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.
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
159 points (94.9% liked)
PC Gaming
9572 readers
839 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren't usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.
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.
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.
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".
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?
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 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?
No, come on man...!
What we need...
Is another... open world survival pvp crafting game.
Preferably with zombies.
And season passes.
And 83939583 in game cosmetics.
...
About a month ago, as a joke, I said that like the most frustrating, evil game I could imagine would be basically a game that is nothing but shitty NPC escort quests, through an active warzone with other players in PvP, where the NPC is fragile, annoying and whiney and pretentious as possible, moves slower than you run but faster than you walk...
....and every time they get wounded or just scared or drop something or trip or see a butterfly, you go into a bethesda death stare with them where you have to get through a 10+ step dialogue tree that is different everytime and only has a single success state, all others result in you having to retry...
... and its all still an active real time combat zone while you are locked into this, you and idiot NPC still vulnerable to other players.
The state of video gaming is such that within minutes, someone said this would actually be a game they'd want to play, that its an actually novel idea, sounds fun.
When I read that, my mouth dropped, in a dazed stupor.
EDIT: Fuck, all you'd have to do is call it Puppy Girl Escort Quest, and make the person you're escorting be varying kinds of kawaii waifus, surprise, the game is actually a harem anime.
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.
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
load more comments
(4 replies)
Just because you really enjoy golf doesn't mean you want every movie to have a half-assed awkward golf game stuffed into it.
load more comments
(10 replies)
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.
load more comments
(2 replies)
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
load more comments
(7 replies)
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.
load more comments
(6 replies)
view more: next ›