I really enjoyed my Shepard and Liara romance during the Mass Effect trilogy, but I don’t think it’s particularly well executed in most other games.
I as a video game enthusiast do not want my character to experience romance. It doesn’t happen in real life the way it is portrayed in media, and it’s fucking boring seeing it over and fucking over again. Gimme tragedy, gimme a problem I can solve, a mystery, or a war to fight. But romance, and sex, have not a damn place in those things. Developers of apparently every damn media have gotten it drilled into their heads that we want to read, watch, play thru, and otherwise experience their mental masturbation. Well I for one, don’t fucking want to experience it at all. Gimme a story, and if you can’t do it without pointless sex scenes then you don’t have a fuckin story, you have a story about fuckin.
I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren’t usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.
that’s only true because most of you motherfuckers do robotic gamified romances that don’t feel natural, heartfelt or interesting.
Romance in video games is fun, yeah, but it’s usually just something extra. It’s rarely the main focus and I’m hard-pressed to really imagine how to make it the main focus without making a gooner game. Usually romance/sex is sort of the cherry on top of an otherwise good game.
SIGNALIS is a game about romance and I loved it, it is one of my favorite relatively recently released games.
Maybe you’re doing it wrong?
bg3 was literally one of the biggest games of the year…
also the sims 4 has been going for years
As usual big business trying to figure out a cookie cutter formula to repeatedly make billions in profit. But games are creative, not formulaic.
Yeah it’s too bad their formula isn’t “what if we made a good game?”
That’s not how senior management approvals work. You’re not allowed to pitch an opinion. Youre only allowed to make recommendations based on something that previously worked or if it’s a direct request by multiple users in an official feed back form. Why do you think there is no creativity in AAA games, they call it “data driven decision making”.
Now, I like a good romance here and there. Who doesn’t?
That being said, games like Sonic 06 are very good examples of why romance isn’t welcome in some places
Oh really. And what do you think he’s collecting all those rings for?
Maybe one day, someone in charge of making video games will
figure outremember that compelling, unique, decently challenging and rewarding gameplay is the actual fundamental component of a video game, and that everything else is important, but ultimately secondary to that.Hmmm… Or, or, hear me out: what about you’re some guy in some mysterious place, but here comes the best part: this time you have amnesia and you must shoot guns at monsters to uncover the truth?
Actually. Sometimes it is. The actual problem is that you’re trying to figure it out at all. If you’re trying to engineer the perfect product, it will always be a shit game. Good games come from passionate developers who have an idea, not from board meetings and focus groups.
If they want sex they’ll go to pornhub
Some people prefer multiplayer games.
Half-assed sex scenes (no pun intended) are probably worse than ones that are well done.
I still think a lot about one of the beats in a DA:I romance. But like… all the ones from DA:O were kind of bad. But also the one I played in DA:V was so PG-13 and sterile it wasn’t any fun at all.
all the ones from DA:O
You underestimate the power of my crush on Morrigan.
I think that you can just give them gifts until they’re horny for you is like the quintessential example of poorly done video game romance.
Wait isn’t that basically how it works in Stardew Valley too?
To be fair, the DLC that added the absurd +50 approval gifts was an optional download released on April 1st. The gifts system as shipped by the vanilla game was not too bad, and was not enough to make a companion swoon over you single-handedly. At least I don’t think so. That being said, I can’t pretend DA:O is the height of dating sims or anything, either.
I’ll admit my fondness was more about her character being interesting and I don’t remember much of the mechanical aspects of the way the game handled relationships.
You’re starting on the wrong end.
People want games that the devs care about making. Whether it has sex or friendship or romance or relativistically-accurate jiggle physics.
People don’t know what they want until it’s in front of them, but devs know what they wanna make.
I think you hit the nail on the head with those points.
I’ve seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out.
For the original Halo they surveyed people who played who pretty much universally described the AI on the harder difficulties as being significantly “smarter”. In actuality the only thing changed was enemies health pools and damage output and it was identical AI.
Gamers usually have a holistic experience with the games they are playing. There’s definitely a place for user feedback to work, but devs don’t look at a game the same way that people playing them do. Asking people who don’t know how something works for feedback will give you perspective, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to informed design decisions.
“I’ve seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out.”
I think this is a great example. You can’t distill things down to a formula because these things exist in conversation with each other. An example that comes to mind is the game “Not Tonight”, a Brexit themed Papers Please clone. Mechanically, it does very little to distinguish itself from papers please, but narratively, that’s sort of the whole point: It being a clone specifically leverages the energy of “Glory to Arstotzka” to satirise the UK’s institutional racism.
Surveys don’t capture that games like this aren’t just clones of Papers Please, they’re actively in conversation with Papers Please
I know it’s anecdotal, but among my students (12-18 y/o), dating sims are extremely popular. Probably the most popular genre after battle royal games. I would definitely consider dating sims romance games.
Dating sims are generally not played by heterosexual boys on Playstation or Xbox.
Dating sims are absolutely played by heterosexual boys. Some of the weirdest, red-pill, alpha-male shit I’ve seen is from dating sims.
But yeah, usually on PC, I would think.
Have gamers ever wanted sex in games?
shifts eyes to 600gb on my external hdd
Haha yeah so right bro yeah haha
Back in the 80’s Leisure Suit Larry sold well enough for a couple sequels.
It’s got to be well written and funny.
Turn off the nsfw filter on steam and find out.
