Do dating games encourage an unhealthy view of relationships?

Continuing this discussion from the #1reasonwhy thread because I think it's relevant to the interests of people here.

Long story short, I saw this article on Twitter which criticized Bioware romances for treating women as sex vending machines; put kindness in, she'll pop sex back out. Thing is, I feel like that's also a trend that many dating sims have, regardless of protagonist/love interest gender (the specific phenomenon that the article is criticizing might be more common in BxG games? I'm not sure since I don't play a lot of them), in that the player is often supposed to guess at the choices that will make the character pursuing like them better. Do you think that's a problematic way to portray relationships? Does that necessarily objectify the love interest and make us see them as goals instead of individuals? Are there visual novels or games that deal with this issue in more progressive ways? How does the gender of the protagonist and the love interests change things? I don't play enough games with romance in them, so I was wondering what other people here think about these issues.

My experience is more with RPG romances than with dating games, so I hope I don't go too off-topic with this.

I think one issue is immersion vs. player annoyance. I'll often use a walkthrough for a romance and pick the options that the romantic interest likes, even if they're not in my character, because I want to see the end of that character's romance and don't feel like replaying the entire game to do it. But that's an issue with me, not an issue with how the game is set up, necessarily.

Especially in games where the sole purpose is dating someone, having a mechanic of "puzzle out what they like and repeat it until sex falls out" is immersion-breaking and not terribly fun for me. The best romances I've played involve a lot of conversation that a) feels natural, and b) isn't all about progressing the romance.

The tendency for sex to be the romance's "achievement unlocked" trigger is problematic, but it's also disappointing from a story perspective. The classic bad example is Anomen in Baldur's Gate 2; his romance consists of you trying to pick all the right options while he gives you absolutely no good reason to, and then he has sex with you and never speaks to you again.

Eh. I'd say no, personally, because in real life you don't talk to people by choosing dialogue options or raising stats. There's really not much similarities between real life relationships and dating games, in the same way I don't think video games encourage violence because you don't kill people by mashing A.

I agree the vending-machine style of romance is disappointing and pretty boring from a gameplay standpoint, but I don't think it's any more of a harmful influence than any average romantic comedy that comes out nowadays.

I've been pondering about this issue on and off for a long time, and may have come to some conclusions I can't fully recall now.

Kieron Gillen talked about this in his article on the indie game Beautiful Escape: Dungoneer:

Something occurred to me after I thought about it a bit more: actually, the best romance I've played is one where "getting the romance" is not really the object.

I've pimped the Haer'Dalis romance mod for Baldur's Gate 2 in other threads, but I'll go into a bit more detail. Basically, the romance starts out with Haer'Dalis a) thinking you're a cool and interesting person, and b) wanting to get into your pants. These two things do not change, regardless of what you do. If you don't explicitly encourage him, the romance doesn't end; he just has a slightly awkward, one-sided friend crush on you. (You can end the romance, but only if you explicitly say you want to end the romance.) Most of his "lovetalks" are just conversations about stuff in your past, or his past, or that you're both experiencing now. They feel like actual conversations, and they work equally well whether you're his friend, or in love with him, or just like sleeping with him; and they work regardless of whether you agree or disagree with what he's saying.

A lot of this is just a function of Haer'Dalis's character: he's Chaotic Neutral in the sense that he's philosophically devoted to Chaotic Neutrality, and so a lot of things that other love interests wouldn't put up with (e.g., cheating, racial differences, being of a completely opposed alignment, arguing with him) he just sees as good old chaotic fun. You couldn't have the same type of love story with someone like Anomen. However, I think it's a great example of how successful a video game romance can be when you give the player the freedom to roleplay their character the way they see their character, without worrying about losing the romance by saying something "wrong."

Hoooooooly cow I completely forgot about this the TOB mod is already in its testing stages?! AAAAAAAA

Ahem. My opinion, for what it's worth, is that I would like romances a lot more if I don't have to min-max them, or roleplay my character a certain way to suit whoever I want to "woo". Mass Effect got it kinda right, where Shep can just say "sup wanna bang?" if you've talked to them enough, but it was shallow. Dragon Age had a problem where you could pump people's affection with gifts even if you disagreed with them, but I kinda liked that, because I could roleplay my character and even though I might get disapproval, I used the gifts as a sort of system where I "imagined" that their approval rose due to my character hanging out with them and shootin the shit. So, my Warden may have gotten disapproval hits from Zevran for not being pragmatic/a killer, but I imagined that the romance worked out because they got over their differences and... talked a lot. Plus, having sex with Zevran wasn't the end game, and I liked that.

Dragon Age 2 sort of went in that direction, where there's no good or bad to friendship/rivalry, but you still had to stay on only one side of their respective arguments. I remember reading the DA wiki, that if you reached a certain threshold with Fenris on the Friendship/Rivalry scale, any further "relationship points" would only increase whichever side you were on, which I thought was nice. I'm not sure if it was like that for the others. I feel that system would be improved if they kept a sort of similar Friendship/Rivalry system, but also kept flags for your character's stance in certain arguements, and others could comment on that.

This kind of turned into a wall of text on Bioware ^_^; I do think it's problematic if you're forced to roleplay your character a certain way to pursue a pixel relationship, but it seems like western games (which is really just Bioware...) is moving away from that, maybe. Japanese games? Not so much, I think. One thing that really ticks me off is that sometimes characters are not consistent, like someone who's really friendly in everyone else's route turns into a yandere creepo in his own. Why would you do that.

When I say problematic, I mean in game design terms, not for real life. I think people can distinguish their games from reality, and if they can't, it's not the game's fault.
Excuse the ramblin'

I honestly don't think they encourage unheathy views of relationship the slightest bit more than something like GTA encourage people to walk out the door, steal a car and befriend Jamaican gangsters.

Put less bluntly, and I'm sorry because this is sort of a trigger with me, and Jaquelle already said it, really, the only way they would have that effect was if you couldn't tell reality apart from the game. When I go a route in a dating game I treat it like I would a visual novel or for the matter being nice to a party member I think is very wrong in an RPG - I want to see the story. That doesn't mean I endlessly interrogate members of my study group about their past, either.

I mean, I've never had a relationship in my entire life that's not been someone else's one-sided affection, but if I were to consider what it was like, I sure as IKEA wouldn't think video games explained it all to me and try to do that any more than I'd trust a book of fiction to carry the gospel. It's becoming such an easy shortcut to blame media entertainment for just about any ill and I honestly think it's becoming a bit lazy.

Done soapboxing. Sorry.

In my opinion, it depends on your definition of a dating game. If you're counting eroges, than yeah, I think they do warp one's point of view. I just take a look at the covers (which is usually a girl tied up in some position with gigantic breasts popping out of her top and bodily fluids everywhere). At best, they present women as little more than sex toys. At worst, they encourage misogyny and/or outright abuse. It doesn't help that the player character usually sounds like some sort of egomaniac. Granted, I'm basing all of this off of covers and descriptions, but it seems to me you can't enjoy those sorts of games without sharing the perspective, if only a little.

But dating games are usually much tamer (I'm thinking of Love Revo and TokiMemo). They seem to simplify everything, but I think that's the worse thing that I can think of. Give me a little while to digest the issue and I might have a little more to add.

While I agree with most of this, Love Revo has some warped views (as in "Nobody except for your incestrous brother will love you unless you lose weight!").
On the subject on treating women like sex toys, it's not just dating games that do that. I was actually watching an opening to an anime today that was very degrading to women. The opening depicted a girl flaunting her breats and butt (long story short: a video parody with your favorite male Yu-Gi-Oh character posing in ways an Egyptian pharaoh should never pose may be entertaining, but discovering the source material is not) and that is only scratching the surface.
I have seen Harvest Moon fanatics admitting they try to raise their crushes heart points as if they were a character in the game, but that's fairly tame. Of course, there's still that guy who married his DS because of Love Plus.

Really? Don't get me wrong; I wouldn't doubt it. Harvest Moon is at a disadvantage with the silent protagonist. It sort of allows the player to impose themselves onto the player character (as many people are prone to do with most video games anyway). Whereas in Love Revo, Hitomi has a definite personality, and there are times when it might clash with that of the players.

And there are definitely a lot of horrible messages in Love Revo (namely: I'll become thin so the boys in my apartment won't treat me like utter garbage * w*). But there's some positivity in most of the routes, too (except Masaki's and possibly Souta's, I think). Even Wakastuki points out in a text something along the lines that no matter how you look outside, the inside is more important. So there's that (for what it's worth).

I think there's quite a few objectionable points in Tokimemo if some thought is put into it.

- The bizarre reputation system that causes people to bomb you if you ignore them, meaning you end up dating people when you absolutely have to just to get them the hell off your back. Seen another way, the inability to just plain say no.

- The way it's totally okay to have a friend stalk your romantic interest, steal their phone number and then call them up out of the blue.

- The relationship limbo you get into after reaching the "desired" Tokimemo state with your target of affection until the end of the game. Also notable, the way the protagonist usually aggressively pursues one target and then pretty much flips at said point, becoming utterly oblivious to any and all advances (and also continuing to date other people).

Also, I have to say I'd be a lot less comfortable with Tokimemo if there wasn't a gender-flipped ladies version that applies all of these oddities to the opposite gender.

Many of these are determined by gameplay: You need some sort of time and character-based challenge to shake up gameplay, hence the bombs, and you can't end a playthrough halfway through with a confession since the game is all about building stats and a relationship over three years. I agree that these are unlikely to influence anyone's behaviour much like FPS games don't make people shoot dudes, but I still think it's important to notice these oddities and point them out, much like I think it's important to not defensively dismiss the idea that violent video games can possibly have any effect at all.

If you're getting tips on actual relationships from dating games then you already have a problem.

Yeah, pretty much this. Sorry if my title comes across as accusing all dating sims of making people adopt an unhealthy view of relationships, because that was not my intention. I simply thought this was a question that we should explore more instead of just dismissing it with a simplistic view one way or another. Maybe certain ways of portraying relationships in games are better than others, I don't know. What do you think of the way relationships are portrayed in games with romance? Do they contain perhaps an implicit approval of certain values or world views? For example, I seem to remember there being a lot of debate in the Diabolik Lovers thread about whether or not the portrayal of relationships were critiquing the trend where otome protagonists stick with abusive partners in order to change them, or whether it was glorifying that kind of relationship. Remember that at least a good deal of dating games are aimed towards younger people, who gain a lot of their ideas about socially appropriate behaviour, not just from the people around them, but also from the media. That's why I think just dismissing all dating games as completely unproblematic might be an irresponsible thing to do. There's a reason why people censor television, and why there's so much debate about things like minority representation in media; for better or for worse, the things we see on TV or in games can influence the way we think about things in real life. It's not a simplistic cause-and-effect thing like play a shooter -> go shoot people. The stories we tell and the way we tell them can affect us in much more subtle ways than that.

While that is true, I feel it goes a bit too far in "it's just a game"-ism. Games, as books and movies and everything else, is culture - does culture have an effect on people? Then games do too. Will the influence of games always pale in comparison to the influence of your parents and peer groups? Certainly, but that doesn't mean culture doesn't interact with you, your parents, and your peer groups in various ways. While that doesn't mean we should go all Moral Majority on, well, anything, we also shouldn't say "meh, it doesn't have a direct causal link to any specific action so there's nothing to discuss".

I'd say that TV and movies are more likely to influence people than video games, because they're usually trying to present at least some version of real life (not things like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, obviously, but sitcoms and romantic comedies are almost always based in reality) and involve real actors who appear to be doing actual things. In video games there's the inherent detachment of it happening on your computer, and there's another automatic disconnect of seeing things happen to 3D models or drawings instead of actual people.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with TV or movies, of course not. They're just as valid as video games. I just don't understand why video games tend to get the blame for RUINING OUR CHILDREN when TV and movies are probably more influential.

Oh, you didn't, I just always jump at these things because I still have a beef with the media half blaming the Utøya Massacre on Call of Duty. Human information processing and decision-making is so insanely complex and holds so many small factors it's very hard to say how any decison of even the slightest bit of complexity came to be. It is proven to a reasonable degree that recent considerations, IE taken from media or a book or a an article, CAN influence subtly how we respond to a survey, for instance (for those of you interested the relevant work is John R. Zallar's Nature and Origin of Mass Opinion), but I am not convinced it's the grand explanation that fixes everything.

In short: I agree entirely there is no simple causal relation, If anything has become apparent to me over the years it is that humans are not very easy to make determinations about when half the time we don't even know ourselves why we act or believe as we do.

On that note, fanservice in anime and other non-realistic media don't tend to bother me as much as seeing real women and girls in television and film get objectified, mostly because "holy shit these are real people having to do those demeaning things, eww", whether if I watch an anime, it's like "meh, lines and colours in a screen, nobody is actually doing anything, carry on". Not to say one is necessarily better or more justified than the other, it's just the gut reaction that I tend to have.

Exactly. Also, I think there's a difference between portraying something in a video game that the average person would not do in real life (e.g., killing, stealing, kicking puppies) and portraying something that the average person will probably do in real life (e.g., romance, general interpersonal interaction).

I'm the same way.

I think the biggest problem for me with how romances are done in video-games is that you always end up playing therapist to your love interest (and other party members too). To accommodate that there is always something "broken" about them, a problem or issue that can't be fixed until the main character comes along. That is simply not how normal friendships and relationships start.

The relationship is often one sided with the main character putting in all the effort and asking all the questions. I'm replaying Neverwinter Nights 2 at the moment, and not once has any of the companions asked how my character feels. I mean, she has plenty of issues: raised by an unloving foster father, away from her home for the first time, she saw her best friend murdered in front of her. But you can never bring any of those points up, never talk about that with anyone.
Again, in a normal relationship (whether friendship or romance) this would be different; you confide in each other rather then it being a one-way street.

Top that with the fact that you can't disagree with anyone without losing points and that you can even completely lose the other person as a companion or love interest and it makes for a very warped relationship view.
Now don't get me wrong, if your character and the companion/love interest fundamentally disagree on everything, there shouldn't be a reason why they shouldn't leave of course. There's no reason why a paladin would have to hang out with an evil assassin, let alone romance him/her. But you should be able to disagree, argue, perhaps try and get the other person to see your character's point of view.

In the end you quite often have no choice but to chose the right conversation options (whether they fit roleplay wise or not) to "win" the romance, or as said in that article "put kindness in, pop sex back out".
The dating sims I've played (admittedly, they aren't many) seem to work the same. Quite often you have to decide in advance who you are going to romance, and pick the right options or else you don't get the ending you want.

I suppose the problem is that the romances/friendships in video-games play more like a game then a real relationship, but because a lot of us get emotionally invested in the characters (just like you can while reading a book or watching a movie/tv show) and on top of that self-insert (I'm certainly guilty of that) it just doesn't "feel" right.

(I'll step of my soap-box now)

I think the main issue here would be, criticism of the relationship mechanics stems from certain viewpoint -- "the game forces you to act the way the target person likes, for sex to fall out". The catch is, that's just one possible viewpoint. The alternative can be just as well, "the game operates on model people choose partners who they feel compatible/comfortable with, and reject ones who don't meet such conditions".

Now granted, games can get extremely picky about setting these conditions (to make it a 'challenge' or whatever) but i'm of the mind that choosing how you interpret the core mechanics tells more about the person picking the viewpoint, than the actual mechanics.

Agreed, it does feel like this might be changing though. I seem to recall Varric, the only true love in Dragon Age 2 being pretty interested in the main characters feelings and motivations. Mass Effect 3 also had the bits where crewmembers would be obviously concerned for Shepards state of mind after the dream sequences. It does feel like this approach requires a more predeveloped main character though. The massive span of characters in the BG and NWN games are fun for mechanics but I can't imagine the work required for creating dialogue that has meaningful feedback on a main character with such a range of options.

I have to admit I've neither played DA 2 or ME3, mostly because I didn't like DA1 and ME1 much. It does sound like they are improving on that then.

I did like the fact that in DA1 I could actually send annoying companions like Morrigan away, it's really bugging me in NWN2 that I have to put up with Qara and Bishop no matter what. Truth to tell, I'm very quickly getting fed up with how NWN2 handles companions, both in writing and the AI, and the story itself isn't that interesting either so I'll probably stop playing soon.
Perhaps I should give Mass Effect another chance, see if I can stomach having my character voice-acted this time. (That's a whole different can of worms though, but I really don't like having my character fully voice acted in an RPG)

DA2 is all over the place. I vastly prefer it to the first one for it's storytelling and incidental characterization, DA1 I had no interest in any of the party members, DA2 I actually cared about most of them. Except Anders, he can go rot. It's fully voiced just like ME however.

I did like the way that DA2's friendship/rivalry options meant that you could have more than one kind of successful romance with the characters. It does bother me somewhat that in a lot of romance games there is only one correct answer to any question the game gives you, and if you don't get them all perfectly right you may not get a good ending. (It's more okay in my mind if there's a secret BEST ending that requires everything perfect but you can get a pretty good ending without perfection). Especially if one of those 'correct' answers is something I morally disagree with and really want to be able to argue my case in game and don't have the option.

On the other hand you could also say that in some ways a well-written romantic game sends the message that you should actually pay attention to your partner as an individual and think about what they like and dislike, rather than expecting there to be one single way to Get All The Girls?

Like being an impressionable 13-year-old?

(no offense to 13-year-olds, but I'd suggest that many of them lack the experience to know the finer differences between real and game-based relationships, primarily as a function of not experiencing the former)

Ah but that's the point. 13-year-olds should not be playing 18+ games as in the games which have sex. The visual novels without sex seem better teachers.
I know I am biased because I am a prude among other reasons but dating games have never encouraged unhealthy relationship views onto me or anyone.

I disagree. I think other "non-sex" dating games (LOVE REVO ESPECIALLY) have extremely problematic messages, despite the fact that they are considered age-appropriate.

Everyone else has already said most of what I want to say.

Re: Bioware, it's great that they allow you to disagree with characters. I love it. What I really wanted, though, was the ability to waffle a little bit. If I wanted to get the romance, I had to bring the character around a LOT (whether they fit in my party or not, I'm looking at Anders), and pick the same side often. What if I thought that sending a mage to the circle was right in one circumstance, but not in another? What if I agreed with his general argument, but only to a certain point? I wasn't allowed any middle ground. I couldn't be pro-mage freedom for good mages, and send bad ones back to the circle. I couldn't say I disagreed with Anders' radical views, but continue to try and help the mages. The same goes for Fenris. I hate to either hate mages or love them, almost unconditionally.

Re: Unhealthy relationship view, I don't think it really has an effect on real life for most people. We don't have these bogus options to choose from (and I find that many routes in games are counterintuitive), we don't have stats to raise and meet. It's not realistic enough to influence me or anyone I know.

My favourite romances and the ones that made the biggest impression on me, though, are ones where you can pursue the character exclusively and have real conversations with them. Tokimemo is out because I have to date everyone (and nobody can ever tell me that I didn't TRY to avoid Chris), most VNs are out because I have to pick all of the right options or suffer FOREVER ALONE OMG SOOOOO BAD TO END HIGH SCHOOL WITHOUT A BOYFRIEND YOU LOSER. I liked Zevran because although he constantly flirted with you, you could brush off his advances a bit and talk about real topics without ruining everything. I could say 'no' and he wouldn't shun me for the rest of the game, but I could also proposition him if I chose to (jokingly or not). Some people do that. It's realistic. I've had friends flirt with me but not actually mean it, and I like it when I can do the same.

So. Not realistic enough to influence, and it's a good thing because some games have some really questionable views and clunky mechanics (Love Revo). I like them if they're done right, but in the end you will always have the dialogue trees that you don't have in real life, so I don't think most people are going to end a game and then use that experience to direct their day-to-day conversations and interactions.

You both bring excellent points. And I can certainly see how you both are correct.

The problem is that these games are not played in a vacuum. Sure, on the face of it, they're unrealistic; however, we get the same messages through other sources, and the games serve to compound those messages (Love Revo being an easy target, the media is already obsessed with losing weight, looking "sexy," etc., so it's not like this is a message people haven't heard before).

Granted, there are a lot of things 13-year-olds shouldn't do. Smoking weed, driving a car, looking up porn. But do you really think the idea that they shouldn't is going to stop them?

No, but that is the parents' problem, not that of developers.

True, but the question is whether or not dating games encourage an unhealthy view of relationships, and for an impressionable 13-year-old the answer is very likely yes.

EDIT: How they get ahold of the game is neither here nor there.
DOUBLE EDIT: And of course that's not to say that there aren't young teens who try playing an eroge or an 18+ visual novel and don't buy into the themes.

I read a study somewhere about 5 years ago where they found that the more romantic films people watched, the less satisfied they were in their own relationships. There is definitely an effect here.

As a secondary school teacher I can vouch that I have been openly laughed at for suggesting that 11 year-olds shouldn't be playing 18 rated games. For some reason the age limits on games tend to be taken even less seriously than those on films, even though they're more immersive.

Both Anders and Fenris are extremists driven to the whinging edge though. I've had a fair amount if contact with the type in left wing political discussions and that's pretty much how they act.

I still loathe Anders, but he's pretty well realised.

Honestly, once again, I can see the argument, I just can't buy the simplification Youth --> Play Game --> Internalize view and behaviour. The world doesn't work that way. Just like Elvis didn't utterly destroy the sexual morals of teens in the 50s or how violent videogames doesn't turn every person playing them into murderers. It depends on who you were to start with.

People aren't weatherwanes no matter how young they are. Youth ARE more impressionable, but they can go to school every day and plainly see games aren't how the world works. Dating games often aren't any more or less fantastic than other games - we have no save menus, dialogue trees, stats in numbers and Lord knows what else in real life. I had a Tamagotchi as a kid, that didn't mean I assumed I was a qualified pet owner because I had friends with pets and I could form my opinions outside of a vacuum. That's the human animal. No amount of reasoning happens alone. We get by as babies by observing and imitating, and while the source certainly matter, it's never just the one source.

If that makes sense. I'll... just go back to wrestling SPSS now, sorry...

I.. have no words. Well continue being sane even if everyone else is insane.

So uh.
I'd just like to say that in high school and younger, girls will often do the whole "I'M GONNA CHANGE ME TO MAKE HIM LIKE ME" thing that happens a lot in dating sims. Basically "raising stats", but you don't call it that in real life. In real life, you call it "dieting" and "buying different clothes" and "learning all about the things that that guy likes so you can impress him with your knowledge". ...actually, that happens past high school, too, unfortunately.

While dating sims certainly don't cause that way of thinking, it can most certainly encourage it if that mindset is already there.

/slowly backs away from thread with giant helmet on

I feel like bringing up the save menus and dialogue trees is a simplification of its own. I basically agree with what your saying, but there definitly are unhealthy messages in (some) dating games and the more you play, the more likely it is some of this messaging will seep through. Especially if you're young and impressionable. But you're right in saying that it doesn't work like that, you're whole world view will remain mostly unchanged after playing a dating game or two, but there still is an effect. I'm just not sure what that effect is, much how I don't know how tv-programs and movies effect my world-view. This doesn't change my behaviour as a consumer though (meaning I don't stop watching television or playing games because I know they have some sort of effect).

That's really unfortunate. I was pretty surprised the first time I caught some twelve-year-olds buying weed because I was only a few years older than them at the time (and smoking weed before high school? whaaaaat?). Now, I don't necessarily expect it, but I'm hardly ever surprised.

MulMizu makes a good point. I was a really nerdy kid and pretty much avoided anything related to femininity to the best of my ability, but I remember watching girls around run around with bright blue lipstick and taking every which diet pill. Luckily, it's something most seem to outgrow. But then again, there are plenty of women who don't.

I think of it kind of like watching gore movies. At first, you might be squeamish, but pretty soon your tolerance rises and you develop a familiarity with the subject.