Investing Time for Your In-Game Boyfriends and BFFs: Time as Commodity and the Simulation of Emotional Labor in Mystic Messenger

Abstract

Mystic Messenger is a real-time mobile dating simulator and otome game that simulates how people fall in love online. In this essay, I will look at significant parallels between casual games and otome games and point out the ways in which both define women as players and consumers of games. By focusing on Mystic Messenger, I examine the ways in which the game's real-time simulation of emotional labor becomes a way of policing women's desires, a way of reinforcing nurturing roles over women's desires, and a way of literally commodifying the assumedly female player's leisure time. Furthermore, I also examine player practices and discussions of cheating within the player community, tagging these as light forms of resistances and ways in which various individuals in the community assert their identity and their agency over their own time.

Growing the Otome Game Market: Fan Labor and Otome Game Communities Online

“…These are spaces where female and nonbinary game players connect with other female and nonbinary game players to talk about games that were supposedly created specifically for them. Elsewhere (Ganzon, 2018a(Ganzon, , 2018b, I noted how many otome game communities are critical of gendered representations in their games. The participants of this study are no exception.…”

“…Elsewhere (Ganzon, 2018a(Ganzon, , 2018b, I described how systems in a number of otome game titles in the visual novel category hinge on the player's performance of emotional labor, mostly demonstrated through selecting empathetic responses toward the male character being romanced. Arlie Hochschild (1983) defined emotional labor as that act of managing feelings and certain expressions, pointing out how differences in social situation, gender, or race can vary the degrees in which individuals are socialized into performing emotional labor.…”

Reading Ren’Py: Game Engine Affordances and Design Possibilities

“…The same is true for the save/load system, which allows the player to save and load their game at any time, a system that-in the hands of diligent players-provides much the same functionality as dialogue history and is similarly at odds with the design philosophy of our game. It is, however, very much in keeping with the design philosophy of certain visual novels, particularly the dating sim variety in which players are incentivized to win the affection of their favorite NPC by optimizing dialogue responses (Ganzon, 2019). These are Fiadotau's "conventions and canons"-visual novel genre tropes-shaping the affordances and constraints of an engine designed specifically to produce visual novels.…”

Female-oriented dating sims in China: Players’ parasocial relationships, gender attitudes, and romantic beliefs.

“…Gender attitudes about sexual relationships refer to people's agreement or beliefs about men's and female's roles and behaviors in dating and sex. Female-oriented dating sims contain a large amount of content about dating and relationships (Ganzon, 2019), which relate directly to these gender attitudes. From a traditional gender attitudes perspective, female always yield to others, whereas men are supposed to play a dominant role in sexual relationships (Kiefer & Sanchez, 2007).…”