Why so many women find heartthrobs in virtual reality. Is it a worrying trend?
Yunnan Province resident Xiao Cheng, disillusioned with male relationships, has a boyfriend. She spends an hour with him after work every day but never holds his hand.
His name is Caleb Xia. He's a 25-year-old, 6.1-feet tall airline pilot. He isn't real.
Xia is one of the five main characters in the mobile otome game "Love and Deepspace," developed by Shanghai-based Papergames. Xiao has developed a cyber romance with him.
"I'm disappointed in men around me, or real men in general," said Xiao, who describes herself as a "desperate straight woman." "The game sets up a comfort zone for me. The characters are men, yet I don't need to face the problems of real-life relationships."
Xia Yizhou from "Love and Deepspace"
In the "Love and Deepspace" game, players can customize the voice of the heroine character.
Before seeing an advertisement for the game last September, Xiao said she never engaged in such activities before, but once she took the plunge, she quickly became obsessed.
"When I first started to play 'Love and Deepspace,' I was going through a rough patch," she said. "I had just graduated, and my family was pushing me hard to take the civil service examination. It was like the heroine in the game, who was also under pressure to take a qualification exam. She turned to Xia for comfort, and so did I."
Xiao is just one of the hundreds of millions of people in China who are obsessed with otome games, which have been fascinating women from teenagers to middle-aged for nearly 10 years, although the video games have been around for decades.
The game "Angelique," developed by Japanese developer Koei Tecmo in 1994, is believed to have been the first otome game in the world.
"Angelique," released by Japanese-based Koei Tecmo in 1994
For a long time in China, the popularity of otome games was limited partly because they were mostly console games. That changed in 2017, when Papergames released a mobile version entitled "Mr. Love: Queen's Choice."
The game soon became a hit and has attracted millions of downloads.
At the time, the mobile otome game market was styled in two-dimensional Japanese animation. "Love and Deepspace" took the genre to a new level, with a 3-D format.
Players like Xiao know the difference between real and virtual men, but some take these games more seriously than others. Many refuse to play otome games with men because they will never fall in love with the male characters.
Players connect with the digital heroine – the character that represents the players in a game. The game "Light and Night," released by Tencent, was involved in a 2022 scandal when the heroine was suspected to have been patterned on one of the game's developers. That caused a backlash among players, who claimed that they were hurt because it felt that they were "dating the character of another woman and unconsciously becoming a third party in the relationship."
Although players can accept that game heroines, who represent players, have defined images, they have rebelled against characters based on real women.
Later Aurora Studio, developer of the game, issued a statement claiming that the staff weren't part of the story design and had already left the team when the controversial content was created.
After otome games became popular, an auxiliary trend developed. Cosplayers were commissioned to dress up as favorite game characters and go on real-life dates with players. Female cosplayers are typically sought to dress up as men out of concerns for personal safety.
Some cosplayers dress up as game idols to go on actual dates with players.
Chloe Gao, a short-video editor in Guangzhou, told Shanghai Daily she booked such a service, arranging for a female cosplayer to dress up as her "boyfriend" Rafayel Qi, another character in "Love and Deepspace."
She said she stipulated that the cosplayer mimic the movements and language of her virtual beloved.
"She talked, acting as Qi, with me for days ahead of our date so we could become familiar with each other before meeting," Gao said.
The "date" included going to museum, watching a movie, taking pictures in a park and then having a dinner. Apart from the commission fee that of 450 yuan (US$61), Gao also covered all the expenses.
"It was all very professional," she said. "I almost forgot that she was a cosplayer. I just felt that Qi was by my side, very gentle and tender. It was one of the best days in my life."
Gao is a relatively sensible player compared to more extreme examples.
A user on the Xiaohongshu (Red) platform, who goes by the online name "Carved by Peace and Love" is studying in the US. During a month-long trip home to China, she commissioned 26 cosplayers at a cost of about 110,000 yuan.
"If I hadn't spent the money on cosplayer commissions, I would have spent it on other things," she said in a post. "I met up with some very good cosplayers, but after I calmed down a bit, I began wondering what I had really gained."
The behavior of otome game players elicits a wide variety of opinions from people observing the trend.
Cheng Yan, mother of a teenage girl, said she has no qualms about her daughter's involvement because the games make her a happier person.
"My daughter found new friends through the game," Cheng said. "She also makes her own otome-related merchandise and runs her own Xiaohongshu account to communicate with other players. As long as she doesn't become too obsessed, it's fine with me."
Many players get involved in making their own otome merchandise.
Cheng even went to a shopping center to collect cards of her daughter's virtual heartthrob while her daughter was in school.
"Nowadays, many young people, especially the only child in a family, are lonely and need such an emotional outlet," she said. "And if they find that in a virtual world, we should understand and support them."
Sociologists are a bit wary.
Shen Yifei, associate professor of sociology at Fudan University, published a thesis entitled "Self-love: A New Type of Romantic Narrative and Transformation of Intimacy in Otome Games."
She noted that otome games are rooted in a money-making realm where players often pay to unlock more stories in relationships that emphasize positive feedback, equality and self-development.
At a birthday event for Rafayel Qi, a character in "Love and Deepspace," players' well-wishes solidly cover an entire wall.
"However, this emotional practice may exacerbate the entanglement of emotions with economics," the thesis says. "It fails to dismantle real gender inequalities, and offers happiness without complexities. It seems sole purpose of love has become happiness. The complex emotions that bring about ups and downs, keep one sleepless at night and prompt profound introspection have been excluded from the realm of love. What will be the costs? It may take time for us to truly comprehend it."
At the same time, Shen wrote that she believes this form of "self-love romance" will be become more common in the future as digital technologies develop further.
"There should be more studies to help us better understand the influence of technology, media and consumption on intimate relationships," she wrote.
