Fantasy,Compromise And Resistance:A Study Of Female-Oriented Games Based On Stuart Hall’s "Encoding-Decoding Theory"

"Female-oriented game" refers to the game products developed for the game preference and psychological needs of female players.With the development of Internet technology and the improvement of women’s social status,the scale of female players in the field of video games has an obvious trend of expansion,and they are participating in the construction of game culture with a new attitude,and female-oriented games show a huge market potential.Since 2018,the domestic boom of female-oriented games has started,and many game companies have joined this track,but there are few games that are really hot.On June 24,2021,the female-oriented game "Light and Night" opened a full-platform public test,reaping great attention,and the explosion of this game made female-oriented games become the focus of the industry again.This study takes the female-oriented game "Light and Night" as the subject,and is based on Stuart Hall’s "Encoding-Decoding Theory".Through participant observation,the study decodes the coding content of female-oriented games to find the reasons why female-oriented games attract female players to immerse themselves in them-the fantastic experience,the clever and diverse narrative techniques,and the advanced and mature value expressions brought by the highly simulated game world.Then analyzes the three decoding methods of female players’ hegemonic,negotiated and confrontational approaches to female-oriented games through questionnaires and in-depth interviews to explore the reasons for the different decoding results of female players.It also reveals the social motives behind the decoding behaviors,and critically reflects on various negative phenomena that appear inside and outside the game.This study finds that female-oriented games mainly create a realistic,immersive and idealized virtual world for female players by coding the game world construction,game narrative techniques and game kernel expression to attract female players with the ultimate sensory experience and positive emotional experience.Faced with this artificial "utopia",female players have both the side of accepting and being addicted to love,and the side of resisting and resisting,criticizing and questioning,presenting a complex and diversified decoding characteristics.The decoding behavior of female players reflects their dissatisfaction and avoidance of gender relations under the current situation of women’s existence in today’s society,and also expresses their desire to obtain identity,break through stereotypes and build equal gender relations.The healthy development of female-oriented games is a long and complicated process,and we should pay close attention to the shaping of female characters,the balance of gender relations,the output of values and other aspects of female discourse expression in female-oriented games,while being alert to various irrational behaviors that appear inside and outside the game.