Examining the Best and Worst of Romance in Games
Happy February! Valentines’ Day recently came and went, and Anna and I decided to celebrate in the traditional fashion—arguing! We have pretty different opinions on romance mechanics in games—here are our thoughts:
Anna: I’m not a fan of most romance mechanics, if any.
Theo: I love romance mechanics—as an optional feature, not as a required part of gameplay. Dating sims aren’t my thing, I just love love (in moderation).
A: To clarify, I don’t hate love. Love is the best! It’s just the adaptation of it into most games that just super isn’t my jam a good 95% of the time.
Theo, why don’t we start with some romance mechanics that you like?
T: Stardew Valley, my friend. It’s got the classic heart levels, gift-giving mechanic, heart events that contribute to character development, and, best of all, I get to be a bisexual farmer.
A: Hell yeah to bisexual farmers! #twentybiteen
Can I be very real with you here?
T: Always.
A: When I play Stardew Valley I don’t talk to anyone, get to the bottom of the mine, and complete the bundles. The only person I ever have any hearts with is Rasmodius the wizard because obviously I’m going to befriend a wizard, that’s almost never an option.
What is it about Stardew Valley’s mechanics that works for you?
T: To be equally real with you, “lets me be bi” is a huge factor for me. Stardew plays a lot on my Harvest Moon nostalgia, and “Harvest Moon but you can date the same gender” is something I’d wanted for a while by the time Stardew came out.
A: That is incredibly understandable, my dude.
T: It’s not just that, though. I know some people don’t like this, but I like that you don’t immediately fit into this tightly knit small town. It takes time for the townsfolk to accept you, and Stardew’s romance mechanic also functions as a friendship mechanic. Talking to people on a regular basis and giving the flowers you find while foraging around town to villagers makes them friendlier towards you, and everyone’s affections are measured the same way, whether it’s the person you’re pursuing or sweet grandmother Evelyn. The fact that Stardew and its romance mechanic doesn’t de-prioritize friendship is one of my favorite things about it.
A: You know, I see what you’re saying; I just don’t feel the same way. Having to build up your relationships to and with other people makes total sense for a virtual farmer who has just moved to a new town. But I think one of the biggest downfalls of friendship or romance mechanics similar to Stardew’s is just how blanket it is. And I don’t mean how friendship and romantic levels are measured together. I just can’t help but feel that the same pre-programmed actions have the basically the same effect for every villager and I don’t think that’s the best mechanical representation of the real-world experience games try to emulate. Obviously video games don’t have to be a perfect reflection of life. I can’t tell you how happy I am that I don’t have to deal with, like, toilet mechanics for my playable characters except in the Sims games. It just feels so icky to me that Stardew Valley and games with similar mechanics have you befriend people all the same exact way. To me anyway, it feels so disingenuous to how most of my relationships to other people happen—which is to say in all different ways, not just flower spamming.
T: For sure! I’d love to see romance/friendship mechanics expanded to span across different love languages or be more specifically individualized to different characters, but for a game that isn’t a dating sim/otome game it’s probably not something we’ll see soon. If it does become a thing, it’ll probably happen in dating sims first (and I will not see it).
A: Right. So here’s a question for you: What other romance mechanics work for you?
T: I also—and this will not surprise you given my top pick—really like how Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar does things. Like Stardew, Grand Bazaar’s romance mechanic doubles as a friendship mechanic, but it also does something fairly unusual for a marriage mechanic. In order to marry many of the candidates, you have to befriend their friends or family.
A: Whaaaaaat?
T: I think it’s a super neat addition! No one’s an island, you know?
A: I do know, but also my favorite marriage mechanic is in Skyrim (to the surprise of no one) where you just have to do someone a favor and wear a necklace to propose marriage to someone. So befriending a potential spouse’s friends and family sounds like a little too much work for my tastes. I’m not willing to put in much commitment to a collection of pixels.
T: See, I think that’s one of the major differences between our views on this topic. You’re also hitting on why I like my romance mechanics optional, though—if it feels like work, it’s frankly not worth it. Romance side plots should be a fun little cute bonus to a game—not, like, a major task I have to work on.
A: So the marriage mechanic in Grand Bazaar fits that mold for you?
T: For sure! I come at gaming from a writing/storytelling perspective, so my big make-or-break thing for a game tends to be the characters. So if I already enjoy a game, that means I enjoy the characters—having to interact more with some I otherwise may not have tends not to be a problem for me.
Unless their schedule makes it hard to find them; then it’s kind of a pain in the ass.
A: I mean, that’s very fair. Especially about the scheduling. That can be kinda true in real life.
Is the main way to level up friendship/romance giving stuff to people?
T: That’s kinda the “best”/most efficient way for most romance mechanics. Conversations also increase the friendship level, but that tends to be a much slower slog towards marriage.
A: Hmm. From a more character-driven standpoint, I guess for the most part I just genuinely feel that in most cases—the ends do not justify the means for me. Which is a weird stance to take, knowing the amount of time I’ve spent playing certain games. For me, performing fetch quests so I can level up my relationships in a game to the point where I unlock different aspects of their personality/backstory/dialogue just has absolutely no appeal to me. Especially because I could hop on the web browser of my choice and find anyone’s dialogue lines and cutscenes. I suppose it comes down to what you feel is worth doing in a game and in-game romances happen to not be it for me.
Or maybe my non-romanceable NPC curse has just made me bitter.
T: And now we’re getting to the heart of the issue.
A: What? That Todd Howard won’t let me virtually marry cats or lizards?
T: It’s not just Todd, Anna. Tree of Tranquility?
A: Oh, right, good old ToT too. You know, I’m pretty sure that guy wasn’t romanceable because he was a child. And to be fair, I was also a child. The player’s age must be a tricky thing to take into account.
T: That’s true, we were like 12 when we were playing ToT.
A: Also, on the subject of ToT romances, I’m pretty sure I was just excited I didn’t have to play as a man. I remember playing Harvest Moon DS and very uncomfortably trying to give girls lotions and jewelry so they would marry me because I thought that was just what I was supposed to do. Even though I was not interested in them and I was very confused why they wanted lotion and jewelry that I found by whacking the floor of the mines with a hoe.
T: Harvest Moon DS is honestly my least favorite Harvest Moon game and the romance mechanic doesn’t really help.
A: *Harvest Moon DS farmer* “Here ladies, check out this rad cave goo I dug up for you. Yeah, the ladies sure do love goo. And shiny things.” Uggggh.
T: Or if you really hate the people around you, you can marry the witch princess. Or if you wanna befriend a real weirdo you can marry the mermaid he has locked in his basement!
A: Excuse me?! I’m going to need some elaboration.
T: Do you not know about the Harvest Moon DS basement mermaid?
A: I do not. Do I want to?
T: Daryll the creepy scientist has a mermaid living in his basement. She was injured and now she lives in his bathtub.
In a locked basement.
A: I ? have ? so ? many ? problems ? with ? this ?
If you marry her, does she go free?
T: I believe she comes to the farm and lives in your duck pond.
A: This is gross. You can’t have a person locked in a basement be romanceable and then transfer them to a duck pond because you leveled them up even to unlock love or whatever. That’s nasty. How are you even supposed to date if you’re locked in a basement bathtub?
T: Yeah, old Harvest Moon is bad.
A: Oofa doofa, no kidding. Are there any other games, franchises, or points we want to explore? If we’re talking about things that are the worst, there’s a franchise I know of that I’ve never played we could rip into.
T: Ooh, let’s hear a worst.
A: I genuinely don’t know if I have the energy to discuss it, but the franchise is called Leisure Suit Larry. They’re just a bunch of games in which you play as a sleazy man in a leisure suit and attempt to pick up women through various gross mini-games. It’s another gross portrayal of women and/or ‘romancing them’ that came out of the 80’s.
T: I’m not familiar with it, but I’ll take your word for it.
A: Theo it’s so bad. You can’t tell me people who respect women have anything to do with those games. And people made money off them. And enjoy playing them. They are currently on the app store, I believe.
T: Gotcha.
You wanna know another thing I’m not super fond of in certain romance mechanics?
A: Hit me.
T: Romance == sex. It only pops up in a small portion of games that aren’t porn games, of course, but it’s still annoying. BioWare is suuuuuuper guilty of this; a lot of their romance lines end in a sex scene as the ~*~pinnacle of romance~*~ and, like, no thanks.
A: YES! That’s why I never finished Dragon Age: Origins! I wasn’t trying to romance a character, but I got his love/friendship points too high based on the story choices I made or something and the dialogue exchanges started to make me pretty uncomfortable. And all of the “reject/ask to be friends” options got me a huge amount of negative points from him, which I didn’t want either. The situation became either continue to romance the character or make the character hate you and if you romance the character in a BioWare game it usually leads to a sex scene. It was Not Fun™ and it kinda kept me from enjoying the rest of the game.
T: Oh my god, that sounds awful. Not to get on my soapbox, but like. Player consent has to be built into games with sexual content. The player needs to be able to opt out of sexual content if they so choose.
A: Agreed. Sexual content should be all about consent, context, and intent. And also “no” should be a viable, enjoyable dialogue option across the board. Instead of getting copious negative points for rejecting that character they could have just made his dialogue reflect his feelings towards the rejection and left the points where they were.
You know, that’s another thing I don’t like about romance mechanics. It all feels so one-sided no matter how many dialogue options you give the player. Especially in the Harvest Moon-esque games. Although, this may be a flaw in the writing rather than in the mechanics, if you want to get technical.
T: That’s not just a Harvest Moon thing—the only game that’s coming to mind for me in terms of games I’ve played where the romance felt reciprocated was a dating sim, which is, like, fundamentally not what this article is about.
A: You’re right. It’s about the games where romance is an added bonus for the people who enjoy it, even though I personally don’t (so far).
Anything else we want to get at here, or are we content to sit in our respective pro and anti romance corners? Should we talk about the abundance of white dating options and the exoticization of characters of color?
T: That’s suuuuuuuuuch an issue as well—even if we look at my #1 pick here, Stardew Valley, out of twelve romance options, only one is a character of color. I also think the topic deserves its own article though, rather than just being a footnote in a more general ‘romance mechanics and why even if we love them we should critique them’ article.
A: Totally fair. I don’t think we could do that topic justice within the confines of gameplay mechanics, but I’m glad we can bring it up and let the reader percolate on that for a bit.
Otherwise, anything else to say?
T: I’m pretty content!
In this interest of full disclosure: Over the course of writing this article, I realized I don’t actually even like romance mechanics that much, I just really like friendship mechanics but those almost never exist without romance mechanics as well. (If you have any that do, please let me know and I probably will play it)
T: We love amatonormativity :/
A: Is that the idea that people only should have one, single, monogamous, romantic relationship and nothing else “because that’s how it is and that’s how it should be”?
T: You’re close! It’s the idea that romantic relationships should be the most important in people’s lives, and anyone who isn’t in one should be actively working to find one. Your aunt asking you why you don’t have a boyfriend yet at every single family holiday? Amatonormativity.
A: Ah, I got it. I’m still learning. Any closing words as a potential romance to friendship mechanic convert?
T: Happy Valentine’s Day, representation matters, burn amatonormativity to the ground!
