Game Against the Canon: The Medialogical Paradox of Transmitting the Traditional Cultural Code in Black Myth: Wukong

Abstract

This article addresses the contradiction between the state's aim to transmit national heritage through video games and the computational nature of the medium itself. The topic is timely because the gaming industry has become an instrument of China's soft power, while the global success of Black Myth: Wukong (2024) makes this a telling case. The study's novelty lies in rejecting two extremes: a naive techno-optimism that sees the game as a seamless translation of tradition, and a radical techno-determinism that posits the erasure of original meanings. The proposed structural-mediological position treats the medium as an active deconstructing agent that does not destroy tradition but reconfigures its operational logic. The aim of the work is to show how computational form transforms the transmitted cultural code. The methodology draws on Régis Debray's mediology, Lev Manovich's theory of transcoding, and a procedural-ludological analysis of specific gameplay mechanics — the transformation system and character progression. The analysis shows that the metaphysical categories of the Daoist-Buddhist tradition undergo semiotic extraction and procedural quantification, flattening into measurable game metrics. The authors conclude that the state strategy gains a global audience but loses control over the fixation of meaning: the myth is preserved as a content of memory, yet the manner of its storage and transmission is rewritten by the carrier itself. The findings are applicable to studies of the digital representation of cultural heritage, media philosophy, and cultural policy.