After its release, the love simulation game "Fucked! I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Girls" (hereinafter referred to as "Finished"), which uses live-action video interaction as its selling point, quickly broke through various channels such as live broadcasts and short videos, and sparked extensive discussions on topics including game design, emotional consumption, gender communication, and short video culture.
Among these discussions of "Finished", the analysis of the introduction of the Japanese beautiful girl game (galgame) and related literary criticism (database consumption, game realism) is the most in-depth. This kind of analysis not only avoids the duplication of live-action images and game history studies that have been relatively well established in the field of game studies, but also cleverly avoids the gender issue of "male consumption of female image" that is easy to become a cliché. By introducing the history and literary criticism of Japanese Bishoujo games, on the one hand, we find commonalities in the historical and cultural environment shared by modern countries in China, Japan and East Asia, and then reflect on individuality. On the other hand, it can also be combined with the increasingly popular "two-dimensional consumption" in recent years, which further corroborates the phenomenon of China's local beautiful girl game production.
"I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Women"
However, this kind of cross-cultural comparative analysis is prone to distortion in some details, which ultimately affects the overall argument. Among the recent critical articles that introduced the Japanese theoretical analysis of "Finished", Deng Jian's article "< is Finished! I Was Surrounded by Beautiful Girls> and the Grammar of Beautiful Girl Game Dramas" (hereinafter referred to as "Deng Wen") published in The Paper (www.thepaper.cn) on December 2, 2023 was the most widely disseminated and influential. On December 6, 2023, this article was also mentioned in an interview with the game executive producer of "Finished" released by Touch.com.
Deng Wen introduces analytical frameworks such as Higashi Hiroki's database consumption and game realism (ゲーム的なリアリズム) and Uno Tsunekan's "maternal antitopia" (母性のディストピア) to explain the similarities and differences between Japanese beautiful girl games and "beautiful girl game dramas" such as "Finished". He also raised the question: in the context of the possible increase in China's local "Bishoujo game dramas", will the (virtual) character culture that is more representative of the player's imagination and cultural leadership-Bishoujo games give way to (realistic) "Bishoujo game dramas"? It further explores how the "Bishoujo Game Drama", which shifts the player's desire from virtual characters to real actors, will reshape the subjectivity of Chinese players. By introducing the study of Japanese beautiful girl games, which are relatively new to the Chinese world, Deng Wen carried out a progressive in-depth analysis and deeply thought about the subjectivity crisis faced by Chinese games in the three-dimensional rice circle cultural environment.
Tsunehiro Uno;" Maternal Dystopia
However, in Deng Wen's analysis, perhaps due to space limitations, the introduction of the Japanese beautiful girl game environment, especially how "Finished" integrates the characteristics of Japanese beautiful girl games, is a slight jump. This also affects the point that the overall discourse is trying to emphasize. In order to more clearly elaborate the position and value of "Finished" in the theoretical framework of Japanese Bishoujo game criticism, this paper will further discuss it in combination with Deng Jian's analysis of "Finished".
Has the "Bishoujo Game Drama" changed the Bishoujo game
Deng Wen first proposed that "Finished", as a "beautiful girl game drama", is fundamentally different from Japanese beautiful girl games. "Finished" provides the characteristics of affirmative fantasies constructed by the heroine's unconditional love, which is an emotional consumer product, while the Japanese Bishoujo game requires the male protagonist to constantly strive to get close to the heroine, attack the heroine through the save/read mechanism (S/L), and finally become the heroine's "father". An example of this is "TO HEART", which was released in 1997.
It is undeniable that in the huge group of works of Japanese Bishoujo games, there are indeed many works that emphasize the agency of the male protagonist and the "father" figure. Before this type of game formed a mature industrial system, there were indeed works that showed complexity in strategy and gameplay design. However, it may be too arbitrary to classify Japanese Bishoujo games as "fatherly games" based on the characteristics of some works, and to define "Finished" as a "motherhood game" in the context of the new era, and to think that "Finished" "changed the fundamental logic of Bishoujo games". Deng Wen said:
"Finished" is not a wild game in which the player actively takes over and possesses the heroine, but a narcissistic but weak game that passively "surrounds" the heroine - in this sense, "I'm surrounded by beautiful women". In this sense, "Finished" can be described as the depravity of Bishoujo games.
In fact, if you look at the narcissistic weakness of the male protagonist, it is clear that such elements are widely present in Japanese Bishoujo games, as well as in otaku culture such as anime, manga, and light novels. Deng Wen borrowed Tsunehiro Uno's concept of "maternal hosttopia" to summarize "Finished", but this concept, as part of the criticism of Bishoujo games in the 00s, is based on Higashihiro's criticism of the playful realism of Bishoujo games. We can see the starting point of the concept of "maternal dystopia" in Tsunehiro Uno's book "Imagination in the Zeros", and we can see how Tsunehiro Uno develops his argument based on this framework:
The fact that the first apartment, which appeared as a symbol of non-entry into society, continues to live semi-permanently after "maturity", which means that the male self-realization circuit is in the female realm (womb), and there is no need to take a step. This is a heartwarming and pure love story full of joy and human affection, but also a story of bloated maternal egoism that swallows everything and triumphs completely. (Excerpted from the translation of "The Imagination of the Zeros" by Rooftop Vision.) ）
Rumiko Takahashi's "A Moment of Reunion"
It can be seen that in the traditional Japanese beautiful girl game-otaku cultural environment with a strong "declining machismo and unsuccessful self-deception" (Zero Fall したマッチョイズムと "ダメ" な Self Deception) traditional Japanese beautiful girl game-otaku cultural environment, "Finished" does not change the fundamental logic of Japanese beautiful girl games in the sense of affirming sexual violence-maternal hosttopia as Deng Wen said, let alone "the degeneration of beautiful girl games" , because from this point of view, even in the era of "AIR" and "KANNON", which are considered by current Bishoujo gamers to be masterpieces, Japanese Bishoujo games themselves represent a kind of self-pity, masochistic degradation in the sense of criticism. Not to mention the current environment in which "boiled water" and "waste cute" beautiful girl games are frequent.
Therefore, rather than saying that "Bishoujo Game Drama" like "Finished" has changed the fundamental logic of Japanese Bishoujo games, it is actually a kind of engagement of this logic. Even in the field of using live-action images to make Bishoujo games, "Ended" is not the first of its kind. For example, in 2010, Bandai Namco released games such as AKB1/48 アイドルと Love したら, which was based on idol groups. "Finished" actually uses short videos and beautiful actresses that are more characteristic of the Chinese media environment as materials, and makes a game for those who are not originally in contact with the beautiful girl game culture circle and are not interested in the two-dimensional painting style of Japanese otaku culture.
《AKB1/48 If you fall in love with an idol》
It is precisely because of the lack of clarity on this sequence that the objective fact that Japan's male consumer goods that provide affirmative emotional value developed earlier than China's, Deng Wen's attribution of the current popularity of "Finished" is also somewhat ambiguous:
In a word, the violence of motherhood prompts the player to avoid the ultimate maturity of the self in the form of returning to the mother's womb, and to live in pure self-fantasy in the form of living in the mother's womb. This is the fundamental reason for the popularity of "" at the moment, that is, it heals the player's wounds in the real world with an affirmative electronic relationship, and the player is pulled back and indulged in this traumatic experience - rather than in the mere structure of pleasure - to enjoy the fantasy of meeting and falling in love with a group of beautiful women that reality promises but never fulfills.
The point here is that while maternal violence is seen as affirmative violence, affirmation is not necessarily the same as maternal violence. It is an indisputable fact that "affirmative electronic love heals the player's wounds in the real world", but this does not necessarily lead the player to indulge in his traumatic experience. The social reality in which the player lives provides "the fantasy of meeting and falling in love with a beautiful girl", which is more like an equivalent exchange of "those who love each other forever", an ideal of escaping from "machismo" and seeking reciprocal love. Returning to Deng Wen's opening chapter, if the criticism of "Finished" only stays at the "maternal antitopia" viewpoint that Tsunehiro Uno indulges in, then where is the possibility of "restarting the criticism space of beautiful girls' games" in addition to the "degenerate game of objectifying women and consuming men" proposed by Deng Wen in "Finished"? In order to solve this problem, it is obviously necessary to re-examine how Deng Wen organizes the textual analysis of the game of "Finished" and the investigation of the concept of "maternal antistopia" of Tsunehiro Uno.
The story structure of "The End" and the problem of "maternal hosttopia".
The first section of Deng Wen first introduces the paradigm of Japanese beautiful girl games and the otaku-database consumption framework of Higashi Hiroki, in which "Finished" is characterized as a kind of visual beautiful girl game. Within this framework, the six heroines in the work are described as "concocted according to their differences, without any sociological depth of the story...... simulacra of infinite proliferation".
In the second stanza, Deng Wen places "Finished" in the context of the collapse of the grand narrative, like other beautiful girl games, emphasizing the postmodern situation of Japan in which the audience's desires turn to small narratives and the animalistic consumption of the moe elements in the database. It then introduces Tsunehiro Uno's reflection on Higashihiro's criticism of Bishoujo games, and proposes that this kind of consumption is actually a kind of daydream with a male perspective, unconditionally affirmed by motherhood, and full of affirmative sexual violence, that is, "maternal antitopia".
However, the third section of Deng Wen takes a turn to discuss the possible changes in character consumption patterns after Sailor Girl Games become "Pretty Girl Game Dramas" like "Finished" in China. That is, the initiative of the audience may be reduced to a "fan circle model" dominated by capital and the loss of subjectivity. This is undoubtedly a further revelation of the potential crisis behind the popularity of "Finished", but it does not provide a positive answer to the possibility of "restarting the space for Bishoujo game criticism". Interestingly, the answer to this question may be hidden in an interview with the production team of "Finished" on the game media Touch.com. The interview mentioned Deng Wen, but did not agree with his analysis of the grammar of the beautiful girl game drama:
The article relies on theories related to "Bishoujo Games", but what it doesn't observe is that the writers who actually created these female characters didn't actually write about these women so methodologically - they wrote more about their feelings according to their own instincts, and believed that such feelings were real. It is this simple belief that makes the whole game more detailed, so that it does not become so close to the traditional beautiful girl love game, so that men who only focus on real life can understand and eat this set.
In other words, at least from the point of view of the game's producers, although the purpose of "Finished" is to satisfy the spiritual needs of male gamers, the story itself is not rootless, but a realistic portrayal of real love. Although it is a little exaggerated in terms of actual presentation, it is the creative intention of "Ended" to realistically express the actual experience of the target group of male gamers in real life.
On the other hand, Deng Wen believes that one of the important clues in "The End" is Bai Yueguang Li Yunsi among the six heroines. He regards Li Yunsi's various tolerances of the protagonist's behavior, and the storyline that eventually evolved into the divorce plot, as a representative of "maternal antistopia". Deng Wen sees this as a mode of desire consumption provided by "Finished", similar to the "affirmative society" described by Han Byung-chul, that is, a paradise full of affirmation without negativity. In "Imagination in the Zeros", Tsunehiro Uno officially proposed the concept of "hypertrophic motherhood-maternal dystopia" for the first time. The issue of motherhood here is based on the post-war Japanese ideological environment, especially the context of "maturity and loss" proposed by Jun Eto. In "The Antitopia of Motherhood", Uno points out that Miyazaki depicts the utopia of motherhood in which the teenage male protagonist flies by unconditionally trusting his "mother", while Tomino depicts the structure in which the teenager cannot and does not need to grow up to be a "father" and be devoured by motherhood. The individual completes the false growth in the false world through the false body, which is the "maternal dystopia".
Hayao Miyazaki's new work "What kind of life do you want to live"
Returning to the plot structure of "Finished", we can find that in the Zhong Zhen line, that is, "The Domineering Female President Takes Care of Me", and the "Hao Hao Mom" Lin Yueqing line, we can indeed see some elements of maternal delusion that avoids growth in a realistic sense and pins the subject on full affirmation. It can also be seen from the community evaluation that players generally think that these two lines are very fantasy, and "Mr. Zhong" is evaluated as a "mechanical séance-style daydream", while "Hao Hao Ma" is regarded as a character that can be tried in the game, but should be avoided in reality. But on the whole, "Finished" clearly does not fully follow this affirmative pattern of emotional consumption. First of all, no matter which line they are in, the protagonist must face the debt crisis, the heroines to help, and finally the process of cheering up and starting a business. Although starting a business to repay debts does not directly mean that the work has turned to the dimension of realism, it has obviously gone beyond the general delusion of teenagers and entered more into the context of socialization. In contrast, Japanese Bishoujo games, which really emphasize motherhood and affirmation, hardly create such propositions, but instead manage everything with absolute motherhood at the beginning, enveloping the player in it.
Secondly, there is a line in "Finished" that makes the entire three-dimensional painting style of "beautiful girl game drama" very two-dimensional beautiful girl game. That is Li Yunsi, who is also interpreted as the true heroine in Deng Wenzhong. The uniqueness of the Li Yunsi line is that no matter how the player operates, the plot will move towards the protagonist's parting of ways with Lee, as well as the unfolding of Li Yunsi's upcoming marriage to someone else. However, in the hidden ending, no matter which route is chosen, as long as the corresponding conditions are triggered before, Li Yunsi's true ending will be unlocked, and the ending will continue after the two escape from marriage. Although not directly mentioned in interviews and related materials, the design of the game seems to provide an opportunity to make up for the shortcomings of reality and heal sentimentality. And this healing mechanism is not to create a heroine who is absolutely loyal to the male protagonist, a "maternal antitopia" that is fully affirmed, but to create this trauma in the game inexplicably, and save it again. This kind of development that does not create affirmation but negation, and loses the heroine instead of gaining the heroine, is actually a classic model in Japanese literary criticism in the 00s.
Therefore, it is indeed appropriate to define "Finished" as a beautiful girl game that provides affirmative daydreaming-sensual consumption, in the line of the maternal gentle countryside such as Mr. Zhong and Hao Hao's mother, as well as the line of Shen Comet's childhood sweetheart and Xiao Lu's unconditional belief in oneself. However, Li Yunsi goes beyond the dimension of this maternal fantasy of consumption, and introduces the element of negation rather than mere affirmation. If we expand our perspective beyond the game, we can see that this is exactly the "realism" that the production team may not have realized themselves, that is, "at least the feelings are real" mentioned in the Touch interview. In the game, having a childhood sweetheart like Shen Comet, or being caught in love at first sight like Xiao Lu, is not so much "fake", "sci-fi" and "dreaming", but these encounters are not non-existent, but accidental: it is difficult for us to deny that such romantic love encounters do exist in reality, but we also can't believe that we will become such a male protagonist in reality. "Finished", as a work that satisfies spiritual needs, gives players a chance to become the male protagonist. The interview mentions that "in his view, all choices are meaningless in the final analysis, and will not change the destined ending, and in the face of this certainty, he thinks of the kind of random experience in life, and he believes that only randomness can counteract this certainty and add more fun to life." ”
The difference between "Finished" and Deng Wen's "maternal antitopia" is reflected here: "Finished" depicts the male protagonist's relationship with the heroine through random and accidental, rather than based on completely affirmative fantasies. Although it is finally shown as a commercial story of the male protagonist being chased by the heroines and enjoying the peach blossom luck, it can be seen that in several lines with Li Yunsi as the core, the production team still tries to create a relationship of mutual affection and mutual understanding. This is also reminiscent of Tsunehiro Uno's discussion of the possibility of transcending the maternal antagonia in Tomino's Gundam series, especially how the familial community symbolized by the new type transcends the model of the traditional patriarchal family. In "Finished", the relationship between the male protagonist and Li Yunsi is not only a traditional couple relationship, but also a close friend who supports each other's lives, which is the closest to a simulated family situation in the game. It can even be said that opening the hidden ending of Li Yunsi in the route of other heroines means waking up from the illusion of "becoming a father" or "embracing motherhood".
Therefore, although "Finished" has many problems in game design and script arrangement, and has to add a lot of content that serves male love fantasies out of commercial considerations, it is actually trying to transcend the proposition of "maternal dystopia" with real experience in the design of Li Yunsi's line. For the Chinese speaking world, this is exactly the possibility of "restarting the space for criticism of beautiful girl games" that Deng Wen refers to.
As the idea of the beautiful girl game and the local practice in China
The third section of Deng Wen introduces the framework of Dong Haoji's playful realism, arguing that "Finished" "changes some of the basic properties of Bishoujo's game" and at the same time has a kind of non-traditional playful realism, "reverse realism". Based on the previous analysis, it can be seen that "Finished" does not change the essence of Bishoujo games, but combines the elements of Bishoujo games in a more Chinese way. Therefore, whether "Finished" really has the so-called "rebellious reality" has become a question worthy of further discussion.
Deng Wen pointed out: What players feel in "Finished" is what does not exist in reality, and they can tackle the unique reality of the beautiful girl game of all the heroines. However, in game-realism, the concept of "realism" does not simply refer to something that does not exist in the real world, but only exists in the game (fictional) world. On the contrary, game-realism emphasizes that even in the fictional space of the game, where the player seems to be omnipotent, there are certain wounds of loss that cannot be reversed or erased (the problem of one-time retrievability that cannot be saved by S/L). This is also the core point that Deng Wen mentioned, and Dong Haoji pointed out when analyzing "ALL YOU NEED IS KILL": "Regardless of whether Kiritani returns to the loop, or conversely, whether he cuts the loop or not, the fact that this thirty hours means that Rita, who is in love with Kiritani, will disappear cannot be changed." In Higashi's discourse, playful realism is realistic through a two-layered environment of fiction and reality (i.e., a meta-point of view). It is based on this dual perspective that the traumatic experience in the postmodern situation can be accurately reflected.
The comparison between "The End" and the traditional beautiful girl game from fiction to reality emphasized by Deng Wen may not have much to do with the core concept of game realism. After all, "Finished" does not directly involve this kind of double-layered, postscriptive thinking. Although Li Yunsi line is not simply a "motherly antitopia", but imports the inevitable loss and provides expectations about repairing relationships and rediscovering true love. However, the spiritual resonance between the two people, which is at the core of the repaired relationship, does not expand too much in terms of the positioning and completion of the work itself, and only provides a convincing and limited possibility (for example, we can use "Five Centimeters per Second" to question whether Li Yunsi's line is more fantastical than realistic). Therefore, "Finished" only touches on the avant-garde nature of Japanese beautiful girl games analyzed by game realism, but does not directly enrich the connotation of game realism.
"Five Centimeters per Second", which depicts missing and sentimental
However, precisely because "Finished" touches on the vanguard of Bishoujo games, Deng Wen's question of whether this kind of Chinese "three-dimensional literature and art" and fan circle culture will eliminate the character culture of Bishoujo games and destroy the cultural leadership and agency of Bishoujo gamers becomes more meaningful. On the surface, this question seems to be a conflict between the character culture at the core of fictional imagination and the actor-centered fan circle culture in reality, but it is actually a discussion of the localization of Bishoujo games in the Chinese cultural environment. In the AO3 incident, we have already witnessed the phenomenon of the role of real idols, in which individuals do not necessarily have priority over the role they play or even their own personality. Similarly, the AO3 incident also reminds us that the premise for the general public to grasp the leadership of character culture is that there is a sufficient public and open cultural space. "Finished" was able to attract unconventional attention with its not-so-remarkable finish and not-so-novel theme, first of all, because it was released on Steam, a relatively public platform for game culture. On the other hand, it has sparked a heated discussion on the spiritual consumption needs of young men, and the related social media field has become an emotional space for this group to reveal their true feelings and confide in themselves, thus further increasing the topicality of "Finished". From this point of view, Chinese beautiful girl gamers do not actually have cultural leadership, but only have the agency as the main body of the player. China's local Bishoujo games have actually relied on platforms like Steam for many years, but they have almost never been so out of the circle. Therefore, rather than discussing the issue of cultural leadership, it is more necessary to discuss the imagination of the game designer/player itself, that is, how to localize the Bishoujo game, tap the ideology in it, and continue to inherit it. And in order to do this, whether it is a traditional two-dimensional Bishoujo game or a live-action "Bishoujo game drama", the localization of such works in China naturally depends on the spiritual life of players and potential player groups. Given the rich and diverse themes of Japanese Bishoujo games, Chinese Bishoujo games are not necessarily limited to the theme of dating simulations. It can continue to be a success, focusing on growth, family and life ideals of the Chinese two-dimensional beautiful girl game, while maintaining entertainment, from simply focusing on the desires and emotions of male youth, the logic of "making cool texts" to focus on the living situation of male youth, ideals and ways out.
A domestic beautiful girl game "Migratory Bird" with the theme of the college entrance examination and the emotional life of high school students
In any case, the success of "Finished" will inevitably prompt game capital to follow suit and launch a new round of "Beautiful Girl Game Drama", and it is said that "Finished 2" with the theme of ancient style has already begun production. Under the tide of "male emotional consumption", the traditional unpopular and niche Chinese two-dimensional beautiful girl games may also produce some changes. For games like "Finished", it should not end with a simple "mainstream culture (short videos, fan circles) crowding out the leadership of subcultures and destroying subjectivity", nor should "Finished" be swept into the trash as some kind of fast food game with no analytical value at all - in fact, with "Finished" being nominated for the Best Story Game Award on Steam today, a certain "game elitism" style of attack has begun, and this may be the "fan circle culture" that the gaming industry needs to worry more about.
It is an inevitable trend for video games to respond to the spiritual needs of contemporary Chinese youth, regardless of gender, and has been happening for a long time. It is undoubtedly an important proposition in the field of Chinese game criticism to analyze the cultural context of Chinese Bishoujo games (and other games) in future works, and to extract the available cultural resources such as Japanese literary criticism in the 00s.
Bibliography:
Deng Jian, Game Theory: "I'm Surrounded by Beautiful Girls" and the grammar of beautiful girl game dramas, Surging Thought Market, December 2, 2023. https://m.thepaper.cn/newsDetail_forward_25468981
Tsunehiro Uno, Imagination, Hayakawa Shobo, 2008.
Tsunehiro Uno, Maternal Dystopia I Contact, Hayakawa Shobo, 2019.
Hiroki Azuma, The Birth of Game-like Realism: Animalizing Postmoderns 2, Kodansha, 2011.
Uno Tsunekokuan, the roof is now looking at the translation, the imagination of the 00s. https://www.douban.com/note/823670424/
Uno is often wide, and the roof is now seen as a translation, and the mother's dystopia. https://www.douban.com/note/854825211/