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
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.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
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.
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?
I never got far in stardew, so maybe?
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.
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.
That’s right “industry execs” — you just need to turn down the romance by 40% and the sex by 15%, add 50% more friendship and 25% more adventure, control for the desired level of political correctness, add just the right variety of behavioural feedback loops, and you’ll have a maximally profitable game.
maximally profitable game
See, it really is just an algorithm that can be nailed down perfectly, and I’ve got an entire floor of statisticians and market analysts that agree it’ll make me berjillions!!!1!!
Lpt: they’re also telling me more statisticians and market analysts will help boost my numbers too! Jackpot!
-an executive, somewhere, in nearly every corporate office
Yes daddy
What part of turn the romance down by 40% didn’t you understand?
It’s the Nuclear Gandhi bug all over again. By dialing down their romance by absolute 40%, you’ve gone through the floor and interger overflowed to 255%.
UwU
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.
If they want sex they’ll go to pornhub
Some people prefer multiplayer games.
Just because you really enjoy golf doesn’t mean you want every movie to have a half-assed awkward golf game stuffed into it.
Also, everyone plays golf differently and someone will watch a pro take a swing and so try it themselves, only to fail awkwardly and in public. The lessons to be learned are misconstrued as golfing lessons when in fact it’s just an exciting story about how hard that kind of shot really is. Folks don’t seem to understand that a story isn’t giving directions but advice.
When there isn’t a need, there isn’t a reason. And egregious golf is gross.
It’s not just games, it’s TV and movies too.
Cramming sex into everything made sense when we weren’t constantly 5 seconds away from being able to see pretty much any kind of porn someone could imagine.
Now tho, that stuff isn’t a reason to watch a show. If you just cared about that, you’d watch the clip online
lol are you equating romance in media to porn
Like do you watch the x files and whip out some porn every time the two mains chars have romantic tension
… Have you not heard of Tumblr? DeviantArt?
Gooning or swooning to shipping fanfiction and fan made eroge / nsfw art has been a huge component of many fandoms, of all kinds, for at least two decades.
The reaction from a whole lot of more modern media is to just capture a lot more of that in the official media itself.
In anime in particular, this is called ‘fan-service.’
Porn is absolutely a giant competitor in the ‘digital media consumption / attention’ market, and it completely makes sense that for people who believe in making every digital media product with as broad an appeal as possible, that there’s been a trend toward an analog of fan-service outside of anime.
Maybe I’m too cooked right now to give this reply the attention it deserves but this was a trip.
Like did my original comment give you the impression that I didn’t know people rule 34 every goddamn thing possible?
Maybe I’m really old but you suggesting that anime is the reason we stuff sex into shit is just so funny to me. I once heard someone say “every generation is the first generation to think they invented sex.”
The comment I replied to was like why romance if porn exist which was also funny
Anyways if I misread your comment then my bad it’s been a day
Yeah, isn’t rule 34 made for that?
Personally I try to get through the whole episode of family guy before I man handle my ham candle
Oh my god, yes, this! So much this! We all know what teens want, and it’s Olympic curling and nothing else.
Big mainstream games that are heavy on sex, like Baldur’s Gate 3, are a recent phenomenon.
Heavy on sex? Just which mods did the author install?
It’s fairly accurate isn’t it? Every single companion (bar Minsc and Jaheira - though the Jaheira romance was cut content) lusts for you with the uncomplicated ferocity of a hormonal teenager, some after having exchanged barely a sentence or two with you (looking at you, Halsin). There is a bear fucking scene, Mizora wants you for some reason and hell, you can even bang a god damn mind flayer.
The bear-fucking scene will always be my answer to things like this.
You can’t look at BG3 and go “yup, wholesome family fun for all ages”
Yeah, but you don’t HAVE to fuck the bear.
Joking aside, if romance and sex aren’t your thing, you as the player have control in most games to just not do those things.
Bear’s Gayte 3
You can romance and have sex with pretty much anything with a heartbeat in BG3.
Yeah there’s some romance, but there’s barely any sex. You can only romance one character at a time and there’s like one short cutscene per character, with some being a fade to black, in a 100 hour long game.
When was the last time you saw a game that was more than that outside of porn games and maybe dating sims? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Cyberpunk 2077.
I always think of this kind of stuff when these kinds of polls come up because they’re always by big corporate companies who put the most shallow of these themes in. People want this stuff like they want strong female leads: they want stuff that actually puts the effort in to make it good, not half-baked content just to maximize market reach or that one gay side character with one line of dialogue mentioning his husband who never actually appears in the movie.
When was the last time you saw a game that was more than that outside of porn games and maybe dating sims? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Cyberpunk 2077.
AAAs games have always been about putting as much stuff as possible in a neat package, there’s a lot of everything, but not much of anything. As you say, if you’re looking for a game heavy on sex you need to turn your eyes towards the indie scene - Eternum, badik, coc2…
Does it need a heart beat?
Asterion?
EVERYONE!
This feels like such a non issue because games and movies these days have basically zero sex appeal or romance
It was a pleasant surprise that you could romance people in BG3
And a major disappointment you couldn’t romance in Cyberpunk and the romance in Outer Worlds felt so half assed. Romance can be a great part of a game.
You can romance in Cyberpunk, but the romances have gender preferences. Judi and River will only romance women, Kerry and the other one I’ve never actually met will only romance men.
Really? Fair enough, I don’t recall there being any options to romance anyone when I played, but I must have just missed it. I remember the forced gay scene, which, like, fine, but I’m not gay, so it would have been cool to get at least one chance with a girl, lol, but it never seemed to come up no matter what I did with female companions in tow.
Panam is the other romancable character. If you do her entire side story (which is quite good) and choose the right options throughout, you’ll have the option to romance her near the end of the game. She’s only attracted to characters with a masculine body.
The romances in general are very easy to screw up. You lock yourself out of several right at character creation unfortunately. Here’s what you need for character creation to get each romance:
Judy: Feminine voice and body Kerry: Masculine voice and body River: Feminine body Panam: Masculine body
As long as you meet the requirements, you can romance 2 people in vanilla, though there’s something at the end of the game that requires you to pick one of them
You also need to do their side missions, but you meet each of them in the course of the main story. There’s also 4 romantic encounters that sadly don’t go anywhere serious.
You can get it on with Meredith Stout, the militech lady who threatens you near the start of the game. If you don’t insult her, you can get another mission from her in act 2. There’s also 3 encounters that can happen, but those are potential story spoilers
It’s always been this way… Are people finally realizing that fan service is cringe?
This came up, I want to say last year? In regards to movies and TV shows as well.
Aha - 2023:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208435267/sex-teens-tv-movies
“Looking for ‘nomance’: Study finds teens want less sex in their TV and movies”
That’s because OPs article is citing the second annual Teens and Screens report from the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Your NPR article from 2023 is citing the first annual Teens and Screens report.
This is where I’ve found myself, too. It’s not that I am prudish or against the inclusion of sex scenes in shows and movies—I think some of them are pretty well done—but we’re at the point where it feels like a lot of media are just adding in sex scenes for the spectacle of it without it serving any particular purpose for narrative development or characterization.
I mean, the Marvel stuff has all been gigantic and proves you don’t need sex scenes. In fact, the one Marvel movie with a sex scene (Eternals) did the worst.
I don’t think the mere existence of a popular franchise (made primarily for kids at that) which happens to lack sex scenes is related to the trend being acknowledged here, though.
but we’re at the point where it feels like a lot of media are just adding in sex scenes for the spectacle of it without it serving any particular purpose for narrative development or characterization.
This has been a thing in movies since they existed. A bit less common, but still there, in books and TV. It isn’t anything new, but at least it is becoming less common.
Have gamers ever wanted sex in games?
I like it if it’s done well
shifts eyes to 600gb on my external hdd
Haha yeah so right bro yeah haha
Turn off the nsfw filter on steam and find out.
Back in the 80’s Leisure Suit Larry sold well enough for a couple sequels.
It’s got to be well written and funny.
Most recent LSL game was 2020
Absolutely.
