Study Finds U.S. Otome Game Players Don't Require Reciprocated Feelings From Characters

A research paper by Elena Yifei Zhao and Nicholas D. Bowman examined why U.S. players are drawn to otome games like Love and Deepspace compared with players in other regions. Forming an emotional and romantic bond with the characters correlated positively with entertainment experience across regions, but U.S. players did not require their in-game love interest to reciprocate their feelings, nor did that affect how close they felt to the character. The researchers attribute this cultural difference to the stigma still attached to the genre in the U.S. and players' relative inexperience with such games.