Author Archives: Mayshu (Meixu) Zhan

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Stanford’s Modern Thought & Literature Program, specializing in game, gender, and Chinese cultural studies with CS and Communication minors. Through critical design and interactive media, I conduct community-driven research on gender and power.
A psychedelic landscape featuring vividly colored skies, purple mountains, silhouetted trees, and floating whale-like figures.

Simulating Systemic Violence: Game Design as Speculative Ethnography in “Seven Days of Destruction”

Gun violence in the United States is a statistical crisis, a political flashpoint, and an everyday reality for millions. But what if we could play through its structural logics? My game Seven Days of Destruction invites players into a speculative environment where systemic poverty, miseducation, drug abuse, and inequality are not only themes but mechanics. By designing this game, I sought to intervene in the ways we narrate and engage with structural violence: not through direct representation or journalistic realism, but via allegory, abstraction, and the aesthetics of defamiliarization. (read more...)