China’s women gamers take centre-stage with ‘virtual boyfriend’ game Love and Producer
With its immersive gameplay, great graphics and heart-throb central characters, the latest sim from PapeGames is wowing women across the country
When it comes to creating a hit online role-playing game for women, it seems you cannot go far wrong with a good old-fashioned simulation … just as long as it oozes romance and movie star sex appeal.
That is certainly the case with Love and Producer, the latest offering for mobile platforms from PapeGames, in which the female protagonist is a television producer who must save her father’s film studio from bankruptcy by reviving a hit show.
As she goes about her work, the central character comes into contact with various men, and for China’s growing legion of women gamers, that is where the fun starts.
“It’s [like] a romantic novel with fascinating voices. It’s more real than reading a novel,” Shen Junzhi, a first-year student at a university in Wuhan, capital of central China’s Hubei province, said.
The game’s “delicate drawings” and the “great voices of the four male characters” were also a big draw, she said.
Shen is not alone in her praise for the game, which made its debut last month. According to the latest figures, Love and Producer – or Lian Yu Zhi Zuo Ren as it is known in Mandarin – not only overtook the smash hit Honour of Kings on the Apple store’s free download charts, but also replaced it as the most talked about game on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.