How Women Construct Emotional Identity and Empower Themselves Through Romantic Mobile Games in China

Abstract

In contemporary China, Otome mobile games—interactive romance simulations designed for female audiences—have emerged as significant cultural spaces where women engage in emotional self-construction, empowerment, and subjective expression. This paper explores how Chinese women utilize Otome games to articulate emotional resonance, affirm their self-worth through consumption, and navigate new forms of digital intimacy. Far from being mere escapism, Otome games provide an interactive emotional landscape where players exercise narrative authorship, rehearse relational agency, and cultivate emotional self-efficacy. Through monetized engagement, players transform consumption into acts of feminist self-assertion, challenging traditional gender norms and reframing emotional labor as valuable and autonomous. These digital platforms foster communal forms of emotional solidarity, enabling women to collectively reimagine intimacy, desire, and identity in ways that contest both mainstream media representations and entrenched patriarchal structures. By analyzing these dynamics, this study reveals how Otome games serve as profound mediums for cultural negotiation, emotional meaning-making, and the redefinition of female subjectivity within China’s rapidly evolving digital and social landscape.