She was a video game addict, now she designs them: how one woman is challenging the negative views that still exist around gaming

Allison Yang, a game developer, producer and curator, was such a gaming addict growing up in China, her parents had to hide the keyboard, mouse and monitor

Her interest is in games that tell a story, deliver a message or teach about culture, and she wants to change the negative perceptions of gamers that persist

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Game developer, producer and curator Allison Yang with a video of Forgetter, a game she is working on that has already won several awards. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

Tom Eves

Published: 7:45pm, 10 Nov 2022Updated: 1:00pm, 15 Nov 2022

One summer, as a teenager, Allison Yang had a novel way of playing video games for much longer than she was allowed.

Her parents had enrolled her in English tutorial classes and a choir group. Yang would turn up but leave soon after, then phone her home landline to see if anyone would pick up. If no one did, then that meant her parents were at work. She would then hurry home and squeeze in as many extra hours on the home PC as she could.

When her parents got home they would ask her how her day was and she would make up a whole list of things she had done. As a reward, she would get to play for another hour.

“I was really an addict,” the 36-year-old says. She was playing up to 16 hours a day, even sneaking into her parents’ room at night – where the PC was kept – to get more gaming in.

Visitors play exhibition games at “Video Game Cohabitant” in 2018, a gaming exhibition curated by Allison Yang, in Shenzhen, southern China, in 2018. Photo: Allison Yang

Of course, she was busted eventually – her parents came to pick her up from English class one day and she was not there. They started hiding the mouse and keyboard to prevent her playing, but she always managed to find a way.

It was not until they started hiding the monitor that they managed to make any significant dent in her playing time.