Author: Chen Muyan
Editor|Li Chunhui
Strictly speaking, this title makes a factual error. Because of the several female-oriented games that will be mentioned in this article and have been defaulted to in the market for a long time, their self-perception is “average-oriented”. If you call “female-oriented games”, people may not agree; You shout “B You” and collectively take three steps back; But in view of the convention, Hard Candy Jun screamed.
Compared with “Love and Deep Space” and “Beyond the World” at the beginning of 2024, which will be launched at the same time to create a prosperous era of national B, women at the end of 2024 will be slightly lost in the game. On the one hand, “Infinite Warmth” shouted “Macho men must play”, and found many male bloggers to promote it on the whole network. This new game, which combines the open world with dress-up gameplay, shows the determination of women to expand male users to game giants from content to marketing, but the mobile performance is lower than expected.
On the one hand, female players of the card mobile game “Codename Kite” rejected otaku stalks, and their copywriting controversy and de-female labeling also aroused a strong backlash among players of the national server “Like Kite”. A similar situation can be seen in female-oriented games such as “In the Name of Shining” and “Moon Shadow Villa”.
It can be said that the important contradiction between the current women-oriented games is the contradiction between the increasingly strong demand for expansion of game manufacturers and the tightening gender consciousness of female players. While wanting to “accept men”, on the other hand, they are even more “rejecting men”, which is not only manifested in content disputes, but even extends to the production team. Women’s games are destined to pass the “male” level, which used to be the love and hate of paper men, but now it is the fight for every inch of real men.
Gender controversy swept women
An incomplete revolution is equivalent to a complete lack of revolution. From this point of view, it is not difficult to understand that women are more likely to touch gender controversies when they play games, and being backstabbed by their own family members is always the most hurtful.
Summarizing the recent cases of women overturning into games, copywriting is the first to bear the brunt of the hardest hit area. Since almost all women are taking the emotional and moving text route to games, good copywriting can make people forget, and bad copywriting can become a time bomb.
“Code Name Kite”, which was first launched overseas, is highly respected by female players with the slogan and theme of “Destiny should fall on women”. Not only survived the cold winter of women in 2023 with only foreign clothes, but also occupied the top five women’s water for a long time after the national costume “Like a Kite” was launched in the second half of this year.
However, in the new event launched on December 10, its activity copy “Is there something wrong in the underground house” and the design of the avatar frame, which was accused of playing with the male harem. The skin introduction of the spy character “Shi Ziyi” launched at the same time – “The normal attack is continuous damage and can put two skills Shi Ziyi Go to the candle, will the landlord like it”, it is alleged that the inspiration is R18 otaku manga. Playing otaku stalks on impulse led to a series of shocks in “Codename Kite”.
Zu Long’s dress-up game “In the Name of Shining” is also a disaster. In November’s Double Five-Star card pool, there was a set called “Dawn of the Hidden Blade” that displayed the word “Dawn of the Blade” when sharing backlinks, and “Dawn of the Blade” is a common word used by male users on some platforms to attack women.
In addition to the flood of otaku stalks, the plot itself is also controversial. At the beginning of this year, “Beyond the World”, which stood out with the logic of the “Tu Tianshuang” short drama, in the latest plot, the male protagonist is suspected of forcing “me” to engage in some indescribable behaviors with him. That is, the turmoil of “Codename Kite” was in front of it, and “Out of the World” escaped, and the copywriting problem was only discussed and fermented among a small number of players.
The second game “Moon Shadow Villa”, which focuses on small and beautiful routes, was dragged down by male employees before leaving, and there were problems in the iOS migration process. The male protagonist and the main character in the game are noted as “version 2110”, “your mother’s nose”, “female watch” and other indecent titles.
In addition to copywriting, the costume design of a dress-up game is also a powder keg. “In the Name of Shining” has been questioned many times for its avant-garde design: last year, the “Zero Machine”, which was launched in the style of mechanical Ji, was inappropriately located in the charging socket; Some fashions are too sexy after dyeing, and they are suspected of cyber erotic underwear.
After the launch of “Infinite Warmth”, it will inevitably be compared with two-dimensional games such as “Genshin Impact” and “Singing Tide”, which are also open worlds. At that time, Nuan Nuan player once said, “Just because of the paper stacking is not like a certain two-word game design digging clothes, in my life, this is a lifetime of death-free gold medal.” And the recently announced suit is impressively digging holes in the waist and abdomen, isn’t the boomerang coming?
And if copywriting, art or tactical negligence, the rush to expand the circle is a strategic contradiction between women-oriented games and the original core players.
In response to the controversy over the deletion of female-oriented tags, the official response of “Like Kites” said, “The label of “Like a Kite” on the official website and App Store has always been an ‘immersive story card mobile game’, and there has never been a female-oriented tag, nor has it been deleted, because what we want players to feel is the characteristics of the plot. But you can also say that “Like a Kite” is a female-oriented game, which is not in conflict. ”
Paperfold, which started with women’s games, was not in a hurry to cut the table with women, but in the early publicity and KOL selection of “Infinite Warmth”, it obviously emphasized “big world exploration”, and put a lot of male UP masters. The slogan of “macho men must play” became louder and louder, and some people said that male players contributed one-third of the turnover. The daily debate of the two-dimensional game, “which male and female players have more purchasing power”, will probably also be staged in “Infinite Warmth”.
Female Games Women Do?
The game doesn’t want to be framed on a certain track, but players are demanding “loyalty” more than ever. Isn’t this a situation where there are many contradictions and wars are frequent?
From the perspective of the overall environment, the awakening of women’s consciousness has put forward new requirements for the entire content field. Mobile gamers, in particular, are the group of people who have the highest intensity of surfing the Internet and are closest to the new ideas. What might have been acceptable two or three years ago is not working now.
For example, the same smoked chicken terrier from “Goodbye Lover 4”, the acceptance of mobile game players and other entertainment users is completely different. Mango TV’s own e-commerce platform launched smoked chicken and milk skins, and most viewers laughed and said, “This time I earned it for Mango.” Mobile gamers will voluntarily resist this kind of meme. Because it was the amateur Mai Lin who was played with today, it could be you and me tomorrow.
This also includes “purity” requirements for the game team. Female-oriented games are made for women, and players want the project team to be people of the same gender as themselves who better understand their needs. Especially in recent years, there have been calls for “women must occupy a place before they have the right to speak”, and players are more willing to see female producers occupy high positions. Out of the chivalrous heart of “women helping each other”, they will also be more tolerant of the flaws of the game. At the beginning, “Codename Kite” was able to survive the cold winter, which also has a certain relationship with the label of “all-female production team”.
But after any project becomes bigger and stronger, it is difficult to maintain the utopian model of an all-female team. The behavior of the male employees who left “Moon Shadow Villa” is a lack of professionalism. More often than not, it is the difference between the thinking patterns of men and women, and the male planners and men use straight male thinking to substitute for women-oriented games, and the result can only be judged by the masses regardless of their intentions, and even suspected of having bad intentions.
From the online debate, it can also be found that men are more self-conscious, and unless they name names, it is difficult for them to feel that they have done something wrong; Women, on the other hand, are prone to guessing “whether they are talking about me” or “today it’s her, tomorrow it’s me”, even if it’s a discussion that has nothing to do with them.
is all playing homophonic stalks, insinuating “reporting Sima”, the otaku brother of the second tour may feel that the production team is very rigid, and he doesn’t feel that he is cursing himself; Women, on the other hand, are more inclined to introspective, and not only do they not find it funny when they see this kind of meme, but they will be angry at the project team’s strafing of everyone.
In general, men prefer to be witty and play abstract. For example, Ye Ke cake and Mai Lin smoked chicken, male players will laugh and praise “the city can play”, and female players will only feel greasy, daddy and offended. Of course, in the face of ridiculing men, male players will also become sensitive in seconds. In the final analysis, the laughter and tears of men and women are different, and the key is that the thunder points are becoming more and more different.
In the open letter co-signed by the players of “Codename Kite”, it is required that “the content moderation team with a proportion of women not less than the proportion of female players in the game must be formed, and the final decision-maker must be female”. Thinking of the current film market’s admiration for female directors and the crusade against “Lao Deng Films”, it is an annoying and fascinating question of where the gender battle will lead content creation.
Female-oriented “general” movements
The film market is dividing men and women, but game manufacturers are still eager for both men and women, which is also a siege problem. Even with some hits, female-oriented games are still regarded as a category with a low ceiling and limited gameplay. It’s no wonder that manufacturers have repeatedly jumped between the female and the average, trying to expand the boundary.
In fact, several female-oriented games that have performed well this year are indeed innovative in gameplay and have reached incremental users. Moreover, concentrating on serving a small group will only become more and more polarized, and “Dust White Forbidden Zone”, which fully serves otaku brothers, is a lesson from the past.
But women’s efforts to the “general direction” of the game always seem to be almost hot.
As early as 2021, Chaoxi Lightyear made such an attempt. Before the open beta, the female-oriented label was removed and changed to the average orientation, and players can choose the male and female protagonists. And the choice of the protagonist is of different gender, which means that the difficulty of solving the puzzle is different. From the perspective of planning, women value experience and men love challenges, and this layered design is also a good thing. But with such a different treatment, you don’t need to say much about Hard Candy, you can also imagine the public opinion controversy and word-of-mouth failure at that time.
As for “Infinite Warmth”, which has just been in public beta at the end of 2024, the design of the open world is obviously intended to break the circle, and it will be higher than “Genshin Impact” and “Zelda”. But the current reality is that the kryptonite logic of “Infinite Warmth” is separated from the gameplay of the big world. The addition of the big world has really enhanced the gameplay of Nuan Nuan, and there are endless things to do every day without pumping clothes. But in other words, the big world makes it less important to smoke clothes.
Although it is reported that “Infinite Warmth” has a turnover of more than 200 million in the first week, the so-called PC revenue accounting for more than 50% and enthusiastic overseas response, we have no way to verify, so we have to listen to it. The reality is that Hard Candy Jun has completely pushed the main story so far, and the collection of the first map has been completed by 90%, but it has only cost 6 yuan since the start of the service.
As a veteran paper-stacking leek who played from “Warm 1” to “Infinite Warmth”, Hard Candy Jun touched his conscience and said that there was actually very little playable content in the previous generations. All the gameplay revolves around “clothes”, if you want to pass the level quickly, you have to draw clothes, if you want to win the championship in the arena, you have to draw clothes, and you can’t do without clothes to exchange topics with young girls in the community.
But when it comes to “Infinite Warmth”, it’s different. Players communicate more about how to get the Fantasy Star, how to get the dungeon, and how to fight the boss. Ability sets that affect the exploration experience are unlocked through the main storyline, and if you’re an exploration party, you can even do it completely in Infinite Warmth.
Krypton gold no longer dominates the warm gaming experience. You can get through by making your own clothes, it’s nothing more than spending time and energy; Drawing five-star clothes can’t make players lie flat, and the top suits have to be matched, and you have to come by yourself to explore and fight monsters. This led to players who didn’t look at the price when they bought shirts in the first few games, but when they arrived in “Infinite Warmth”, they slammed the door, “no suits over 6 yuan will be bought”.
The gameplay has been enhanced, but the gold absorption has decreased, is the game industry more qualified to complain about users than the movie industry? Regardless, we encourage innovation and expansion, and we welcome men and women to travel together. Thinking about how many couples and how many families were broken up in “Sword Network III” back then, isn’t it also a nostalgic game era.
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