Lea, 26, is not really dating right now. But there is a man blowing up her phone. His name is Zayne, and he’s an animated character from the video game Love and Deepspace. “The dating pool is so bleak right now that it’s like, I’d rather just do this,” she tells me.
She’s not the only one. “Otome,” which roughly translates to “maiden,” refers to a genre of story-based romance role-playing video games targeted toward women that originated in Japan in 1994, and have exploded in popularity since then.
As the political, educational and financial gap between women and men continues to grow, it’s affected how women feel about the possibility of finding lasting love and partnership. Terms like “heteropessimism,” describing the nihilism that women feel about their prospects in the dating pool, have entered modern parlance.
But Love and Deepspace, a sci-fi and action mobile game released from Infold Games in 2024, offers a reprieve from that bleak reality for many of its female players. It’s taken off in both the United States and globally, accruing over half a billion dollars in global revenue from app store downloads alone as of March 2025, and surpassing $1 billion in total user spend, according to data from market research platform AppMagic. Fans feel exceptionally strong ties to their love interests — they’ll even throw parties and drone light shows for their fictional boyfriends’ birthdays.
“The premise is that you’re a Hunter in a place called Linkon City, which I think is based off Shanghai,” Lea explained, swiping around the interface. “So you’re basically fighting these monsters that have superpowers, but you also have superpowers — you’re the center of the universe, you’re made of stars and the cosmos, and when you were younger, you were experimented on. There’s a ton of lore. But as you’re growing up and becoming a Hunter, you come across these different love interests, you fight monsters and you find out why you were experimented on by this company entity who wants to make the world worse.”
A Date With Death revolves around a weeklong barter you make with the Grim Reaper to keep your soul — but wait, why is the Grim Reaper kind of sexy?
Most of the top-played otome games have similarly rich storylines propelling them, whether sci-fi or action. Tokyo Debunker involves solving supernatural cases (while meeting good-looking ghouls along the way); A Date With Death revolves around a weeklong barter you make with the Grim Reaper to keep your soul — but wait, why is the Grim Reaper kind of sexy? A compelling game is not just about some floppy protagonist who’s waiting around for a guy to show up, but one who is actively doing something useful and important most of the time.
Video games are designed to tap into the core feelings we all want to have in our lives: achievement, motivation, pride and joy. Otome games mine these emotions, alongside intimacy, lust and connection. And for a generation of people who feel disconnected and overwhelmed by the world around them, it’s a deeply rewarding form of entertainment.
Would your flesh-and-bone boyfriend do this?
In Love and Deepspace, you play under your own name, and there are five main love interests: Xavier, Zayne, Rafayel, Sylus and Caleb. They all have specific relationships with the protagonist, whether it be a childhood friend, a coworker or an enemy who turns into a lover. Going on dates with the different love interests gives you more support in battle, and if you pay to use their gashapon (a claw machine-esque minigame), you can unlock more moments with them.
The boundaries between reality and fantasy can easily start to blur when you’re spending hours in this world. There’s a function within the game through which the men can send you texts and even call you, which usually funnels you into dates and adventures with the five different characters. There’s a photo booth where you can take silly pictures together. There’s even a menstrual cycle tracker on the app, which triggers the characters to share caring messages and information about periods, as well as offer to pick up pads or tampons.
Lea shows me a memory she unlocked in the game, a video of Zayne, with long hair and tinsel extensions, heavily breathing all over the protagonist as you have implied intercourse in a flower-littered pool, while tied together with a golden rope. It’s essentially soft-core porn. There’s seemingly little that your virtual boyfriend can’t do for you.
Kris, 28, has been playing Love and Deepspace since its launch in 2024. “Usually, I get really into them in between serious relationships,” she told Yahoo. “After a big breakup during college was the first time I started playing one.”
In the past, Kris said, she’s experienced communication issues with her partner, but in Love and Deepspace, disagreements always get resolved. “For me, usually how I communicated would bother my partner or not be sufficient, so in a way I think otome games were a safer way for me to explore conversations with a romantic interest since there were options and no real-life ramifications,” she said. “I could also see what kinds of personalities I was better able to communicate with. Most of my real-life partners had been pretty extroverted since I find it hard to approach people. But in otome games, I found myself drawn to characters that were a bit more standoffish, that I would need to work harder to pursue.”
None of the love interests ever talk ad nauseam about doing farmer’s walks at the gym, get inexplicably angry because they’re sad, or subscribe to the labels of “avoidant attachment” or “emotionally unavailable.”
The affections she has for the characters aren’t really personal, but more parasocial. It’s “like being a fan of a K-pop idol or musician,” she said. There are a lot of activities within the fandom that stem from the K-pop world: gamers throw café birthday parties, get together in person and even book billboards to express their devotion to their favored love interests.
To anyone who has ever dated a corporeal man before, it’s easy to see why these games are so compelling. None of the love interests ever talk ad nauseam about doing farmer’s walks at the gym, get inexplicably angry because they’re sad, or subscribe to the labels of “avoidant attachment” or “emotionally unavailable.” The precision of the dialogue is almost bone-chilling. “Do you want to go for a walk after work?” asks the love interest Rafayel from inside the liminal space where Lea can dress him up in the different clothing and hair options (yes, shirtless is also a possibility).
When fictional romance raises expectations
Ari, 28, is in a long-term relationship but is deeply invested in the otome game Tokyo Debunker. They’ve been playing the game for over 10 years, since they were in high school.
Ari said that being immersed in their otome game doesn’t necessarily affect their relationship with their partner. ” More so, I think it offers different flavors of romance that maybe we might not encounter in our real relationship,” they said. “But we’re also both aware these are excellent writers, or maybe sometimes delusional ones. And it’s just fun to be kinda immersed in that type of romance, or at least observe it.”
Still, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that these characters are more real than they really are. “Someone I met via [the Tokyo Debunker] Discord, who’s actually a fully grown woman with a husband and two kids, said in a shared server she wished her romantic life was similar to some of the games she plays, like Love and Deepspace,” they said. “I think otome games can sometimes skew how we create and build relationships, since these games are often programmed with specific endings, which is to fall in love.”
Ari said the suggested dialogue, primarily used to propel the plot, isn’t always the “healthiest” form of communication. ” It does help you kind of give examples of certain encounters you might have while dating, or an example of a conflict, but not necessarily the best choices to deal with them,” they said. When playing A Date With Death, Ari added: ” I think it helps for setting your mind up for a potential scenario, but again, you’re like, ‘You’re never gonna meet a Grim Reaper in real life.'”
There’s a perception that this new economy targeting women’s romantic loneliness — the market of otome games, collectible dolls and earlier versions of pocket boyfriends — would make them only more reclusive from love and society in general. But for Kris and Lea, it’s not necessarily the case. Lea said she’s learned to become flirtier when she’s meeting people she’s interested in, and more forthcoming when acting on a crush.
I’m never on a date and thinking, oh, I just want to go back and play this game. Sometimes I just want to play it because it’s a video game.
“Nothing could replace real-life love for me,” Lea said. “I’m never on a date and thinking, oh, I just want to go back and play this game. Sometimes I just want to play it because it’s a video game. It also makes me excited to date because it’s like, I could have this with other people.”
Kris, meanwhile, says it’s raised her romantic standards. “They definitely have given me a better idea of what kind of relationship I picture for myself. They also scratch an itch when I’m feeling like being chaotic in my personal life.”
Ari has found community through the fan Discord channels, where players talk about gameplay and new game updates. They’ve met up in person over the years, had arguments and gone through all the very real, human obstacles of getting to know people. Though everyone I interviewed said that they know other players who very much feel as though they are deeply, truly in love with the otome characters, none of them see it that way. Lea sometimes brings her “boyfriend” Zayne around with her, as kind of a sardonic joke, but it hasn’t stopped her from wanting to date. The animated 3D ideal on her screen does set a high bar, though.
” In the end they’re just pixels,” Lea said. “They’re just people in a game, and I could also go out and meet people who are like this as well. But it’s also, like, why would I?”
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com ’
