China women pay for ‘companions’ in role-playing games, spark love commercialisation debate

An orphan, trained as a cold-hearted assassin, learns what love truly means from a master thief. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, however, she kills her lover, granting him freedom as her final gift. Joyce, from Shenzhen in southern China, played this female killer in a script-killing game, and after a 10-hour plot unfolding, tears streamed down her face upon reaching this ending. She is one of many participating in the recently booming romantic script-killing games in China. In traditional...