area was lit with "blood-red lights," and several props were placed inside. In one store, the owner showed the reporter scripts about "human demons," "nightclub murders," and "people with possessed eyes."
While these reports may be attempts to attack the new game due to a lack of understanding by the party and a desire to contain it, China still manages to craft a new subculture despite efforts to suppress it in the name of 'proper party values.' The unofficial "party values" of the United States suppress games, movies, and subcultures that oppose it before they can even get off the ground. Chinese game fans were not pleased with the state's efforts to alter the public's opinion of their new favorite pastime. One board gamer criticized the state's flimsy justification of "psychological problems" as a reason to regulate the game, joking that if games and Jubensha were deemed responsible for mental issues and therefore restricted, the same logic would apply to avid celebrity followers and individuals returning to work after vacation, warranting restrictions on all such activities. "Chinese authorities even recommended that players give up Jubensha for 'healthier' activities such as camping - an ironic consideration due to the many Jubensha games played outside.
American culture may not be ready for it. Americans have become so engrossed in politics, recycled movies, the theatrical lives of trending celebrities, and woke culture and its ever-changing rules that they may not even be able to sit down for three hours. While there are similar games to jubensha, one I have played is called One Night Ultimate Werewolf, but it is only a short whodunit game with the ability to be replayed and no actual plot. The closest is the infamous Dungeons & Dragons, with games lasting more than 4 hours, with a handful of players LARPing their characters and following a storyline the Dungeon Master lays out for them. However, the D&D community is seemingly unable to swap out their 20-sided die and character sheet for a jubensha case. A large number of popular jubensha scripts contain dark themes about sexual assault and extreme violence. These topics are so taboo in American and Western culture that there would be public outrage and backlash. D&D players are a very inclusive community, and there is a reason why jubensha was not imported in 2020 in the US while at peak popularity in China; it was deemed more important to focus on changing D&D to be more inclusive and equitable. In 2020, the creators of D&D, Wizards of the Coast, announced changes to the game in response to the ongoing protests over racism and police violence. While this includes editing past "racist" descriptions and adding more diverse writers, the game's designers are fundamentally changing how certain playable characters are portrayed.
Adults in a functioning society should be able to play a game that discusses sexual assault or death. When it is impossible to have any civil conversation about an issue many are victim to, that problem will not magically fix itself. If people in the States ever want to play original intense jubensha, America would need to shift its culture to one that does not cry out for the invisible victim in the room, even if it is only a tiny portion of the population crying loudly – not only for the sake of a board game but for focusing our culture on something productive. In a decade, China imported a French board game, popularized it on TV aimed at a younger audience, had writers develop scripts, developed mobile apps for people to script-kill from anywhere, and created a whole new business of hosting jubensha games. While America and the entire Western World are ensnared by ideologies obsessed with protecting victims that do not exist, China created a board gaming subculture that connects the country's youth and has nurtured it into a multi-billion dollar industry.
China has shown that new ways of connecting are still possible, even under the watch of a bloated and overbearing government, while America is doing the opposite. With culture being relatively unregulated by the United States government, the mob of journalists, activists, and social justice advocates choke out any attempt at creating lively new experiences that challenge people's emotions and worldviews. Both China and the United States could learn from one another. However, the country able to create an industry out of thin air, survive and even flourish online during the COVID pandemic, and continue to grow despite looming regulations is the country whose younger generation has a more cohesive and positive culture.
What, if anything, can be done today to bring jubensha to the West? Singaporean jubensha game design firms have begun work on translating scripts and altering them for a Western audience, with one company beginning the release in Toronto, Canada. However, these altered versions will likely require several content warnings so that no players dare have their feelings hurt or their golden morals compromised. The problem lies not with the country's inability to play a board game but its lack of freedom to have an adult discussion about human interaction.
Perhaps the next best option is to make English jubensha cases available online so one can order and play in one's home instead of in a public setting. An original jubensha game has already been made in English and is available for $150. People looking to play jubensha in a language other than Chinese could contact scriptwriters and ask them to create a jubensha game fitting for a US audience. If jubensha goes viral even once on TikTok or within board game communities, there would be a market for the game in US homes, as long as it is safe or stamped in a number of content warnings. Nevertheless, these warning stickers and at-home-only styles of play lose sight of why jubensha was so successful and fun in the first place; it was emotional, profoundly connecting, and a great way to meet a new friend or romantic partner. After researching this game and analyzing how China has reacted, it seems that China is able nourish a culture that can change the lives of millions and reopen their hearts to solid relationships, but it struggles to keep it out government reach.
Thank you for reading. If you would like to feature this article in your publication, contact me via a method listed at deng.poker.
Sources:
https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2022/09/speed-dating-on-the-frisbee-field/
https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/06/29/884824236/dungeons-dragons-tries-to-banish-racist-stereotypes
https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-heterosexual-us-couples/
Purchase The Dark Council here:
https://www.storyboxed.com/thedark-council