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The author\u2019s findings are based upon ethnographic research and participant observation of e-sports audience members, teams, and tournaments, including the 2010 E-sports Champion League tournament in Beijing, the 2012 and 2013 World Cyber Games Festivals in Kunshan, and a 2014 Starcraft II tournament in Shanghai. A comparison of these events leads the author to argue that live e-sports events in China are less about spectatorship than they are about creating a spectacle that presents a carefully crafted vision of Chinese politics, nationalism, and capitalist consumer culture. In these cases, the participants and audience members are not only commodities to be sold but also a means of masking contradictory and highly ambivalent discourses about China\u2019s role in technological production, digital game culture, and the promotion of the discourse of Internet addiction.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/1555412015595298","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2015,7,23]],"date-time":"2015-07-23T20:19:58Z","timestamp":1437682798000},"page":"256-274","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":36,"title":["A Realm of Mere Representation? \u201cLive\u201d E-Sports Spectacles and the Crafting of China\u2019s Digital Gaming Image"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"11","author":[{"given":"Marcella","family":"Szablewicz","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Communication Studies, Pace University, New York, NY, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2015,7,22]]},"reference":[{"key":"bibr1-1555412015595298","unstructured":"Aegis Gaming Networks & Global Mobile Game Confederation. 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