Skip to main content Skip to main navigation menu Skip to site footer
Articles
Published: 2019-11-11

Growing the otome game market: Fan labor and otome game communities online

Concordia University, mLab, 501 Faubourg Building, 1250 Rue Guy Montreal, QC
otome games postfeminism women and games fan blogging Japanese games

Abstract

Otome games are a niche category of Japanese games marketed toward women. Outside its country of origin and the infrastructure of the anime media mix, its predominantly female player communities traditionally have defined these games as those that feature romance or dating simulation. In this paper, I look into how fan bloggers talk about their own work in marketing and distributing otome games beyond Japan. In the case of otome game fan blogging, the ability to shape discussions surrounding otome games also relies upon maintaining the image of players as good consumers. Although this work focuses on the practice of fan blogging, it is part of an ongoing study on otome games in English and otome game players outside Japan.

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

References

  1. Ahmed, S. (2010). Happy objects. In G. Seigworth & M. Gregg (Eds.), The affect theory reader (pp 29–51). Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press.
  2. Aksys Games. (2012). Hakuoki: The Demon of the Fleeting Blossom [Playstation Portable]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  3. Aksys Games. (2013). Sweet Fuse: At Your Side [Playstation Portable]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  4. Aksys Games. (2015). Code Realize: The Guardian of Rebirth [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  5. Aksys Games. (2015). Norn9 [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  6. Aksys Games. (2017). Bad Apple Wars [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  7. Aksys Games. (2017). Collar x Malice [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  8. Aksys Games. (2017). Period Cube: Shackles of Amadeus [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  9. Aksys Games. (2018). 7scarlet [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  10. Aksys Games. (2018). Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA, USA: Aksys Games.
  11. Aksys Games. (2018). Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk [Playstation Vita]. Torrance, CA: Aksys Games.
  12. Anable, A. (2013). Casual games, time management, and the work of affect. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 2 [online]. https://doi.org/10.7264/N3ZW1HVD
  13. Andlauer, L. (2018). Pursuing one’s own prince: Love’s fantasy in otome game contents and fan practice. Mechademia, 11(1), 166–183.
  14. Ang, I. (1985). Watching Dallas: Soap opera and the melodramatic imagination. New York, NY, USA: Routledge.
  15. Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at large: Cultural dimensions of globalization. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
  16. Banet-Weiser, S. (2011). Branding the post-feminist self: Girls’ video production and YouTube. In M. C. Kearney (Ed.), Mediated girlhoods: New explorations of girls’ media culture (pp. 277–294). New York, NY, USA: Peter Lang.
  17. Banet-Weiser, S. (2012). Authentic: The politics of ambivalence in a brand culture. New York, NY, USA: NYU Press.
  18. Bennet, T., & Woollacott, J. (1987). Bond and beyond: The political career of a popular hero. New York, NY, USA: Methuen.
  19. Berlant, L. (2008). The female complaint: The unfinished business of sentimentality in American culture. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press.
  20. Bolton, K., & Bautista, M. L. (2004). Philippine English: Tensions and transitions. World Englishes, 23(1), 1–5.
  21. Brocolli. (2010). Uta no Prince Sama [PlayStation Portable (PSP)]. Tokyo, Japan: Brocolli.
  22. Browne, K. (2005). Snowball sampling: Using social networks to research non‐heterosexual women. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 8(1), 47–60.
  23. Busse, K. (2013). Geek hierarchies, boundary policing, and the gendering of the good fan. Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 10(1), 73–91.
  24. Cheritz. (2016). Mystic Messenger [Android]. Seoul, South Korea: Cheritz.
  25. Chess, S. (2012). Going with the Flo: Diner Dash and feminism. Feminist Media Studies, 12, 83–99.
  26. Chess, S. (2017). Ready player two: Women gamers and designed identity. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
  27. Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. New York, NY, USA: Polity.
  28. Condry, I. (2013). The soul of anime: Collaborative creativity and Japan’s media success story. Durham, NC, USA: Duke University Press.
  29. Consalvo, M. (2007). Cheating: Gaining advantage in video games. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
  30. Consalvo, M. (2016). Atari to Zelda: Japanese games in global contexts. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.
  31. Consalvo, M., & Begy, J. (2015). Players and their pets: Gaming communities from beta to sunset. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minneapolis Press.
  32. Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299.
  33. De Kosnik, A. (2009). Should fan fiction be free? Cinema Journal, 48(4), 118–124.
  34. Dosekun, S. (2015). For Western girls only?: Postfeminism as transnational culture. Feminist Media Studies, 15(6), 960–975.
  35. Duffy, B. E. (2016). The romance of work: Gender and aspirational labour in the digital culture industries. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19(4), 441–457.
  36. Dyer-Witheford, N., & De Peuter, G. (2009). Games of empire: Global capitalism and video games. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
  37. Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class?: The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University Press.
  38. Ganzon. S. C. (2018a). Making love not war: Female power and the emotional labor of peace in Code: Realize–The Guardian of Rebirth and Princess Arthur. In H. MacDonald (Ed.), Digital love: Romance and sexuality in games (pp. 37–58). Boca Raton, FL, USA: CRC Press.
  39. Ganzon, S. C. (2018b). Investing time for your in-game boyfriends and BFFs: Time as commodity and the simulation of emotional labor in Mystic Messenger. Games and Culture, 14(2), 139–153. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412018793068
  40. Ganzon, S. C. (2020). Playing at romance: Global flows and otome games in English. Concordia University, Montreal, Canada. Dissertation manuscript in preparation.
  41. Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166.
  42. Hartley, G. (2018). Fed up: Emotional labor, women and the way forward. New York, NY, USA: HarperCollins.
  43. Harvey, A. (2018). The fame game: Working your way up the celebrity ladder in Kim Kardashian: Hollywood. Games and Culture, 13(7), 652–670. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412018757872
  44. Harvey, A., & Fisher, S. (2015). “Everyone can make games!”: The post-feminist context of women in digital game production. Feminist Media Studies, 15(4), 576–592.
  45. Hasegawa, K. (2013). Falling in love with history: Japanese girls’ otome sexuality and queering historical imagination. In M. W. Kapell & A. Elliot (Eds.), Playing the past: Digital games and the simulation of history (pp. 135–150). New York, NY, USA: Bloomsbury Academic.
  46. Hellekson, K. (2009). A fannish field of value: Online fan gift culture. Cinema Journal, 48(4), 113–118.
  47. Hirameki International. (2006). Yo-Jim-Bo [PC]. Diamond Bar, CA, USA: Hirameki International Group.
  48. Hochschild, A. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press.
  49. Huntemann, N. (2013). Women in video games: The case of hardware production and promotion. In N. Huntemann & B. Aslinger (Eds.), Gaming globally: Production, play and place (pp. 41–58). New York, NY, USA: Palgrave Macmillan.
  50. Idea Factory International. (2015). Amnesia: Memories [PC]. Shibuya, Japan: Idea Factory.
  51. Jarrett, K. (2014). The relevance of “women’s work”: Social reproduction and immaterial labour in digital media. Television & New Media, 15(1), 14–29.
  52. Jenkins, H. (2006). Fans, bloggers, gamers: Exploring participatory culture. New York, NY, USA: NYU Press.
  53. Jenkins, H., Ford, S., & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York, NY, USA: NYU Press.
  54. Kim, H. (2009). Women’s games in Japan: Gendered identity and narrative construction. Theory, Culture and Society, 26(2–3), 165–188.
  55. Krobová, T., Moravec, O., & Švelch, J. (2015). Dressing Commander Shepard in pink: Queer playing in a heteronormative game culture. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 9(3), article 3. https://doi.org/10.5817/CP2015-3-3
  56. Lamerichs, N. (2014). Romancing pigeons: The deconstruction of the dating-sim in Hatoful Boyfriend. Well Played, 3(2), 43–61.
  57. Lee, A. (2011). Time travelling with fanfic writers: Understanding fan culture through repeated online interviews. Participations, 8(1), 246–269.
  58. Lobato, R., & Thomas, J. (2015). The informal media economy. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
  59. McRobbie, A. (2004). Post feminism and popular culture. Feminist Media Studies, 4, 255–264.
  60. Morimoto, L. H., & Chin, B. (2017). Reimagining the imagined community: Online media fandoms in the age of global convergence. In J. Gray, C. Sandvoss, & C. L. Harrington (Eds.), Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world [2nd ed.; Kindle 1.26.1]. New York, NY, USA: NYU Press.
  61. Noy, C. (2008). Sampling knowledge: The hermeneutics of snowball sampling in qualitative research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 11(4), 327–344.
  62. Pelletier-Gagnon, J. (2011). Video games and Japaneseness: An analysis of localization and circulation of Japanese video games in North America (Unpublished master’s thesis, McGill University, Canada).
  63. Primula. (2015). Taisho Alice [PC]. Tokyo, Japan: Primula.
  64. Radway, J. (1984). Reading the romance: Women, patriarchy and popular literature. Chapel Hill, NC, USA: University of North Carolina Press.
  65. Richards, T. (2015). Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side: Enacting femininity to avoid dying alone. ToDigra, 2(1), 101–127.
  66. Ruanni, T., & Tupas, F. (2004). The politics of Philippine English: Neocolonialism, global politics, and the problem of postcolonialism. World Englishes, 23(1), 47–58.
  67. Ruby Party. (1994). Angelique [Super Famicom]. Yokohama, Japan: Koei.
  68. Sakevisual. (2010). RE: AListair [PC]. Los Angeles, CA, USA: Sakevisual.
  69. Scott, D. M. (2010). The new rules of marketing and PR: How to use social media, news releases, online video and viral marketing to reach buyers directly (2nd ed). Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley and Sons.
  70. Scott, S. (2009). Repackaging fan culture: The regifting economy of ancillary content models. Transformative Works and Cultures, 3 [online]. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0150
  71. Scott, S. (2015). “Cosplay is serious business”: Gendering material fan labor on heroes of cosplay. Cinema Journal, 54(3), 146–154.
  72. Shaw, A. (2013a). Rethinking game studies: A case study approach to video game play and identification. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 30(5), 347–361.
  73. Shaw, A. (2013b). On not becoming gamers: Moving beyond the constructed audience. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 2 [online]. https://doi.org/10.7264/N33N21B3
  74. Shaw, A. (2015). Gaming at the edge: Sexuality and gender at the margins of gamer culture. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
  75. Steinberg, M. (2012). Anime’s media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan. Minneapolis, MN, USA: University of Minnesota Press.
  76. Steinberg, M., & Ernest dit Alban, E. (2018). Otaku pedestrians. In P. Booth (Ed.), A companion to media fandom and fan studies (pp. 289–304). Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley.
  77. Taylor, N., Jenson, J., & de Castell, S. (2009). Cheerleaders/booth babes/ Halo hoes: Pro-gaming, gender and jobs for the boys. Digital Creativity, 20(4), 232–252.
  78. Turk, T. (2014). Fan work: Labor, worth, and participation in fandom's gift economy. Transformative Works and Cultures, 15 [online]. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2014.0518
  79. Vanderhoef, J. (2013). Casual threats: The feminization of casual video games. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, 2 [online]. https://doi.org/10.7264/N3V40S4D

How to Cite

Ganzon, S. C. (2019). Growing the otome game market: Fan labor and otome game communities online. Human Technology, 15(3), 347–366. Retrieved from https://ht.csr-pub.eu/index.php/ht/article/view/275