21 MARCH 2025
Welcome to this week’s edition of Culture Wire, a newsletter brought to you by Singapore-based pop culture and lifestyle marketing agency Culture Group.
In this week’s edition:
- Headline of the Week: Female-centric gaming experiences gain traction across SEA
- Fax, No Printer: Which platform promises a call back to the whimsy of the early internet?
- Before You Leave: Deepseek adoption, fragrance dupes, Mattel and the manananggal
Headline of the Week
💌 CODED ROMANCE
Inviting players to ‘step into a sci-fi world where love knows no bounds’, Love and Deepspace is an otome mobile game that combines real-time combat, photorealistic characters and customization options with a first-person story. Other features include mini games (which open up more dating options) and in-game micro-transactions. It’s wildly popular. According to its Chinese developer Papergames, Love and Deepspace has more than 50 million players worldwide. It generated USD 446.6 million in its first year, with 36% coming from outside China. Now the game—and the otome genre—is gaining traction in Southeast Asia with Google searches in Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore on the rise in the last 30 days.
💡 OUR TAKE
Before we dive in, a quick primer: otome games are a sub-genre of dating sims that are catered to women. Originating in Japan, the word otome means ‘maiden’ (it also refers to a girl who is obsessed with anime or manga). In these games, players take on the role of a female main character, navigating a series of scenarios alongside simulated romantic relationships with male characters. It’s important to note that while Love and Deepspace is very new, otome isn’t—the genre dates back to 1994’s Angelique.
Three decades later, female gamers have emerged as a powerful demographic in SEA. Not only is the number of female gamers in the region growing, they’re embracing mobile games (77% of female online gamers in SEA are mobile gamers, compared to 83% of male gamers). Perhaps more importantly they are willing to open their wallets—30% of female gamers make game-related purchases versus 22% of male gamers. And some are openly documenting their Love and Deepspace sprees. Per one report, it’s not uncommon to find players who have spent nearly USD 1,400 on the game.
Players cite the ‘gentler’ relationship dynamics where female characters are respected and male characters are both aesthetically pleasing and emotionally intelligent. At their core, otome games appeal because they center on the female experience. At the start of the year, Love and Deepspace introduced a period-tracking feature, where players can input their real-life menstruation dates. It’s part of a broader Remind Me calendar-style feature where players can add specific events then receive a notification from a male character. (Note that while some embraced this feature, others raised concerns about the risks of sharing sensitive personal information with companies).
Beyond the empathy factor, otome games provide an antidote to dating apps and IRL relationships that, for many young women, don’t live up to the hype. The Philippines, for example, has seen a surge of romance scams. It’s perhaps unsurprising that Love and Deepscape is finding success in markets where women’s rights remain contested.
Zooming out and considering the broader pop culture scene, Love and Deepscape’s success sits alongside the explosion of interest in romantasy (romance and fantasy lit), which has gained significant traction globally, including Southeast Asia. Both offer escapism and fulfill romantic fantasies that form a collective experience through communities like BookTok and fanfic forums.
This success is indicative of a media industry that’s finally acknowledging and catering to women’s interests in a creative and culturally relevant way. The recent success of Barbie and Wicked proved that when brands give female consumers something to show up for, they will. And they will show up with enthusiasm. Expect more success stories like Love and Deepspace in the coming months.
The rise of otome gaming across SEA reveals a shift in how women engage with entertainment: they’re seeking experiences that balance fantasy with agency, escape with empowerment. Female consumers aren’t just looking for products—they’re looking for spaces where their complexity is understood and catered to. Can you create spaces where women can explore their desires on their own terms, without judgment or limitation?
Fax, No Printer*
For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’
Which platform promises a call back to the whimsy of the early internet?
Scroll to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!
Before You Leave
The big business of perfume dupes
(6 min read)
This Week's Trivia Answer
B. Facebook Marketplace
It seems like every week there’s a new social media platform that promises to counter doomscrolling and prioritize human connection. But what if users are looking in the wrong place for a more ‘social’ media, and the answer lies in a legacy platform?
According to the New York Times, Facebook Marketplace ‘still yields surprises rather than serving up — or, at least, only serving up — algorithmic slop’. Scrolling through sellers’ items, the author argues, is ‘almost a form of time travel, a callback to the whimsy that defined the Web 1.0 era’. It’s a space where personal listings come with highly personal anecdotes.
Maybe it’s a reminder that catering to the growing need for more social connection doesn’t mean abandoning Facebook and co., but rather prioritising browsing experiences that feel refreshingly random and human. How might your brand inject more serendipity and authentic human moments into your social strategy, rather than chasing the next platform?
🚀 Over and Out!
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Your Culture Mavens,
Angela, Catherine, Teri, Twila, & Vicki
