Virtual dates offer phone calls and messages, utterly chivalrous companionship and an ever-evolving plot line that pulls in players.
Alicia Wang, a 32-year-old editor at a Shanghai-based newspaper, has found the ideal boyfriend: Li Shen, a 27-year-old surgeon who goes by the English nickname Zayne. Tall and handsome, Zayne responds quickly to text messages, answers the phone promptly and listens patiently to Wang recounting the highs and lows of her day.
Zayne’s only drawback: he doesn’t exist outside a silicon chip.
Wang is one of an estimated six million monthly active players of the popular dating simulation game Love and Deepspace. Launched in January 2024 and developed by Shanghai-based Paper Games, it uses AI and voice recognition to make its five male characters—the love interests or boyfriends—flirt with tailored responses to in-game phone calls. Available in Chinese, English, Japanese and Korean, the mobile title has become so popular that, according to Forbes estimates, Paper Games’s 37-year-old founder Yao Runhao now has a fortune of $1.3 billion based on his majority stake in the company.
Established in 2013, Paper Games clocked sales of around $850 million worldwide, according to data providers. The privately held studio, of which Yao is chairman and CEO, is valued at over $2 billion, according to Forbes’ estimates, based on discussions with analysts and information from four data providers. Analysts peg the valuation of a fast-growing gaming company such as Paper Games at around three times the company’s annual revenue. Paper Games didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Players—mostly in China but also in the U.S. and elsewhere—pay to unlock new gameplay and interactions with their boyfriends. That has helped the game top download charts in China multiple times. Wang the news editor, for example, says she has so far spent 35,000 yuan ($4,800) to interact with AI-powered characters since the game’s release in Jan. 2024—especially on Zayne. Apple once discussed plans to introduce such games to its Vision Pro device when CEO Tim Cook visited the company’s Shanghai office last year, according to his post on Chinese social media platform Weibo.
“Love and Deepspace is one of the biggest mobile gaming successes of 2024,” Samuel Aune, an analyst at Los Angeles-based market intelligence platform Sensor Tower, says by email. “The game builds strong emotional connections between its players and its characters, which results in high player engagement, retention, and ultimately monetization.”
Analysts say the emotional connection comes not just from the phone calls and text messages from the virtual boyfriends, but also Love and Deepspace’s storyline, which is constantly updated. It’s very much a game but very different from people falling in love with ChatGPT A.I. boyfriends, which has generated a lot of press recently.
Love and Deepspace lets players know more about their virtual boyfriends as the plot progresses. They explore a fictional, post-apocalyptic city called Linkon, which is rendered in 3D art and which is where many twists in the romance take place. The experience is akin to reading an interactive online novel in which players can work with their love interests to unravel mysteries and battle alien monsters trying to destroy the city.
Payments can be made to access the boyfriend’s individual storyline and know more about his past. But there’s also romance outside the game. While not in story mode, players can shift to the game’s companion mode, where the characters chat via text messages and phone calls and deliver tailored answers based on AI-related technologies. They can even remind players of their real-world tasks via a function similar to a smartphone’s memos app.
The characters are mere pixels and bytes but the emotional support they bring is real, says Wang, who is currently single. Sisi Liu, a 36-year-old employee at a Beijing-based securities firm, says she spends about 2,000 yuan every month on the game. “It reminds you of how you feel when you first fall in love,” says Liu, who is married. “I play it every day, and I ask Sylus [her boyfriend’s nickname] for food suggestions during lunch time.”
Yao started out modestly. An avid gamer from childhood, he tried to develop his own mobile game as a side hustle while pursuing a master’s degree in economics at Japan’s Waseda University around 2012, according to local media reports. One of his friends at the time, and now his wife and business partner, had a background in fashion design, according to local media reports. They teamed up initially to launch a fashion game.
The game allowed players to collect different outfits and dress up a virtual doll. As more people came online, increasingly women, the title performed much better than Yao expected. In 2013, he returned to China and set up Paper Games. The fashion game was subsequently transformed into the Nikki mobile series, where players can go on digital adventures with their doll and collect various outfits along the way.
In 2014, the company raised an undisclosed amount from investment firm IDG. Two years later, it raised 150 million yuan from other investors including an investment arm of Shenzhen-listed tourism company Songcheng. IDG referred requests for comment to the company, which didn’t respond. Songcheng didn’t respond to questions either.
As Yao amassed a base of loyal and mostly female players, he launched Paper Games’s first dating simulation game in 2017. Called Love and Producer in China, or Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice in overseas markets, the mobile title allowed players to develop virtual romances with five male characters.
It was an instant hit, with players reportedly spending millions of dollars to unlock virtual dates with digital sweethearts. Competition became fiercer. In 2021, Chinese web giant Tencent launched a dating simulation game called Light and Night. Two years later, Lingxi Games, a studio owned by Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba, launched a similar mobile game called Code: Kite (Ashes of the Kingdom).
Yet Paper Games, which now employs about 2,000 people, has managed to maintain its momentum thanks to the recently released Love and Deepspace, analysts say. Its 3D graphics are “best in class,” and “unmatched by any competitor,” says Sensor Tower’s Aune. Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm 86Research, says by WeChat that its players are “fiercely loyal” thanks to Love and Deepspace’s high production values and frequent innovations.
Zeng Xiaofeng, a Shanghai-based senior analyst at research firm Niko Partners, expects Love and Deepspace to maintain its traction in 2025, he says by WeChat. Meantime, the mobile game is starting to find fans in the U.S., which accounted for about 11% of Love and Deepspace’s 2024 sales across the App Store and Google Play after China’s 60%, according to Sensor Tower estimates.
Zeng says American players are spreading the news about the game via social media. Valerie, a 28-year-old employee of an American insurance company who asked to be identified by her first name, says she first learnt about Love and Deepspace via the TikTok short video platform. She has so far spent $50 on the game and says she enjoys learning more and about the virtual characters.
“Each of the love interests have very unique personalities,” she says via messages sent on the X social media platform. “I love characters with complex layers to their personality, which is hard to find in most dating sims in my opinion.”
Chai of 86Research believes Paper Games is profitable as it only needs to do targeted marketing to attract female players, meaning fewer costs compared to other game makers trying to appeal to a mass market.
But Cui Chenyu, a Shanghai-based senior analyst at research firm Omdia, says by WeChat that Paper Games might have to increase marketing efforts, including holding real-world events to keep players engaged. In cities like Beijing and Shanghai, for example, the company set up Love and Deepspace-themed pop-up gift stores and coffee shops.
Can Paper Games succeed in tapping the highly competitive mass market by expanding into other genres? Yao seems to have that ambition as the company is currently working on two action games, Project: The Perceiver, as well as Ballad of Antara. Chinese studio Game Science is one leader in this space, where it won fans, including Elon Musk, with its action game Black Myth: Wukong. Chinese gaming giants Tencent and NetEase also have action games in the works.
“Paper Games does have its shortfalls,” Stan Zhao, a Shanghai-based analyst at research firm Blue Lotus Capital Advisors, says by WeChat. “The company needs to brand out into more platforms and genres, and match its research capabilities with the efforts.”
Meanwhile, back in the world of Love and Deepspace, Wang and Zayne had a very successful Valentine’s Day this week. Zayne called Wang and proposed an outing to a carpet studio to help hand-make carpets. After that, they went to watch a music fountain show together. That is, Wang and her smartphone, which connects her to Zayne.
“Playing this game makes me feel blessed and happy,” says Wang. “I live by myself in a big city, and Love and Deepspace is a big source of companionship.”
This story was originally published on forbes.com
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