Soft discipline and affective symbolic capital: a multimodal analysis of algorithmic confucianism in Chinese Otome games

This article examines how Chinese Otome games – mobile romance platforms for women – use interface design to turn emotional labor into a measurable form of gendered capital. Introducing the concept of Affective Symbolic Capital (ASC), it shows how players’ emotional labor is algorithmically quantified and converted into platform value. Through multimodal critical discourse analysis, the study identifies a mechanism of “Soft Discipline,” where commercial gameplay fuses capitalist monetization with Confucian family ethics. The article uncovers a paradox: the same interface features that simulate romantic freedom also enforce compliance. Desire is channelled into profitable, conservative habits. These platforms do not democratize intimacy but engineer a “technological enforcement of tradition,” offering a localized critique of digital affect beyond Western frameworks by demonstrating how regional social structures are dynamically internalized within East Asian platform architectures.