Love and Deepspace, a Chinese mobile romance game released globally in January 2024, sells intimacy partly by naming its audience. Its official Chinese and English channels address players as “猎人小姐” (Miss Hunters), “深空猎人” (Deepspace Hunters), and, at other moments, simply “players.” During controversies over the game’s global-facing promotion in 2026, these differences became evidence in a wider dispute over whether the publisher still recognized a specifically women-oriented audience. This paper asks how audience address organizes intimacy and accountability across Chinese and international channels. Using matched comparative discourse analysis, it examines paired Chinese-English crisis statements, routine notices from both channels, market-specific event and compensation documents, and an illustrative corpus of Xiaohongshu (RedNote), Douyin, and TapTap posts that explicitly discuss naming differences. The analysis shows that crisis communication layers romantic and administrative language. Several forms of address coexist and perform different functions: “Miss Hunters” preserves gendered recognition and the game’s romantic fiction; “Deepspace Hunters” constructs a less explicitly gendered in-world community; “players” names a public requiring explanation; and UID, real-name, ticket, and order categories determine eligibility for compensation. Player posts interpret movement among these labels as evidence about who the game is for. The paper argues that address is part of platform governance: cross-market communication sustains attachment while sorting audiences into romantic subjects, market publics, and administratively verifiable consumers.

Authors:
Xiaohan Yang, The University of Sydney, Australia

About the Presenter(s)
Xiaohan Yang is a Cultural Studies postgraduate at the University of Sydney researching feminist media, romance games, digital intimacy, and platform governance.

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