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“Protecting our female gaze rights”: Chinese Female

Gamers’ and Game Producers’ Negotiations with
Government Restrictions on Erotic Material

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Games and Culture

“Protecting our female gaze

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DOI: 10.1177/15554120231151300

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Producers’ Negotiations with

Government Restrictions on
Erotic Material

Zishan Lai1 and Tingting Liu2

Abstract
This article applies the Foucauldian concept of practiced freedom to examine how
Chinese female gamers work hand in hand with game developers to negotiate govern-
ment restrictions on in-game erotic material. Game developers have redesigned cer-
tain visual and textual game elements and used sexy dubbed voices to comply with
state censorship while maintaining a game’s appeal. Female gamers have meanwhile
aligned themselves with the game developers by spending significant money on
games and creating fan fiction, demonstrating their financial and sexual agency. This
article explores how the practice of sexual freedom can serve as a useful lens for
understanding the alliance between game developers and players, providing a glimpse
into the everyday, conditioned, leisure-driven micro-resistance by engaging with exist-
ing scholarship that criticizes the commercial nature of digital games. Instead of over-
throwing the conservative political framework, the goal of such gaming micro-
resistance is to increase the profits of game developers and the sexual, consumptive
rights of women gamers.

1
Department of Communication and New Media, National University of Singapore, Singapore
2
School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China
Corresponding Author:
Tingting Liu, School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, Room 505, The Second Building of
Arts, No. 601 Huangpu Avenue, Guangzhou 510000, Guangdong Province, China.
Email: lttjulttju@gmail.com
2 Games and Culture 0(0)

Keywords
otome game, women studies, practiced freedom, censorship, erotic game

Introduction
Mrs. Li, one of our research participants, is a 24-year-old woman who self-identifies as
the wife of Li Zeyan, one of the male non-player characters (NPCs) in the otome game
Mr. Love: Dream Date (lian yu zhizuoren, hereinafter Mr. Love). Recounting an inci-
dent from early 2021 in which several erotic scenes from Mr. Love were reported and
later censored by the Chinese authorities, Mrs. Li complained, “I don’t understand the
state. I’m a grown woman and I’ve paid for the game, so why can’t I enjoy the meat*?
Why do we have to go to such great effort to see the meat?” (*meat: local internet slang
for erotic material.) Mrs. Li’s exasperation about state interference is one of many
examples of the Chinese government strengthening its “digital authoritarianism”
over the past decade (Ming-Tak Chew & Wang, 2021). It has also created new, medi-
ated forms of soft propaganda (Chen et al., 2021; Chen & Wang, 2019; Song, 2022)
and exerted substantial effort to censor “harmful” online information. According to
the official narrative of the “cleaning up the Internet” campaign, which was carried
out in the years 2011, 2014, and 2021, “harmful” online information includes politi-
cally sensitive content, cultural content involving androgynous male images (Song,
2022a; Song, 2022), and sexually explicit material (Jacobs, 2012).1 Since Xi Jinping
assumed power in March 2013, this repressive censorship has rapidly intensified
(Ho et al., 2018), threatening the free expression of diverse genders and sexual repre-
sentations and the transnational fandom culture afforded by the post-1980s market
reform (Fung, 2019; Song, 2022b; Wang & Ge, 2022).
Considering this context, this article seeks to investigate the unexplored questions:
What have Chinese otome game developers done to comply with state censorship?
How have Chinese female gamers negotiated with state censorship of erotic in-game
content to fulfill their emotional and sexual gameplay needs?
To answer these questions, we chose Mr. Love, an otome game developed by Paper
Games, as a case study. Mr. Love follows a typical Mary Sue plot (Chander & Sunder,
2007), in which the player assumes control of the female protagonist—a young televi-
sion producer. Her recently deceased father has bequeathed her a struggling entertain-
ment firm which she strives to salvage from bankruptcy. The female protagonist has
romantic encounters with four attractive male NPCs. In contrast to male-centered
romance/sex simulation games where female characters are presented in a secondary,
objective, or marginal position, otome games such as Mr. Love are part of a women-
centered genre (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). In 2018, around 70% of the Paper Games
employees were women (36Kr, 2018), and 91% of Mr. Love’s gaming audience were
women (Jiguang, 2018), making it a suitable case for examining female gamers’
agency. The Chinese authorities issued their warning to Mr. Love’s creators in early
Lai and Liu 3

2021, advising them to remove and rectify “inappropriate” content, including sexually
suggestive graphics, voice dubbing, and storylines2. Against this backdrop, this article
employs the women-centered live-experience feminist approach (Kong, 2006) to
investigate the under-studied micro-resistance, carried out by Chinese game develop-
ers and female gamers. Although both Chinese game developers and female gamers
are not “political” in fight for their financial benefits or sexual rights, they have
tended to carry out micro-resistance as a result of negotiating both conservative dom-
inant ideologies and everyday censorship that deny their gains and rights. Before pro-
viding our research findings and conclusions, we will first examine the sociocultural
environment from which the Chinese sexual economy has arisen, to contextualize
our investigation.

Literature Review: Chinese Sexual Economy and the Female

Gaze
Gender relations and the sexual landscape in China have changed dramatically since the
post-socialist reform (Ho et al., 2018; Rofel, 2007). The rising national income has con-
tributed to the emergence of consumer cultures that did not exist during the communist
era, and subsequently created “desiring subject” (Rofel, 2007) and “consumer-citizens”
(Tian & Dong, 2011). In this consumption-driven economy, a sexual industry is flour-
ishing, which caters not only to males (Zhang & Hjorth, 2019; Zheng, 2009), but also
to newly emerged female consumers (Griffin, 2007; Tan & Shi, 2021; Zurndorfer,
2016). The Boy’s Love (BL) culture, with its male-male romance material, generated
mainly by and for heterosexual women, has disrupted heteronormative norms and
inverted the “male gaze” by transforming women into active participants, acknowledg-
ing their entitlement to their “female gaze” rights of male bodies (Li, 2020; Liang, 2022;
Thornham & Pengpeng, 2010; Yang & Bao, 2012; Yang & Xu, 2017). The proliferation
of effeminate, soft, and attractive masculine representations in transnational East Asian
popular culture, which Jung (2010) refers to as “chogukjeok (transnational) pan-East
Asian soft masculinity,” has also heavily influenced Chinese popular culture and
includes Korean kkonminam (flower boys), Japanese bishō nen (beautiful boy) and
Chinese xiao xian rou (little fresh meat). The phrase “little fresh meat” reflects the rever-
sal of gender power relations, whereby men are expected to be young, inexperienced,
and available for sex and love (“fresh”) with healthy and desirable bodies (“meat”)
(Li, 2020; Song, 2022a; Wen, 2021). These cultural representations exist to fulfill
women’s desires, and women can also purchase care and concern provided by male
virtual lovers for emotional satisfaction (Tan & Shi, 2021).
The expansion of the sexual economy has influenced the evolution of local otome
games. In the early 2000s, unauthorized versions of otome games began to filter from
Japan into the Chinese market (Yang & Xu, 2017). Most of the early Japanese otome
games were played on gaming consoles (Kim, 2009), and the genre spread somewhat
more slowly than its anime, comic, manga, and drama equivalents (Ganzon, 2019). It
4 Games and Culture 0(0)

was not until the 2010s that Chinese game developers were able to invent local otome
games. Similar to other types of anime comic game and novel (ACGN) cultures, the
Chinese otome game fandom culture “was negotiated by both the ‘original’ fans and
the transferring fans, who entered the fandom with their own traditions cultivated in
other fandoms” (Yin, 2021, p. 461). Specifically, the Japanese otome game genre
(Liu & Lai, 2022) and the aesthetic beauty standards of Korean popular entertainment
were embodied by the in-game male (Song, 2022a), as well as the technological,
social, and highly datafied norms of Chinese fan communities (Guo & Evans, 2020;
Yin, 2020; Yin & Xie, 2021). Local otome games and their female gamers were
heavily criticized by the local media, which incited a moral panic over the genre’s
potential to influence young women’s romantic ideals and encourage antisocial behav-
ior and rejection of marriage (Pu & Xiang, 2022; Wu et al., 2020).
As the field of Chinese fandom cultural studies gradually took shape in the late 2010s,
different approaches emerged to examining the overlapping and sometimes contradic-
tory cultural trends. First, previous studies have examined the diminishing gap
between producers and consumers, and the increase of fandom networks with various
types of audiovisual texts, influenced by the rapid advancement of digital technology
(Fung, 2009; Zhang, 2016). Second, Queer Theory has been used as a means to acknowl-
edge the participatory productivity and creative performativity of BL and Girls’ Love
fandom, in spite of fandom culture’s heteronormative or homonormative limitations
(Bao, 2020; L. Yang & Bao, 2012; Zhao, 2017). It has also been noted that the state-
driven “positive energy” mainstream agenda (or “melody”)3 has significantly shaped
the increasingly narrowing expressions of BL elements in recent mass media represen-
tation (Hu & Wang, 2021; Ng & Li, 2020). Another line of inquiry, influenced by
Marxist theory, critiques the platformization of popular culture (de Kloet et al., 2019;
Nieborg & Poell, 2018), the fandomization of digital culture (Fung, 2019) and emotional
capitalism (Yin, 2021). Such research observes the impact of dataization, namely the
hegemonic effect of social media platforms and the algorithmic culture on fandom prac-
tices (Yin, 2020, 2021). Previous studies on otome games, then, has mainly examined
the relationships between otome games and female gamers’ romantic ideals (Song &
Fox, 2016), the emotional labor invested by female players in otome games (Ganzon,
2017, 2019), and various narrative forms of otome games (Saito, 2021). Like other
forms of ACGN cultures, Chinese otome culture “is always a dynamic and negotiated
one, dealing with complex and interconnected conversations among multiple partici-
pants, values, norms, and performances” (Yin, 2021, p. 461).
However, little is known about the efforts Chinese women take to protect their
rights to play otome games and their sexual rights to express themselves freely. To
fill in this gap, the women-centered live-experience feminist approach is of use
(Kong, 2006). In a Foucauldian sense, this approach rejects seeing power as a totalistic
whole and seeing resistance as the coordinated rejection of oppressive structures
(Danaher et al., 2000). Instead, it emphasizes the idea of micropower and micro-
resistance, which refers to power and resistance as relations between various individ-
uals, groups, organizations, which changes with circumstances and time.
Lai and Liu 5

Theoretical Frameworks
Foucault’s practice of freedom (Foucault, 1987) further offers a means of thinking
about how otome gamers negotiate censorship-based panopticism to achieve a sense
of sexual freedom, via carrying out micro-resistance (Foucault, 1986, 1995[1977]).
Foucault (1987) emphasizes that humans are always able to exercise freedom within
multifaceted and multilayered power relations, as opposed to abstract notions of
freedom without any discipline or control (Mendieta, 2010). In his analysis of
Foucault’s practiced freedom concept, Mendieta (2010) writes:

Freedom may be primordially creative freedom, when it relates to the games of truth […];
when freedom relates to governmentality, it is transgressive; when freedom refers to the
techniques of the self, it is agonistic. Freedom is never one, it is never stable, it is never an
a priori, nor is it ever a transcendental. It is always contingent, it is always to be practiced,
it is always discursive and relational, it is intransigent and recalcitrant. (p.123)

The Foucauldian understanding of the “creative” “contingent”, never-stable, prac-

ticed freedom (Mendieta, 2010) theoretically leads to the development of the idea of
relational autonomy (Mackenzie & Stoljar, 2000; Millar, 2018) and the women-
centered live-experience feminist approach (Kong, 2006). Relational autonomy
departs from the traditional idea of literal individualist autonomy, which emphasizes
the freedom to be one’s own person, to live one’s life according to one’s own
reasons and not as a result of manipulative or distorting external forces (Kant, 1797
[1999]). Mackenzie and Stoljar (2000) understand relational autonomy as the
freedom that is contingent upon limited opportunities, social relationships, and cultural
determinants.
On a theoretical level, relational autonomy criticizes the dominant, individualistic
sociological understanding of autonomy. Relational freedom values flexibility, coop-
eration, mutual responsibility, and concern for others (Dove et al., 2017). On an empir-
ical level, relational autonomy has informed sociological research on how marginal
groups negotiate with layered disadvantages. For instance, in Millar’s (2018) ethno-
graphic study of self-employed ragpickers in Rio’s garbage dump in Brazil, she under-
stands ragpickers’ choice of informal employment without rigid schedules and
discipline as a survival strategy and thus demonstrates a form of relational autonomy.
The women-centered live-experience feminist approach (Kong, 2006), then, pays
special attention to women’s micro-resistance, against a sexual double standard,
denying women’s sexual rights while granting that of men.
Our research is indebted to the literature referenced for situating the study of
female gamers’ sexual agency within the expanding sexual and cultural economy
that capitalizes on heterosexual women’s consumptive power. This research
focuses on how game developers and female gamers navigate state censorship and
cultural taboos related to women’s consumption of male bodies and protect their
sexual entertainment rights.
6 Games and Culture 0(0)

Method
This research focuses on the most popular Chinese otome game, Mr. Love, as a case
study. Our research consisted of two parts. The first part included a 5-year participant
observation of the online spaces within and surrounding the game Mr. Love, along
with our step-by-step “walkthrough” examinations of the game Mr. Love itself
(Duguay, 2014; Light et al., 2016). The online spaces in which we carried out partic-
ipant observation included:

1. The official Sina Weibo4 account of Mr. Love and the five male NPC accounts run
by the game company Paper Games.
2. Fan-run Sina Weibo accounts and forums posting gameplay experience and game-
related news; we believe participant observations on fan-run social media spaces are
most likely to elicit gamers’ opinions (Chen, 2021; Hodkinson, 2016).
3. The Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Lofter5, where gamers of Mr. Love publish fan
fiction (Lothian, 2011; Price, 2019).

The study also employs the walkthrough method, to explore the Mr. Love game itself.
Developed by Light et al. (2016), the walkthrough method facilitates critical analysis
of a given app or digital product as a sociotechnical artifact. In game studies, the walk-
through method allows researchers to see a game and its surrounding sociocultural and
technical factors as simultaneously shaping and becoming products of each other (Liu,
2019). In this study, the researchers gathered data for analysis and documented screen-
shots during everyday gameplay of Mr. Love. All the original data was in Chinese but
later translated into English for analysis by the author team.
The second set of research data draws upon our in-depth interviews with 13
Mr. Love gamers. Our long-term online participant observation allowed us to
connect with more than 500 Mr. Love gamers. To ensure that our interviewees had suf-
ficient immersive experience of the game, we selected only those who had played for at
least an hour a day for at least 6 months. All our participants are women. Their average
annual gaming spending on Mr. Love ranges between 2,000 and 20,000 yuan (approx-
imately US $296 to US $2,960 ). Their average age was 27.5; they were residents of
Guangzhou, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. Of the 13 participants, five were university stu-
dents, while the rest worked in infotech and as game company staff, nongovernmental
organization workers, or new media promoters.

Research Findings
Game developers negotiating with state censorship
Since 2010, there has been an empirically observable rise in the number of Chinese
women-oriented cultural products, including television dramas, films, comics, and
otome games, with the intention of “selling male sexuality to heterosexual women”
Lai and Liu 7

(Li, 2020). All these women-oriented cultural products need to negotiate with, if not to
resist, the conservative-leaning socialist state’s media censorship in a certain way. For
example, BL television dramas have pioneered the “juxtaposition” narrative method
(Chen et al., 2021; Ge, 2022; Xu, 2013), which skillfully combines a bromance plot
with the mainstream state-supported tone of nationalism, collectivism, and socialism
(Gow, 2017; Xu, 2013). To further mask the sensitive same-sex material, several tele-
vision programs have replaced same-sex romance plotlines with those involving brother-
hood instead (Hu & Wang, 2021; Ng & Li, 2020). This “brotherhood”-centered television
drama conforms to what the socialist state calls shehui zhuyi zhu xuanlv, or the “socialist
mainstream melody”, while maintaining a certain degree of imaginative space for their audi-
ence (Ge, 2022; Hu & Wang, 2021; Ng & Li, 2020). As with otome games, they deliver a
more intricate audio, visual, and textual system and a multilayered narrative convergence
(Jenkins, 2006a; Taylor, 2006; Trepte & Reinecke, 2010); thus, the game developers’ nego-
tiation strategies, which are dependent on all types of mediated expressions, are far more
complex.
On a visual and textual level, digital games such as Mr. Love have to de-sexualize
the games’ storyline and sexual material to avoid being labeled as a sexual game by the
state’s censorship bureau, as sexual games are deemed to be “damaging to young
people” (Jacobs, 2012; Song, 2022; Wang & Ding, 2022). As we explained earlier,
in Mr. Love, the female protagonist has romantic encounters with four extremely good-
looking and lovable NPCs. Despite the erotic appeal of the four NPCs, the game’s
textual plot does not depict any sex. There are very few incidences of kissing
between the female avatar and male NPCs, much less sexual innuendo (than one
would find in a male-centered game) (Saito, 2021), and no sexually explicit scenes.
There are a few romantic scenarios in which the female avatar and male NPCs have
sexual chemistry, but this never leads to intercourse. For example, there is a situation in
the storyline of Li Zeyan (also called Victor in the English version of Mr. Love as
below), who is a tall, handsome, and physically robust businessman. Due to a
storm, Li Zeyan’s flight is canceled and the female avatar, who is on a business trip,
runs into him in the airport hotel lobby. Aware that Li Zeyan is unable to get a
flight, she suggests that he stay with her in her hotel room. They are shown lying
on the same bed, sharing one earpiece to listen to music as they play truth or dare.
The female avatar declares her love for Li Zeyan before sneaking up on him. Li
Zeyan responds playfully, grasping her hands with one hand and placing the other
around her waist. At the height of this romantic scene, the tale abruptly ends
without any further depictions of physical closeness (Figures 1 and 2).
In response to the warning about explicit material, Mr. Love employs graphic
tactics to conceal sexual content, highlighting effects to conceal the female avatar’s
bare body parts or having the female avatar dress to conceal her body being the
most common. Mr. Love’s producers issued an apology on the game’s official Sina
Weibo microblogging account in early 2021, after authorities demanded rectification
of the game’s “inappropriate” content. The original illustration in Figure 3 was said
to contain “inappropriate” material by censorship authorities. As shown in Figure 4,
8 Games and Culture 0(0)

Figure 1. Sexless storyline in the Doomsday Date (Caption: I crept up on Victor and nudged his
back cushion.).

Mr. Love’s graphics team added highlighting effects to the female avatar and reduced
the amount of skin on display. In Figure 5, the female avatar now wears black pants,
finally satisfying the censorship rules. Despite the rigorous nature of censorship, it is
worth noting that it is through a male-centered lens that the depiction of the uncovered
female body is deemed sexually explicit. However, the true sexual material attracting
the female players are the male bodies.
On an audio-textual level, Mr. Love has developed ways to continue enhancing the sex
appeal while complying with the state’s restrictions, namely, “voice porn” is added to the
soundtrack of the game. “Voice porn,” which refers to the deliberate addition of sounds
and human voices associated with sexual desire, such as whispering, panting, sighs, and
the sounds of garments rustling is a typical feature of Japanese BL Drama soundtracks
and soft pornography in Japan (Ishida, 2019; Starr et al., 2020). Mr. Love has added
“voice porn” to the game since voices are more difficult to censor than text and graphics.
Lai and Liu 9

Figure 2. Sexless storyline in the Doomsday Date (Caption: He must’ve anticipated it. He
grabbed my hand and put an arm around my waist.).

To this end, Mr. Love hired professional male voice actors to perform the voices of the four
NPCs, all of whom have performed in other women-centered games, comics, and audio-
books. As an example, the voice actor Wu Lei, who performed the character Li Zeyan in
Mr. Love, is one of the most prominent voice actors to have shaped the sound space of
women-centered cultural products. He is known for his gentle, rich, baritone, and often
sexually arrogant voice. Over the course of his career, which began in 2004, Wu Lei
has participated in over seven films, six games, and some BL comics and audiobooks.
In their research exploring the working experience of male live streamers in China, Tan
et al. (2022) found that to attract current female audiences, male live streamers need to
adapt their performance and voice to avoid being overly youni (“greasy”),6 or sleazy.
We found that the same applies to the voiceovers in games: they need to naturally fit
the characters’ personalities, and voice actors effectively perform according to the game
storyline. Then the “fizzy voice”, which is currently popular on Chinese video sharing
10 Games and Culture 0(0)

Figure 3. Original illustration of intimate scenes.

platforms, can be transformed into a distinctive vocal style associated with masculine
attractiveness (Mei & Starr, 2021).
In 2021, Mr. Love released a limited premium gaming mode called “Right Beside
You ASMR,” in which players could access sensual recordings of male voice actors
upon upgrading and spending more money. The themes of the recordings include
the male voice actors reading bedtime stories, massaging the female avatar’s head,
and cleaning their ears, which purposely lead to the imaginative stages of bodily explo-
ration and erotic flirting.
Last but not least, the game’s public relations team has been strategic in cooperating
with state organizations to further demonstrate loyalty to the party state and their align-
ment with the “positive energy” agenda (Chen et al., 2021; Chen & Wang, 2019).
A seemingly ironic case in point is the game company’s cooperation with the
Lai and Liu 11

Figure 4. Intimate scenes censored by the authorities (First-round rectification).

Hangzhou Public Security Bureau to launch a video featuring the four Mr. Love’s
NPCs and an official cartoon police character. The animated video aims at helping
the police by promoting public safety to reduce crime and the fear of crime.7 That
said, the developers of otome games have demonstrated that micro-resistance,
within a social framework marked by a sexual double standard that restricts
women’s rights while permitting men’s, can be covert, indirect, and come in a
variety of forms through their use of many different negotiation strategies.

Gamers Protecting Their “female-gaze” Rights

Using the women-centered, live-experience feminist approach (Kong, 2006), we con-
ducted in-depth interviews and long-term online participant observation to discover
12 Games and Culture 0(0)

Figure 5. Intimate scenes censored by the authorities (Second-round rectification).

that the everyday post-feminism logic emphasizing “female-gaze” rights and individ-
ualist consumptive rights has a strong influence on players’ understandings of their
involvement with the game Mr. Love (Tan, Liu, & Gao, 2021; Tan & Shi, 2021).
Faced with the conflict between the commercially driven game creators and the autho-
ritarian government censorship of sexual content (Ho et al., 2018), Mr. Love gamers
have developed various micro-resistant methods to exercise their sexual rights while
protecting the game from being censored.
After the state’s warning and penalty in game-related online communities, players
cautioned one another against posting “inappropriate” Mr. Love-related comments on
social media, for fear that it may attract the attention of the officials and result in further
removal of their beloved, sexy storylines. Mr. Love players also accepted the game’s
tight self-censorship in order to continue playing. For instance, following Mr. Love’s
August 11, 2021 release of cards, in which the game company strategically include
highly intimate scenes in graphic designs only in the evolved versions, one player
posted the following message on Sina Weibo: “Please refrain from releasing screen-
shots of the new evolved game-cards! They will be censored by Sina! Please don’t
Lai and Liu 13

show them anymore! Keep them hidden! If Mr. Love is reported, it will be to our detri-
ment! The gaming experience deteriorates when games are reported!” Another similar
post (August 11, 2021) stated, “Hush hush hush. I’ll go insane if censors force the char-
acters to wear fewer revealing outfits again!” Some players shared contrasting views on
Sina Weibo, declaring cleanliness after censoring the new cards by saying: “New cards
presented in this round are presumably safe from censors.”
So, how do gamers circulate and enjoy game screenshots under such strict censor-
ship? Mrs. Li told us that gamers like her have learnt to share compressed file packages
via cloud storage links and was forthcoming about explaining the naming strategies:
“We would name the compressed packages things like “study materials for the
IELT exanimation” or che (“car”). IELT is an abbreviation for International English
Language Testing; and che is from the local slang term kai che, which means
making pornographic jokes. As evidenced by the interviews, the participant felt a
certain sense of joy and pride about these innovative naming strategies bypassing
censorship.
In our interviews, gamers also expressed their allegiance to the game and their will-
ingness to earn more money to yang (“provide for”) the game. Traditionally used to
describe men providing for their wives, the term yang has assumed a new meaning
in this domain: as a women-centered consumptive power over their male virtual
lovers. As Tan and Shi (2021) argue in their study of Chinese women who purchase
“virtual loving services”: “exhibit[ing] a novel mode of womanhood characterized
by historically unprecedented self-confidence, a willingness to openly articulate and
purchase what they want, and a high degree of mediatization (p. 2213).” Zhu, a
32-year-old Guangzhou resident, is a typical example of a woman who spends a
great deal of money on Mr. Love and exemplifies a consumption-based micro-
resistance. Presently employed by a local infotech business, where she has a senior
position and earns over one million yuan (approximately US $147,880) annually,
Zhu spends tens of thousands of yuan on the game every year. Zhu regards her expen-
ditures on the game as expenditures for herself; moreover, she said that she considers
family-related expenditure as a waste of money. This attitude has resulted from her
being badly disappointed by a brother in the past. Some years ago, when she had
earned her first large sum of money, Zhu purchased a house for her mother in her
hometown. Zhu’s mother allowed Zhu’s older brother to move in without Zhu’s
consent and Zhu’s brother, her sister-in-law, and their two children live rent-free in
her mother’s home. Expressing her dissatisfaction with both her brother’s incompe-
tence and her mother’s eccentricities. Zhu said: “I came to realize that it’s really not
necessary to be a filial daughter—you pay for all the men in the family. That’s
useless. Why not spend money on yourself and a good-looking man, right?” Zhu’s
rationalization of her heavy spending on the game is clearly strongly related to individ-
ualist consumption, and her rejection of traditionally defined womanhood (Tan & Shi,
2021).
Another typical example comes from Wang, a 29-year-old Guangzhou-based
woman working for a local nongovernmental organization. Since the beginning of
14 Games and Culture 0(0)

the COVID-19 epidemic, Wang had primarily worked from home and characterized
her daily routine as follows: “I normally wake up at 5am and play games for a few
hours before work. After a few hours of work, I spend the remainder of my day
playing games.” Wang does not make as much as Zhu, but she has created an
online players’ network, and dedicates herself to “advocating for” Mr. Love and, in
her words, her nv ning quanli (“female gaze rights”). Wang persuades other gamers
to pay for the game of Mr. Love. Zhu said: “These days, nv ning (‘the female
gaze’) is a basic right. We need to protect our ‘female-gaze’ rights or we’ll lose
more.” Clearly, Wang’s experience working for a nongovernmental organization has
provided her with the awareness to fight for her own rights and the social ability to
establish online networks for the cause.
Furthermore, some Mr. Love gamers have written and created fan-erotica picking
up the sexless storylines from where they leave off in the game. Existing research
shows that unofficially made and circulated erotic slash fiction or BL fan fiction
(Chang & Tian, 2021; Martin, 2012; L. Yang & Bao, 2012; Zhang, 2016) has been
a popular way for Chinese women “to play with patriarchal gender constructions”
as the fictional space “provides escapism, and creates aesthetics that offer an alternative
to clichéd heterosexual romantic storytelling” (Zhang, 2016, p. 249). The same is true
for otome game fan fiction. For instance, in the sexless game storyline of Mr. Love, the
female avatar walks with Zhou Qiluo (one of the male NPCs) and their dog when the
dog suddenly jumps into a small puddle of water and becomes soaked. The two char-
acters go home to wash the dog in the bathroom. After washing the dog, Zhou Qiluo
invites the female avatar to take a bath with him. The game text stops abruptly when
the two kiss, and no further sexual scenes are shown. To make up for the sexless
in-game scene, one gamer posted an erotic fan fiction featuring the same characters,
settings, and storylines in the fanfic archive of Archive of Our Own (Dalton, 2012;
Fathallah, 2018). The free space of Archive of Our Own allows Mr. Love gamers to
write the following, talking to the female avatar in the second person:

Zhou Qiluo gently lifts the hem of your shirt. The water-soaked fabric is cold against your
skin as it cools down, but in its place is Zhou Qiluo’s warm palm. The red marks left after
a love bite on the collarbone highlight his sovereignty over you. The fire descends to his
chest and belly. He drops to one knee, his lips plundering your inner thigh repeatedly. You
shiver uncontrollably, a shiver of excitement. As Zhou Qiluo rears up, he touches your
earlobe, his already alluring voice tinged with desire. “Turn around.” You turn around
obediently, but not wanting to look at the clean wall, you turn your head and reach out
to cup his face. Zhou Qiluo’s head rests on your shoulder, and his long blonde hair
rubs against your neck, strand by strand, shaggy and carrying his heartbeat. When he
enters you, the void inside your body is gradually filled […]8

There is also a plethora of fan fiction taking non-textual forms. Mr. Love gamers
also published self-made pornographic soundtracks consisting of the male NPC’s
voices. One is a fan-made video post on Bilibili (a popular Chinese video sharing
Lai and Liu 15

platform). The local slang term kai che (“a dirty joke”) appears in its title called
“Mr. Love- The CEO Li Zeyan kai che!”. This video splices together clips of Li’s
deep, sexy intonations from the game, with the addition of Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love
(from 2015’s erotic movie, Fifty Shades of Grey. In this clip, Li is engaged in
bodily exploration and erotic flirting with the female avatar:

[Li is whispering in your ear] I have to remind you: everything you’re doing to me, I will
do back to you later (sexual handcuffs sound effect). You think I’m joking? Try it and
you’ll see (Li’s gasp). I warned you. You’re asking for trouble. You need to pay the
price for stroking me (Li’s gasp and tearing clothes sound effect). Hold me tighter.
Perhaps I’ll be lenient and let you off the hook this time (Li’s gasp and kissing).
You’re not sleepy? Then let’s do something else (Li’s kissing). Okay, game over. Are
you ready for your punishment? […]. Dummy, I’ll give you whatever you want […]9

As shown by these cases, female gamers of Mr. Love have formed an alliance with
the game in reaction to the harsh government censorship. As such, female gamers have
learned that sex rights won’t require a whole political revolution to achieve but a terrain
of micro-struggle. They have also demonstrated their consumptive agency by provid-
ing for the game and adding fan fiction to the game’s storyline in the way they choose,
showing their relational autonomy.

Concluding Remarks
As we have shown above, women-centered storylines, emotional entertainment, and
sexual fulfillment are central to the gameplay experiences of Chinese female
gamers. Despite the party-state’s instructions to motivate private game companies,
financiers and create public funding programs in favor of entrepreneurs’ financial
needs (Huang, 2022; Keane & Chen, 2019), censorship still significantly suppresses
the gamers’ sexual experience (Jacobs, 2012). Under Xi Jinping’s “more authoritarian
regime” (Ho et al., 2018, p. 28) and the recently introduced game-related censorship,
both games and gamers continue to seek ways to protect their “female gaze” rights. As
such, contemporary Chinese women have entwined their leisure activities, intimate
connections of gaming and sexual experience with negotiations with game developers
and the state’s censorship, where gamers’ relational autonomy are prominent (but
understudied). Our research ethos has embraced the Foucauldian understanding that
freedom “is always to be achieved, sustained, preserved and wrestled from the
games of power in which it always circulates like blood in a living organism
(Mendieta, 2010, p. 123).”
Ironically, the precarity of the gamers’ negotiation with the party-state’s censorship
makes them the most theoretically productive in a conversation with existing research
criticizing cultural products that aim at capitalizing on the “female gaze” (Li, 2020;
Liang, 2022; G. Song, 2022a; Wang et al., 2019; Yang, 2020). This criticism is partic-
ularly focused on pointing out that the neoliberal consumerist culture in contemporary
16 Games and Culture 0(0)

China has constructed a regime centering on women’s consumptive capacity rather

than promoting the cause of gender equality. The challenge here is to recognize the
progressive elements of Chinese gameplayers’ alignment with games, and their
belief that spending on games is spending on themselves, otherwise they would be
exploited by their patriarchal families.
Finally, our research also outlines the rich and multilayered game texts afforded by
emerging new media technologies, which have allowed gamers to carry out micro-
resistance to engage with their sexual fantasies. The highly interactive feature of
video games with multiple story paths and hidden clues allows some players to
create space for alternative expressions under tight censorship (Hu et al., 2022).
These wide, open, evolving online spaces also enhance all kinds of female sexual
fantasy via out-of-game fan participatory experience (Jenkins, 2006b). The richness
of gameplay has long been recognized by game researchers; what we want to bring
to scholarly attention is the significant progressive potential of these rich texts and
out-of-game affordances in facilitating women game developers’ and gamers’
diverse micro-resistance to state censorship. When we turn our research attention to
this aspect, we find a strong sense of home and belonging that encompasses both
gamers and game developers in their understanding of gameplay and female sexual
fantasies.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: The paper is supported by the Chinese Ministry of
Education Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project, titled “Researching the
Communication Model and Effectiveness of Live Streaming E-Commerce in the Context of
Rural Revitalization” (22YJC860021).

ORCID iD
Tingting Liu https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4717-6519

Notes
1. For further details about the 2011 “cleaning up the Internet” campaign, see https://www.gov.
cn/gzdt/2011-08/25/content_1932744.htm; for the 2014 “cleaning up the Internet” campaign,
see https://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2014-09/20/content_2753319.htm; and for the 2021 “clean-
ing up the Internet” campaign, see https://www.cac.gov.cn/2021-08/26/c_1631563902354
584.htm (visited on August 4, 2021).
2. For further details, visit https://weibo.com/3248438592/K3gcMxfIZ and https://weibo.com/
3248438592/K8h5IzlWE (visited on August 3, 2021).
Lai and Liu 17

3. Positive energy has been promoted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since 2012,
which encourages youth to pursue personal success to simultaneously improve social contri-
butions and maintain social harmony.
4. Sina Weibo, the largest Chinese microblogging and social media platform, has become a
central hub of fandom culture.
5. Lofter is a popular microblogging and social media platform. For more details, visit its home-
page https://i.lofter.com/.
6. For further interpretation on youni (“greasy”), see https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001149/
meet-chinas-new-fall-guys-greasy-middle-aged-men (visited on December 6, 2022)
7. For more information, see Tender companionship to protect the public safety: the cooperation
between Mr. Love and Hangzhou Public Security Bureau, via https://www.sohu.com/a/
356875394_523002 (visited August 4, 2021)
8. The fan fiction can be accessed via https://archiveofourown.org/works/39811479 (visited
August 4, 2021).
9. The fan-made video (with accompanying pornographic soundtrack) can be accessed via
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1wY411E74D?spm_id from=333.337.search-card.all.
click&vd_source=3a8544fdb9619ed14e56082d8b631094 (visited August 4, 2021).

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Author Biographies
Zishan Lai is a PhD candidate in the Department of Communication and New Media
at the National University of Singapore. Her interests include digital intimacy, East
Asian popular culture and fandom, lying at the intersection of feminism and media
& cultural studies. Her on going dissertation project is about understanding how
Chinese women’s love and intimacy relate to the otome (female-targeted dating sim-
ulation) games, and to the political economy in which they are embedded.
Tingting Liu (PhD) is an Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and
Communication at Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. Her research interests
center on new media, gender, sexuality, and their intersections. Recent publications
include peer-review journal articles on China Information, Continuum: Journal of
Media & Cultural Studies, Television & New Media, and Feminist Media Studies.

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