Lack of romance in games ignores the female audience

[putowtin]

You can't assume that because your girlfriend wants games with romance that all girls want games with romance.

That's like assuming every male wants to play COD clones with huge muscly space marines.

this a million times!

most games that try and introduce romance either miss the spot or make it the most boring thing known to man (the romance/friendship quests in fable III anyone)

Tho I have to admit the addition of the Christina memories in AC: Brotherhood, did tug at the heart strings!

 

[badgersprite]

Eh, it's not necessarily "romance" that I'm interested in, but I will admit I am generally more interested in games that explore relationships between the characters, be it just friendship deepening over time, or just simply being able to get to know character X and their backstory better. I don't know that that's a specifically female thing, though. That just seems more like a roleplaying thing.

I generally find games more involving when you can see friendships developing, or see any kind of bond, be it father-daughter like in Silent Hill 1, or the bond of soldiers in a war. I don't need games to have this, and I love plenty of games where there's none of this sort of thing, and all the characters are completely arbitrary, but I'm definitely willing to forgive a lot in a game if it has good characters and interesting dynamics.

I'm usually more than willing to forgo the romantic aspect of it, though. There are plenty of games with central love stories that I think are bad and just plain uninteresting. I would have liked it better had they just been about friendship. Honestly, having there be an inexorable overarching romantic plot is often one way to get me disinterested in a game. I don't particularly care to be railroaded into a romance I dislike.

So, yeah, would a lot of women who don't play games be more interested in games if there were more romantic subplots? Yeah, probably. That would attract some 'shippers, without a doubt. Is a lack of romance in games ignoring or neglecting a female audience? No. It's "neglecting" people who are only interested in romance and shipping and not necessarily interested in the games themselves, not women.

I can think of plenty of ways in which video games tend to ignore a female audience, but I don't see including romance in all games improving gaming or catering to women. Never mind that romances often have a big issue in how they portray women as being helpless damsels dependent on men or guys as being mopey doormats who do anything their girlfriend tells them. I'm not interested in more banal, adolescent takes on romance in games. Adding romance for the sake of adding romance or "for the sake of appealing to a certain audience" usually just leads to badly written subplots ridden with cliche and shallowness.

Overall, I want better, more interesting, more dynamic characters in games who make me care about them and what I'm doing, not for some marketing guy to try to pander to my demographic by forcing designers to include a generic, badly written love interest and a shoddily executed romance subplot that they just assume I'm going to like because it's a romance and romances are emotional.

 

[TheDarkestDerp]

Sorry to see people attacking you so much for this...

Female gamer here, favorite game currently being Splatterhouse on the 360.

Now, that being said, yes, I do enjoy romance in a game, but I only enjoy it in the text that it's a part of a greater story, a narrative of well-constructed character interaction or at least adequate enough to pull my interest in and make me want to know what happens next. I was just as interested in the back and forth between Rick and The Mask about Rick's cheating on his girlfriend and his gradual subversion by The Mask's lure of power as I was in the relationship development between Adel and Rosalyn in Disgaea 2 (my personal fave of the series) as Adel grows to embrace his feelings for her and they both deal with the confusion of who and what Rosalyn really is.

A relationship and the tension of it's growth can be a HUGE part of a game's appeal when done right, be it romantic or a more respectful friendship, another level of love or understanding. But when a relationship feels forced or awkward, as if being acted out by drunken circus clowns (Hello Metroid: Other M, I'm talking about you) it can outright ruin an otherwise great game. This is where you end up with those games where you just want the stupid cutscene to be over with so you can go back to playing -AUGH I don't care about these people blah blah blah- general state of affairs.

Romance can be a great sub-text for practically any game, but it has to be well woven into a finer tapestry of an overlaid narrative.

To the original points- PS3 Mass Effect2- gimme some Garrus, gods he's a fox. Loyalty, strength, courage, a touch of danger, a bit of self-loathing and you get an interesting character you want to know better... maybe a romance? As for my sex- I don't feel terribly ignored, personally, just generally I feel my gender's overall belittled and misrepresented. Way too many top-heavy one dimensional "action girls" that exist purely for eye candy. .. *sighs* got kinda tired of that years ago...

As I see it, there's nothing wrong with eye candy. It's why most characters in fiction are pretty, male or female, unless they need to be ugly to prove they are extremely evil or to give you a "don't judge a book by it's cover" Aesop. However, why can't you have eye candy, as well as I don't know what better to call it so I'm going to call it "mind candy"?

Make the chicks insanely hot but give them some personality. Not just that "strong female" bullshit. Making a female character a man in all but body isn't strength.

Like, I'm not sure why mind you. I kind of like Revy from Black Lagoon.

Sure she acts kind of masculine in a badass kind of way.... but from all I can tell she had to, to quote the song Boy named Sue "Get tough or die."

She has reasons for how she acts. Not good ones either. She is at least half psychotic/sadistic, with what seems like a hefty dose of post traumatic stress disorder. Though they don't always let her blood thirst slide.

Dutch says if he has to he'll put her down like a mad dog, and even the massive buttmonkey he is Rock calls her out on her bullshit and on how much of a royal unholy ***** she is acting.

She largely breaks down and says she couldn't be normal or morally pure or she probably would have died for it, at a young age. Rock basically says what I have said for a long time (quote is my own philosophy) "That's a reason not an excuse."

Shit happens, you always have some kind of choice etc.

It was one of my favorite scenes in the anime, and it did have a decent bit of shiptease in it.

It basically points out, yeah she's foul mouthed, drunken, bloodthirsty, greedy, and royally pointlessly bitchy at times. However she has real reasons for these things. You know human emotions and depth and shit.

On top of looking hot and kicking ass.

And why do they, the "chicks", have to be "mind candy"?

UGH... the generic "hot chick that can kick ass too..."

Your reply is almost in pure essence, why most girls I know don't play video games, and why many don't care for anime. They are only interesting as people when they are "insanely hot". Before you even touched on the subject of this thread 'romance in games' you had to establish the females' role as looking good, titilating to you, then how their presence affects the story, or what role they play in it.

If you really see it that there's nothing wrong with eye candy, then I suppose you'd be just as keen on watching anime wherein every male is Shonen-Ai material, all muscles, waifish femenine good looks and homoerotic in overtone, long beautiful hair, lots of whispering sweet voices? Maybe they could all be in leather pants, loose flowing shirts or speedo bathing suits with flowers in their teeth? They could be much more interested in each other too, than posturing and strutting about, being open about their sexuality with each other, instead of just being yeat another "tough guy with a soft side too".

Personally I'd rather not this be the case, but then again, I see 'eye candy' as the crutch used by poor artists with no story interesting enough to attract attention of it's own merit.

 

[Archangel768]

Final Fantasy VIII is available on the PSN under PS1 Classics

If your ps3 can run ps2 games then you could play Final Fantasy X

Final Fantasy VIII was also released on the PC years ago but, it would be easier to get it on the PSN.

 

[WaderiAAA]

yes, because all girls love romance in games and the only way that any female will enjoy anything is if you force a romantic sub-plot in

You didn't read the original post, did you? For the record he said his girlfriend really wanted games with romance and he doubted she was the only one - which is a bit different from saying all girls love romantic stories and that's all they love.

two wordsating Sim

Not sure that helps though. Dating sims doesn't really have a story, and I think the story is the whole point. Telling a girl who wants love stories in games to try out dating sims would be like me saying I wanted to read the sports collumn in the paper and someone handing me a football.

from what i understand of dating sims and from a conference on female characters at PAX dating sims often have quite well written female characters and depending on how much you can get into them they are supposed to be pretty good at emulating real life romance

for the time being they are probably closest we have to true romance in games

I'm not talking about character's, I'm talking about story. Like in my example, playing with a football comes close to the actual sport, but if what I wanted was sport new, then I want to know who is out with injury, who blames a loss on the judge etc. See, I think what they want is a love story between two fictional characters, not between "yourself" and a fictional character.

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

Another female Escapist here.

I've been playing games for a long time now, round about the 20 year mark. Over the course of that... horrifying... number of years, I've found that the games I enjoyed the most are generally the ones that go out of their way to create their world, get me involved in what's going on, and caring about what happens to the people within it. Basically, a bloody good story. That's not to say that's all there is to it - I've persevered through games with god-awful control systems and mechanics, and it does take away from the enjoyment if you feel like you're constantly waging a war against the controller.

Romance as a concept didn't really enter into it much, at least not in a "I will buy this game so I can get it on with my comrades" kind of way. In a lot of the RPGs / JRPGs there are connections between characters (I think someone already mentioned Zidane and Garnet) but that's part of the story and pre-determined, so for me personally it all blended into one. Then I played Dragon Age.

When I bought it, I bought it because it looked like a cool RPG. And it was. Is. Whatever. I didn't realise that there was this whole romancable character thing going on, so it came as something of a surprise when I found out I could do that... And bloody hell, was the Alistair romance well written. That was what suckered me into the whole thing. As previous ladies have mentioned, it wasn't the prospect of seeing a bunch of pixels with his top off that had me hooked, it was the whole build up and exposition leading up to that which was the best part (of the romance arc, that is, not the entire game).

I think it really boils down to what you enjoy from a game. If blasting the living bejesus out of anything that moves is what does it for you, then there's a whole plethora of titles out there that'll be right up your boulevard. And sometimes, all I really want to do is hand some monsters their arse on a plate. Hell, I spent most of my formative years in the 6th form playing Doom. But if your girlfriend wants something more than that, then there's lots to choose from.

All I really know is that I'm not a fan of games trying to appeal to me as a girl. I'd rather they appealed to me as a gamer.

 

[S3Cs4uN 8]

You can't assume that because your girlfriend wants games with romance that all girls want games with romance.

That's like assuming every male wants to play COD clones with huge muscly space marines.

You Dare mention Space Marine in the same sentence as CoD, HERESEY! *BLAM*

 

[S3Cs4uN 8]

Another female Escapist here.

I've been playing games for a long time now, round about the 20 year mark. Over the course of that... horrifying... number of years, I've found that the games I enjoyed the most are generally the ones that go out of their way to create their world, get me involved in what's going on, and caring about what happens to the people within it. Basically, a bloody good story. That's not to say that's all there is to it - I've persevered through games with god-awful control systems and mechanics, and it does take away from the enjoyment if you feel like you're constantly waging a war against the controller.

Romance as a concept didn't really enter into it much, at least not in a "I will buy this game so I can get it on with my comrades" kind of way. In a lot of the RPGs / JRPGs there are connections between characters (I think someone already mentioned Zidane and Garnet) but that's part of the story and pre-determined, so for me personally it all blended into one. Then I played Dragon Age.

When I bought it, I bought it because it looked like a cool RPG. And it was. Is. Whatever. I didn't realise that there was this whole romancable character thing going on, so it came as something of a surprise when I found out I could do that... And bloody hell, was the Alistair romance well written. That was what suckered me into the whole thing. As previous ladies have mentioned, it wasn't the prospect of seeing a bunch of pixels with his top off that had me hooked, it was the whole build up and exposition leading up to that which was the best part (of the romance arc, that is, not the entire game).

I think it really boils down to what you enjoy from a game. If blasting the living bejesus out of anything that moves is what does it for you, then there's a whole plethora of titles out there that'll be right up your boulevard. And sometimes, all I really want to do is hand some monsters their arse on a plate. Hell, I spent most of my formative years in the 6th form playing Doom. But if your girlfriend wants something more than that, then there's lots to choose from.

All I really know is that I'm not a fan of games trying to appeal to me as a girl. I'd rather they appealed to me as a gamer.

I couldn't have said it better myself

 

[Savagezion]

Two questions for Escapists: Can you think of any games with a good romance, ideally available on PC or PS3? And more importantly, it would be great to hear from female Escapists on if they feel like romance is important, would improve games, and whether they feel ignored.

Have her check out Uncharted 1 and 2 if she hasn't already. The relationship between Nathan and Elena is pretty cool. It still hasn't been given total closure yet but it is good and pretty natural in its approach. Uncharted 2 is where it flourishes but I feel 1 is important to know their history. That relationship, I think, is one of the top reasons so many gamers out there enjoy the series.

Plus, if she likes it, this gives her a game to await this Fall.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

Romance is okay if it's where it belongs. But I can tell you from watching plenty of movies, there's nothing more annoying then a shoed in romance, just because they needed it for the audience goers who need romance.

Nothing like seeing some guy bump into a girl as the movie hits you over the head with how obvious that they're gone to fall in love that you can tell it's gone to happen before it even happens. What makes it worse, is it's totaly pointless and goes nowhere. The character added in for romance accomplished nothing and barely effects the story and could be replaced with a puppy. Except for the sex scenes... ... Those need to go to. Sex scenes just to get a jolt out of the audience are just as pointless when there's no meaning behind it, other then to show off someone's ass.

 

[sheah1]

Devil May Cry 4? One of the funnest games out there, the romance is a little cheesy, but in a really enjoyable way.

 

[Katana314]

Sorry to see people attacking you so much for this...

Female gamer here, favorite game currently being Splatterhouse on the 360.

Now, that being said, yes, I do enjoy romance in a game, but I only enjoy it in the text that it's a part of a greater story, a narrative of well-constructed character interaction or at least adequate enough to pull my interest in and make me want to know what happens next. I was just as interested in the back and forth between Rick and The Mask about Rick's cheating on his girlfriend and his gradual subversion by The Mask's lure of power as I was in the relationship development between Adel and Rosalyn in Disgaea 2 (my personal fave of the series) as Adel grows to embrace his feelings for her and they both deal with the confusion of who and what Rosalyn really is.

A relationship and the tension of it's growth can be a HUGE part of a game's appeal when done right, be it romantic or a more respectful friendship, another level of love or understanding. But when a relationship feels forced or awkward, as if being acted out by drunken circus clowns (Hello Metroid: Other M, I'm talking about you) it can outright ruin an otherwise great game. This is where you end up with those games where you just want the stupid cutscene to be over with so you can go back to playing -AUGH I don't care about these people blah blah blah- general state of affairs.

Romance can be a great sub-text for practically any game, but it has to be well woven into a finer tapestry of an overlaid narrative.

To the original points- PS3 Mass Effect2- gimme some Garrus, gods he's a fox. Loyalty, strength, courage, a touch of danger, a bit of self-loathing and you get an interesting character you want to know better... maybe a romance? As for my sex- I don't feel terribly ignored, personally, just generally I feel my gender's overall belittled and misrepresented. Way too many top-heavy one dimensional "action girls" that exist purely for eye candy. .. *sighs* got kinda tired of that years ago...

As I see it, there's nothing wrong with eye candy. It's why most characters in fiction are pretty, male or female, unless they need to be ugly to prove they are extremely evil or to give you a "don't judge a book by it's cover" Aesop. However, why can't you have eye candy, as well as I don't know what better to call it so I'm going to call it "mind candy"?

Make the chicks insanely hot but give them some personality. Not just that "strong female" bullshit. Making a female character a man in all but body isn't strength.

Like, I'm not sure why mind you. I kind of like Revy from Black Lagoon.

Sure she acts kind of masculine in a badass kind of way.... but from all I can tell she had to, to quote the song Boy named Sue "Get tough or die."

She has reasons for how she acts. Not good ones either. She is at least half psychotic/sadistic, with what seems like a hefty dose of post traumatic stress disorder. Though they don't always let her blood thirst slide.

Dutch says if he has to he'll put her down like a mad dog, and even the massive buttmonkey he is Rock calls her out on her bullshit and on how much of a royal unholy ***** she is acting.

She largely breaks down and says she couldn't be normal or morally pure or she probably would have died for it, at a young age. Rock basically says what I have said for a long time (quote is my own philosophy) "That's a reason not an excuse."

Shit happens, you always have some kind of choice etc.

It was one of my favorite scenes in the anime, and it did have a decent bit of shiptease in it.

It basically points out, yeah she's foul mouthed, drunken, bloodthirsty, greedy, and royally pointlessly bitchy at times. However she has real reasons for these things. You know human emotions and depth and shit.

On top of looking hot and kicking ass.

And why do they, the "chicks", have to be "mind candy"?

UGH... the generic "hot chick that can kick ass too..."

Your reply is almost in pure essence, why most girls I know don't play video games, and why many don't care for anime. They are only interesting as people when they are "insanely hot". Before you even touched on the subject of this thread 'romance in games' you had to establish the females' role as looking good, titilating to you, then how their presence affects the story, or what role they play in it.

If you really see it that there's nothing wrong with eye candy, then I suppose you'd be just as keen on watching anime wherein every male is Shonen-Ai material, all muscles, waifish femenine good looks and homoerotic in overtone, long beautiful hair, lots of whispering sweet voices? Maybe they could all be in leather pants, loose flowing shirts or speedo bathing suits with flowers in their teeth? They could be much more interested in each other too, than posturing and strutting about, being open about their sexuality with each other, instead of just being yeat another "tough guy with a soft side too".

Personally I'd rather not this be the case, but then again, I see 'eye candy' as the crutch used by poor artists with no story interesting enough to attract attention of it's own merit.

I'm kind of surprised to hear this, because at the PAX panel "females on female characters", the reaction was exactly the opposite. They felt that having an eye-candy character is fine, as long as that's not ALL they have going for them. For instance, as much nudity as Bayonetta had, they found the main character charming and witty, so they didn't mind.

As a guy, I certainly don't get offended that Dante from DMC is pretty ripped, often has his shirt open, and his entire personality is somewhat flirtatious. Heck, I'd much rather play as an attractive character like that than a "realistically-made" overweight person with very imperfect facial features.

Still, for both guys and girls, we all have our limits, and that's not even the point where you get offended; that's the point where you get weirded out, like you've stumbled on someone else's bizarre porn fetish tapes. The last paragraph you mentioned would certainly weird out most American viewers, which is why you don't see that stuff often as it wouldn't actually appeal to people. Then again, Japan is more open about that stuff, which is why some of their authors say "Hey, you know what? All of us at XYZMangaCo are okay with it. Why not?"

You feel like females don't often have enough good characters? Hey, guess what; sometimes men simply feel that way too. Sure, we have the pure dominant cast of protagonists, but even then many of THEM aren't great characters either. That's not sexism, it's just part of an overarching issue of game developers not being great at character development. So in the end, I think we actually agree on games' flaws, it just doesn't lie exactly in sexism.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Tales of Symphonia, Dawn of the new world has a relationship at it's very core. Despite all the other story elements to the game, a very large chuck is about the budding relationship between the two main characters.

 

[Austin Howe]

That title is pretty sexist: Lack of romance in video games also ignores the lonely, angsty, teenage male community. IE, me. I'm sure it ignores other men as well.

 

[Vault101]

I was talking with my girlfriend the other day about games. I was telling her how excited I am for some upcoming games and also discussing games I thought she might like to try that I/we own.

But she's just not interested. Why? She likes games with romances, and finds basically any and all games without that to be boring. Therefore, she absolutely loves Assassins' Creed 2, and moreso Brotherhood. She played the shit out of those games.

She also enjoyed a bit of Dragon Age, but I guess the style of the game isn't exactly her thing, and even though it has romances, they're very much "on the back burner". I mean if you think about it, the only point of BioWare romances, really, is to get that "steamy" cutscene.

So I was thinking of other games I really like, and I just can't think of any games with any sort of meaningful romance in the plot.

I think, of course, not every game needs a romance. I think boys especially can simply play a game and have fun on the mechanics alone (hence the male dominated FPS games). Please keep in mind I'm not saying girls can't like that, and I really wish my gf was one of those who can enjoy a game for the simple fun of exploration and blowing stuff up, but she's not like that. And I'm sure she's not alone, not by a long shot.

But thinking about my favorite books, they basically all have at least some sort of romance. I don't really like the cheezy stuff ("romance" novels) but I do appreciate the bond of love. I mean even Harry Potter has some romance and I guarantee a large portion of the audience would not like the series as much if it didn't have some sexual tension and the like.

So are developers completely ignoring a huge issue here? When there are romances in typical AAA games (BioWare for example) they're almost always heavy handed and shallow attempts. The nice thing of AC:B is that the romance is a main plot point, and it's very well developed. It's not the silly flirt/shower with gifts/sleep with/get different convo options that are presents in certain RPGs. Even Heavy Rain's romance was a bit sloppy, although my girlfriend did enjoy that game.

Two questions for Escapists: Can you think of any games with a good romance, ideally available on PC or PS3? And more importantly, it would be great to hear from female Escapists on if they feel like romance is important, would improve games, and whether they feel ignored.

as a female I fucking HATE romantic comedies

anyway back to the main poit its kind of insulting to assume that all females need some kind of romance in their games (not saying you are)

you know what I want? a good STORY nothing more nothing less, if theres a romance (and it works) thats good if there isnt? thats good too

I mean how many films ect thease days have a token romance there just for the sake of having a romance? and therefore create a token female charachter thats only purpose os to be the love interest

as a female all I feel ignored over is lack of good playable female charachters, I dont want my gender to always be sidlined as "love interest for dickhead macho man to do macho things to impress"

 

[SpireOfFire]

"theres not enough sappy love stories!"

"... shut up."

 

[LittleBlondeGoth]

you know what I want? a good STORY nothing more nothing less, if theres a romance (and it works) thats good if there isnt? thats good too

I mean how many films ect thease days have a token romance there just for the sake of having a romance? and therefore create a token female charachter thats only purpose os to be the love interest

This.

Romance is great if it ties in with what else is going on inside the game. It's when a love interest gets shoehorned in for the sake of it that things start to go awry. You don't have to have it to make a good game; a lot of stories will function perfectly well without the lovey-dovey stuff, and you don't miss what isn't there because the rest stands up so well on its' own. And you know what? It's nice sometimes to see male and female characters just being normal without long, lingering looks across the room at each other. Because in the real world, most of the time we don't fancy everyone around us.

But then there's also times when it just really works. To the point where, when Alistair broke up with my Warden when she made him King, I was absolutely furious. And then the soppy git went and killed himself in my place against the Archdemon, and I was left wailing at the PlayStation for ages. In that circumstance, the romance arc tied in so strongly with the main story arc, it wouldn't have been the same without it.