Chinese Developer Sees Untapped Market in Gay Gamers

In his central Beijing office, Zhu Qiming flicked at his smartphone screen. A small pair of yellow boxer shorts suddenly appeared on the digital hunk staring back at him from his device.

The briefs were designed to resemble Spongebob Squarepants' head, complete with a scowling face over the bulge they were concealing. A few more finger flicks from Zhu caused the guy in the Spongebob boxers to be joined by a friend who was equally as buff, but sported an even skimpier pair of briefs over his considerable virtual package.

Zhu was giving me a demo of a forthcoming smartphone game with the working title Rainbow Town. As both its title and heavy use of near-naked men suggested, it looks set to be the gayest game ever released in China.

This is wholly intentional: Rainbow Town is the result of Zhu's gaming company Star-G Technologies spotting a gap in the enormous Chinese mobile gaming market. Right now China is having its own 'pink dollar' moment, with an increasing amount of companies realising there's money to be made marketing to LGBT customers. Small tech firms such as Star-G are leading the way.

"China is going though a 'nationwide entrepreneur' and 'nationwide innovation' campaign, and its technology industry is developing at peak speed," Geng Le, founder of Chinese gay dating app Blued, said. Geng has been hugely instrumental in promoting LGBT-friendly business in China and has made his own app the equivalent of Grindr in the country. Geng: "China's LGBT community is big: tens of millions of people. It's a very good business opportunity."

"LGBT people are gradually being accepted by the public—a few years ago the market would not be ready for a gay game," said Zhu. Although it is still believed that only a tiny percentage of homosexual people in China ever come out, Zhu is correct in asserting that societal attitudes are beginning to change.

We're a long way from country-wide acceptance of non-heterosexual lifestyles in China, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997, but cities with significant amounts of international visitors such as Beijing and Shanghai are largely welcoming places for openly gay people. Chinese state media, meanwhile, almost invariably covers LGBT issues with a progressive, positive tone.

"With rising social tolerance, people in the LGBT community have begun to demonstrate their identity and meet other members of the community through a range of social activities, including games," Zhu told China Daily before I met him. "I see strong demand going unfulfilled, and that provides us with 'pink' opportunities."

One such pink opportunity is Rainbow Town, which is scheduled for release in March. An RPG-style game with elements of The Sims, it sees you guide your dreamboat avatar around a city going on virtual dates with other players, taking part in fashion shows and playing various mini-games.

Players link their avatars to their accounts on Blued, meaning there's real life boyfriend (or hook-up) potential too. "If you like someone you can touch them," said Zhu, bringing up a screen with yet another muscly hunk, this time wearing dungarees and a yellow hard hat. As Zhu taps the character's chest on his screen red hearts appear and the character begins to blush.

Zhu claims that Rainbow Town will be the first Chinese video game to be specifically designed for gay people. As well as being fun for openly gay people in the country, he's hoping it will offer a vital outlet to those who remain in the closet.

"I've always wanted to do something for gay people," he said. "A purpose of this game is to let people do things they might not be able to do in real life, such as dress however they want to and just be themselves."

When researching the title, Zhu found that gay people quizzed about what they wanted in a game kept mentioning gay marriage. As such, Rainbow Town has a church with a hunky minister in which avatars can get married, whereas in the real world gay marriage is not recognised in China. "We're working on a baby adoption function too," said Zhu.

The church might not go down well with authorities—the government promotes secularism and is often accused of persecuting religious people. It also strictly controls the media, banning content deemed unsuitable. Despite state media newspapers and websites largely demonstrating progressive attitudes towards LGBT topics, in March last year the government banned all depictions of gay people on television as part of a crackdown on "vulgar, immoral and unhealthy content."

There are no actions more lewd than gentle stroking for red heart 'likes' in Rainbow Town; Zhu has been careful not to incite the censor scissors. "We understand that gays like muscular guys, so we made the characters as nakedly appreciable as possible without them being completely naked. The government does have control over gay issues but the regulations for TV, films and the internet are more strict."

Rainbow Town will be keeping things cute rather than kinky. "For our research we found a foreign game that's a campus story—the professors would rip off the player's clothes and have sex with him on the desk," says Zhu. "We saw another one in which the player only does one thing: help male clients have baths. You rub naked men's backs and if you do it right they moan. We won't have things like that."

Rainbow Town will get an English language release after the Chinese version comes out. In expectation of kicking off a mini gayming revolution in China, Star-G will release a different, pure 'virtual boyfriend' game in China soon too.

When the virtual town's ribbon is cut it will mark another small step towards equality for all sexualities in China.