guānyú关于/About

Culture, Read in Both Directions.

DaoPlay is a cultural media company working at the interface between Europe and the Chinese-speaking world.

We use games as the entry point. A single game can carry mythology, history, philosophy, aesthetics, language, humour, architecture and social values at once, which makes it an unusually dense cultural document and an unusually good place to start.

The question we ask is never only what a game is. It is what the game reveals about the culture that made it, and how someone from elsewhere can meet it on its own terms.

We publish in both directions: Chinese creative culture explained to European audiences, European creative culture explained to Chinese audiences.

dào道/The name

The Name Is the Method

DaoPlay takes a principle from Daoist thought: culture should not be forced into a predetermined shape. Cultural exchange does not work by one side imposing its framework on the other.

We do not impose the path. We help make it visible.

Our role is to create context. To observe, listen, understand, translate and connect — and then let the exchange develop on its own.

shēnrù qiǎnchū深入浅出/Accessible

Accessible, Not Simplified

There are two ways to get this wrong. One is to make a culture so light that it collapses into a set of stereotypes — the dragon, the tea, the honour. The other is to make it so heavy that only someone who already studies it can get through the door.

The way through is to pay attention to how people create, communicate, imagine, remember, argue, play and make meaning. That includes mythology and history. It also includes food, music, humour, design, ritual and ordinary daily life.

You should be able to finish a piece knowing more than you did, and also knowing the subject is more complicated than the piece could hold.

Alexander Oldberg
Founder / Editor-in-Shifu
Madrid  ·  info@daoplay.net