The Conversion game: Production mechanisms and power relations in the Chinese micro-drama industry

This study focuses on the Chinese micro-drama industry, conceptualizing its cultural production as a new form of traffic game – the conversion game. Distinct from the subscription and visibility games, the conversion game operates on a production logic aimed at short-term commercial monetization. Based on methods including production ethnography and in-depth interviews, this study finds that the conversion game is a closed-loop system centered on conversion rates: creatively, it employs data-driven recombination of motifs; narratively, it engineers emotional conversion through gratification points and paywalled cliffhangers; operationally, it relies on a horse-racing mechanism for high-speed mass production; and ultimately, its outcome is determined by a distribution game where ‘distribution is king’. This study challenges the ‘control-resistance’ binary, revealing how the state, platforms, and creators, in their shared pursuit of traffic, form a coupled structure that is functionally interdependent yet marked by a power imbalance. This paper theorizes the conversion game as an extreme form of platform capitalism. By systematically uncovering its operational mechanisms and power dynamics, it offers a new perspective for a critical understanding of the evolutionary trends in the global digital cultural industries.