This August, a teaser trailer for the forthcoming Black Myth: Wukong had China’s gaming community on cloud nine. Although the country is home to some of the world’s top mobile gaming companies and several well-regarded indie developers, Black Myth was something different: Based on the classic tale “Journey to the West,” it wants to be China’s first true AAA game, a category dominated by graphics-intensive titles like the Dark Souls series.
今年8月，一部即将上映的《黑神话:悟空》的预告片让中国的游戏社区上了九霄云外。尽管中国是全球最大的手机游戏公司和几个著名的独立开发者,黑色的神话是不同的:基于经典故事“西游记”,它想成为中国第一个真正的AA*级A**游戏,一个类别由图形密集的标题就像黑暗的灵魂系列。
Although developer Game Science has yet to release even a demo version of Black Myth, the trailer nevertheless racked up over 10 million views on video-streaming site Bilibili within a day of being uploaded, alongside another 2 million views on YouTube.
尽管开发商Game Science还没有发布《黑色神话》的演示版本，但该预告片在上传一天之内就在视频网站Bilibili上获得了超过1000万的点击量，在YouTube上的点击量也达到了200万。
Game Science may not have been prepared for all that attention. The day of the trailer’s release, founder and CEO Feng Ji wrote on microblogging platform Weibo: “We’ve been staffing up with new hires, and I’ve been sucked off so many times I can’t get an erection anymore.” Two days later he came back for more, writing, “Watching it (the trailer) made me wet too… My pants are about to burst!”
博弈论可能还没有准备好应对所有这些关注。在预告片发布的当天，创始人兼CEO冯吉在微博上写道:“我们一直在招聘新员工，我被吸了那么多次，都不能勃起了。”两天后，他又回来看了更多，写道:“看它(预告片)也把我弄湿了……我的裤子都快炸了!”
Soon, internet sleuths had unearthed a pattern of lewd and offensive job postings by the company dating back to 2015. In one of the ads, a mouse cursor is placed over the private parts of a nude woman in a painting. The job advertisements were taken down after the controversy broke, but their sheer crassness drew harsh criticism, including from the country’s female gamers, many of whom had enthusiastically promoted the trailer when it was released.
很快，网络侦探就发现了该公司自2015年以来发布的一系列猥亵和无礼的招聘信息。在其中一个广告中，鼠标光标被放置在一幅画中一位裸体女性的*处私**。这则招聘广告在争议爆发后被撤下，但其纯粹的粗言秽语招致了包括韩国女性玩家在内的严厉批评，她们中的许多人在预告片发布时曾热情地为其进行宣传。
In part, this is because they spend significantly less on their hobby than male players: Women account for 46% of all Chinese gamers, but less than 23% of all games spending in China. Mobile games, especially, make their money off high-spending “whales” — known in China as “Big R’s,” a reference to the country’s renminbi currency, or yuan. But even in popular games aimed at women, such as Mr Love: Queen’s Choice and Onmyoji, there are very few female Big R’s willing to drop hundreds of thousands of yuan on in-game purchases, and almost all Big R’s who spend over 1 million yuan ($150,000) in major strategy or massive multiplayer online games are male. With game companies focused on turning a profit, female players’ relatively lower spending compared with their male counterparts allows developers to justify disrespecting women’s feelings and requests.
这在一定程度上是因为她们在业余爱好上的花费比男性玩家少得多:女性玩家占中国玩家总数的46%，但在中国游戏总花费中所占的比例还不到23%。尤其是手机游戏，它们的赚钱渠道是“大鲸”——在中国被称为“大R”，指的是中国的人民币货币。但即便是在《Mr Love: Queen 's Choice》和《阴阳师》等面向女性的热门游戏中，愿意在游戏内购买上投入数十万元的女性R玩家也寥寥无几。
When I entered the industry a few years ago, I was the only woman out of 20 people in my onboarding group.
-Silvara, game designer
几年前，当我进入这个行业时，我是我的入职团队20人中唯一的女性。
This is made easier by the fact that the majority of game developers in China are men. The male gaze has become so prevalent that many women in the industry have even internalized it. The dearth of female producers means women do not have much of a voice, anyway. When I entered the industry a few years ago, I was the only woman out of 20 people in my onboarding group. My boss flatly told us — me — that “new hires could be terminated if they get pregnant immediately after joining the company.”
中国大部分游戏开发者都是男性，这使得这一点变得更容易。男性的凝视已经变得如此普遍，以至于许多业内女性已经将其内化。无论如何，女性制作人的缺乏意味着女性没有多少发言权。几年前，当我进入这个行业时，我是我的入职团队20人中唯一的女性。我的老板直截了当地告诉我们——我——“如果新员工在加入公司后马上怀孕，他们可能会被解雇。
Currently, most of the games featuring respectful portrayals of women in China have female designers or artists behind them. Sometimes getting this power means gambling our careers in arguments with our male colleagues. For example, it is common practice in the industry to boost user spending by introducing skimpy buyable outfits for female characters. Female designers can push back, but if they then fail to match the sales or results of other projects, they’ll find themselves falling behind their less-principled coworkers. This loss of status leads to a vicious cycle whereby even more male-oriented games appear.
目前，大多数以尊重女性形象为主题的奥运会背后都有女性设计师或艺术家。有时候，获得这种权力意味着拿自己的职业生涯来和男同事争论。例如，通过为女性角色介绍可购买的轻薄服装来刺激用户消费，这在业内是很常见的做法。女性设计师可以反击，但如果她们的销售业绩或其他项目的业绩不如她们，她们就会发现自己落后于不那么有原则的同事。这种地位的丧失导致了一种恶性循环，在这种循环中，更多的男性或男*游戏性**出现了。
Is there any way to raise the status of female gamers and reduce sexism in gaming? Any real solution must involve improving the social status of Chinese women in general. But as for what the game industry can accomplish on its own, bringing more female voices in would be a good start. This would hopefully force companies to respect and consider women’s perspectives before making design decisions.
有没有什么方法可以提高女性玩家的地位，减少游戏中的性别歧视?任何真正的解决方案都必须包括提高中国妇女的社会地位。但就游戏产业自身所能取得的成就而言，引入更多女性声音将是一个良好的开端。这有望迫使公司在做出设计决定前尊重并考虑女性的观点。
Outside the industry, women can help by spending more money on their favorite games. But at the same time, game companies need to be more aware of the myriad nonfinancial ways female gamers contribute to the success of games. For example, female players are often more willing to produce fan art and fan fiction based on their favorite IP, which essentially amounts to free advertising. Working in the game industry, I’ve been pleased to see Chinese game companies start to recognize the importance of this kind of word-of-mouth, grassroots publicity in recent years. The industry still has a lot of imperfections, but things are getting better.
在游戏产业之外，女性可以通过在她们喜欢的游戏上花更多的钱来帮助玩家。但与此同时，游戏公司需要更多地了解女性玩家为游戏的成功做出的无数非金融贡献。例如，女性玩家通常更愿意根据自己喜爱的IP制作粉丝艺术和粉丝小说，这实际上相当于免费广告。在游戏行业工作，我很高兴看到近年来中国游戏公司开始认识到这种口碑、草根宣传的重要性。这个行业仍然有很多不完美的地方，但是事情已经越来越好了。
Female gamers are a powerful group, and I believe the industry’s problems will eventually be overcome as more women agitate for change. When that happens, I hope to see more and better games developed by women, for women, and respectful of women.
女性玩家是一个强大的群体，我相信随着越来越多的女性参与变革，这个行业的问题最终会得到解决。当这一切发生时，我希望看到更多更好的游戏由女性开发，为女性，尊重女性。