Who cares what teens want?
They don't have any money.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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I enjoy well-done romance in games. It's just a taste thing.
Does that exist?
What's your fave?
Been saying this for a long time now. Romance in video games is about as batshit-cringy as it gets and is a tremendous waste of time that could have been used to add meaningful content or fix stability issues/bugs instead.
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.
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.
1000% agree.
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.
bg3 was literally one of the biggest games of the year....
also the sims 4 has been going for years
The romance was the worst part of BG3, imo.
Too forced, every dialogue option is either slightly flirty (at least) or just telling them "fuck you and die".
Even when you say you just want friendship and avoid the most flirty options, it won't stop the game from trying to throw you in a romance. I hated that.
Bets that it wasn’t because of the romance.
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".
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.
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.
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
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?
Sauron
Maybe one day, someone in charge of making video games will ~~figure out~~ remember 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?
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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
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Just because you really enjoy golf doesn't mean you want every movie to have a half-assed awkward golf game stuffed into it.
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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.
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.
The characters keep throwing themselves at you though.
It really sucks when I'm playing a game with my girlfriend and there is a half-naked demon lady trying to bang me despite me being an asshole to them in every interaction.
Baldurs Gate 3 is one of my favorites games ever, but I would enjoy it a lot more without the awkward horny stuff it throws in my face.
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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?
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.
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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.
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