Negotiated Empowerment and Split Performance: Female Representation in Chinese Video Games

Abstract

This study investigates a central paradox in contemporary Chinese video games: the coexistence of narratively empowered female characters and their simultaneous visual objectification. While existing scholarship explains why this tension exists, particularly in female-oriented games, less attention has been paid to how this negotiation manifests at the micro-level. Through qualitative content analysis of dialogue, plot structures, and visual design across 16 female characters from five popular mobile games (Onmyoji, Genshin Impact, Path to Nowhere, Code: Kite, Morimens), this study identifies three interconnected strategies of negotiated empowerment: contained resistance, which quarantines character agency within specific spatial-temporal boundaries; citational split, where contradictory gender scripts are performed simultaneously to satisfy fragmented audiences; and split performativity, which systematically decouples empowering narratives from commercialized aesthetics. The analysis reveals this contradiction not as design failure, but as deliberate systematic negotiation among developers, state regulations, and player expectations. Moving beyond existing macro-level platform studies, this research offers a micro-analytical framework demonstrating how abstract platform pressures translate into concrete, paradoxical character designs, with broader implications for understanding gender representation in platform-based cultural production globally.