Jubensha
About 10 years ago in China, a very simple murder mystery party game (Guillaume Montiage’s Death Wears White) made it to China, and caught on like wildfire. It started a craze of murder mystery party games called Jubensha that is sweeping the nation.
In the US, escape rooms really became a thing in the late 2010’s and peaked in 2019 with just over 2300 different escape rooms shops. At the same time, Jubensha is looking to be a phenomenon that has displaced karaoke as the 3rd largest recreational activity in China after movies and sports. The estimate is there were over 30,000 jubensha shops hosting these gaming events in China by 2021.
What is jubensha? Jubensha is a form of scripted role-playing game much like a murder mystery party game in which the players role-play different character roles they are given. But it’s grown to much more than simple murder mystery parties. The stories have become extremely involved. They’ve expanded to include deep relationship, romance, horror, fantasy, magical, futuristic, and all kinds of other themes. The breadth and creativity has gotten staggering and it’s caught on like wildfire. Jubensha has also become wildly popular TV shows (Who’s the Murderer), have video game tie-ins, as well as expanded from simple parlor games to costumes and even live action weekends in themed locations.
According to Chinese players, it’s the social aspects of meeting new people and playing very different characters that is a huge draw – to the point it often overshadows its case-solving and gaming elements. One might be able to describe Jubensha as gamified social gathering of strangers. Part of this comes from the fact that jubensha games are almost always written to require 3 females and 3 males. Dating profiles now commonly say things like “No to hookups, yes to jubensha”. This should not really be a surprise in a country in which Covid lockdowns the last few years have been the most extreme. People are craving social interaction; and these games give young people the opportunity to act out roles and emotions that might not otherwise be socially acceptable.
Beyond the social aspects, the creativity of the stories is also apparently amazing. Characters and stories unraveling for you and other players in ways that you might never expect. The game guidance might tell you to role play in certain ways, only to find out that what you were role playing was an unreliable narrator and your own character isn’t who you thought you were. Motivations you were given in a relationship story (say making sacrifices for a loved one) might turn out to reveal a dynamic completely different than what you thought you were doing.
This isn’t all without some problems. There are no real rules to jubensha because half the fun is getting into stories without knowing where it will go. This means you have to trust the moral compass of the authors and hosts of the game. So what happens if they game doesn’t align with your values or puts you in a very uncomfortable situation?
As jubesha writers try to make a name for themselves, it has been noted that some jubensha horror games have had gratuitous levels of gore and violence to increase shock value. Another theme that is surprisingly prominent involves sexual assault. Chinese gamers largely shrug this off, claiming they have no problem with darker themes like murder and sexual assault – but it has surprised many western reporters. Unfortunately, this all means as the story unfolds you may find yourself having to role play around these themes. You may even becoming a character, an accomplice of a character, or even the victim of a character that is doing things or you might find extremely offensive or distasteful. So far there are largely no content warnings on many games.
To add complications, the Chinese government has also noticed this firestorm of popularity and are starting to review and clamp down on the industry to ensure stories adhere to accepted party standards. Recent TV shows are putting up disclaimers and one even has real life judges appear to reveal what the real world crimes and punishments would be.
Sadly, almost none of these game scripts are available in English – which is a real shame. I’m personally very curious what some of the stories are.
If you like to check what this looks like on Chinese TV, it appears multiple seasons of “Who’s the Murderer”, that become the start of the craze, are on Youtube.
- Who’s the Murderer
- Celebrity Detective is another show that features Chinese celebrity actors.
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