We are excited to present this special issue on Games and Gaming in China and the Sinophone World, featuring seven original research articles alongside four short essays, all submitted in response to our Call for Papers of March 2021. These eleven contributions reflect the diversity of possible approaches to Sinophone game studies, focusing not just on the often-conflicting politics and economics of the PRC games industry, but also exploring Taiwan’s flourishing indie game scene and political uses of games in Hong Kong, among other topics. Sinophone game studies is a highly fruitful area of academic research that is intrinsically inter- and cross-disciplinary in nature and well placed to respond to some of the most pressing issues of our time, whether they be international conflict, ecological crisis, identity politics, minority rights, or even the development of disparate virtual worlds into a cross-platform ‘metaverse’ in which many of us may one day live our lives. We believe that this is the first time a Chinese studies journal has dedicated a whole issue to the study of video games, thus contributing to a young and dynamic field of research, the full contours of which are only slowly coming into view.