“Protecting our female gaze rights”: Chinese Female Gamers’ and Game Producers’ Negotiations with Government Restrictions on Erotic Material

Abstract

This article applies the Foucauldian concept of practiced freedom to examine how Chinese female gamers work hand in hand with game developers to negotiate government restrictions on in-game erotic material. Game developers have redesigned certain visual and textual game elements and used sexy dubbed voices to comply with state censorship while maintaining a game's appeal. Female gamers have meanwhile aligned themselves with the game developers by spending significant money on games and creating fan fiction, demonstrating their financial and sexual agency. This article explores how the practice of sexual freedom can serve as a useful lens for understanding the alliance between game developers and players, providing a glimpse into the everyday, conditioned, leisure-driven micro-resistance by engaging with existing scholarship that criticizes the commercial nature of digital games. Instead of overthrowing the conservative political framework, the goal of such gaming micro-resistance is to increase the profits of game developers and the sexual, consumptive rights of women gamers.

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“…While female gaze research tends to be directed toward studying film, advertising, and fashion (Farid & Mamat, 2021;French, 2021;Jesica, 2021;Laing, 2021;Li, 2020;Rome, O'Donohoe, & Dunnett, 2020;Valderrama-Burgos, 2021) and to female gaze, games, and fandom (K & Chithra, 2022;Lai & Liu, 2023;Liang, 2022).…”