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.
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.
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.
Wait isn’t that basically how it works in Stardew Valley too?
I mean, that’s what fanfiction.net is for if you want to ship Bowser and Peach.
Who cares what teens want?
They don’t have any money.
Is that why no one cares what I want? Because I don’t have any money? 🤔
Money is the old economy. Teens have something that adults don’t have that is infinitely more valuable than money: attention. This is how, despite having no money, teen taste and culture is so over-represented today.
They also will become adults. So hook them now. They might also have access to their parents’ money.
I genuinely think that money is no longer the goal of the top economic echelon. Techniques for controlling how people spend money can be generalized into controlling all their behaviour; total power.
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.
No one wants to admit they want that stuff in a survey but those are always super popular
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.
Did romantic feelings have any place in Max Payne 2?
I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren’t usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.
Sometimes it’s fun
Well this is funny sex humor
Not romance
This is the same thing TV shows figured out ages ago: you give people a flirty relationship and it’s generally fun to watch. You turn that flirting into an actual relationship and it’s boring + usually some fan service where the authors of the show try to get their female coworkers as naked as they can be manipulated into getting. And then they always need to make that same female coworker get pregnant and force her to fake giving birth.
Tldr it doesn’t matter what the fans want, authors are fucking pervs.
I mean, maybe my friends are just weird, but I’m looking at the success of mass effect trilogy, BG3, the older dragon age games, etc and a huge talking point was always all the companions and possible avenues of romance and sex. That should never be the focus of the game, but it can be a substantial part of the overall experience and add a lot.
Teens these days.
I played and enjoyed BG3 too. but I’m an adult…
What’s this from?
I meant the cartoon ork in a suit :P
You’ve also simultaneously failed age verification
Good Sir I’m almost 40. I thought Ancient Aliens Guy was ubiquitous.
Never enough dakka.
Related game: Mothergunship
I mean, I played Firewatch. It’s part suspense and mystery but I felt there was a possible romance angle there that is hard to deny. You can make it platonic and straightforward but I remember feeling quite connected to the person on the other line.
Then again, I’m twice the age of a “teen” so I don’t know if it fits.
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
A romance story is good if’s not half-assed and a game doesn’t depend on it. 16-bit RPG’s did it well.
that’s only true because most of you motherfuckers do robotic gamified romances that don’t feel natural, heartfelt or interesting.
kids these days don’t want sex they want to be held as they curl up in a ball and cry
Hey, me too
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?
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”.
