Idrelle Games
patreon
Romance in Gaming, Part II: Playersexuality, Gender-Selectability, and LGBTQ+ Representation in Gaming Romance
🕑 Added 2022-02-27 08:54:39 +0000 UTCThis article is a continuation of January’s Romance in Gaming article. Last time, I spoke of romance as gameplay in a broad scope, and its impact on interactive fiction development. I want to now focus in on the mechanical gameplay of romance, how it is implemented, and what it says—intentionally or unintentionally—about diversity within LGBTQ+ games.
Though I am focusing on interactive fiction, some of my examples will continue to pull from traditional video games. I’m doing this because interactive fiction gamebooks are a relatively new genre in gaming, pioneered predominantly by Choice of Games and its subsidiary labels. The vast majority of interactive fiction games I have played are incomplete works-in-progress and I don’t think it is fair to critique games that are still in development. This article will probably warrant an updated version as more WIPs are released and published in their finished state.
Because the terms are used a significant amount of times in this article, I will be referring to romanceable characters as ROs (romance option).
What Makes a Good Game Romance?
Before we can discuss romance mechanics and why they are used, we first need to establish what games a good romance in a game. There are multiple ways of writing romance depending on a game’s needs, but I think it comes down to a few core elements:
1. The romance has important, definable stakes.
By pursuing a relationship, the player character and the RO are putting something valuable at risk. They are going to be tested, they are going to be challenged. Maybe the thing they are risking is political and social standing; maybe it’s the RO’s past, which they have kept hidden against all odds until now. I think inexperienced writers often make the mistake of equating high stakes with extreme situations. High stakes are not always about life and death. But they are about internalized value. By romancing the player character, the RO is jeopardizing something they hold dear, something they wish to keep the same, or something wish to keep hidden.
2. The romance fundamentally changes the characters.
In playwriting, there is the concept of “changing the status quo”. The status quo is the state in which the characters are in at the beginning of the scene. By the end, the status quo needs to shift—a new discovery comes to light, a relationship changes, someone says something they shouldn’t. Regardless of what it is, once the scene reaches its end, the characters cannot go back to the way they were before.
When this concept is applied to romance arcs, the romantic relationship needs to fundamentally change the characters involved. Because of this intimate relationship, the RO cannot be the same person they were before the met the player character. There needs to be substantial growth (positive or negative) throughout the course of the relationship.
3. The romance impacts the game’s overall plot.
In most game narrative structure, there is an overarching plot or goal for the player character to complete, and character relationships are subjugated to side quest or side story content. Similar to how a book series may relegate character romances to subplots that enhance the narrative but do not overtake it, the side story/side quest structure provides additional or optional content for the player to pursue that often has its own unique story arc in addition to the main story. Boyfriend Dungeon, for example, has an overall plot (the weapon people are mysteriously disappearing and waking up in dungeons with no memories of what happened or how they got there) and seven individual romantic subplots, one for each RO (plus a cat).
The separation of game plot and romance plots can make the narrative design easier to execute in the long run. If romance is isolated to its own storyline, then the developer doesn’t have to account for a host of scene variations in the main plot.
However, depending on the game, I find this ultimately can do the romance a disservice. If the romance doesn’t impact the main plot in some way beyond a scattering of referential text and dialogue, then the romance feels supplementary and detached, existing only within its own boundaries as if it didn’t need the main focus of the game for the romance to happen.
To go back to the Dragon Age series for a moment, there is a reason why Morrigan’s and Alistair’s romances make a stronger impact on the player than Zevran’s and Leliana’s. Though Zevran and Leliana have their own individualized stories with high stakes and character growth, they are detached from the main story arc of Dragon Age: Origins. Both Morrigan and Alistair’s romances lead up to a choice that impact the end of the game. And while there are non-romance versions of these choices to account for the players who didn’t romance them, the romance versions are executed in a way that make them feel more important than the non-romance ones. How you handle this choice can lead to major narrative consequences, such as Morrigan leaving the player’s party (ultimately leading to their death) or Alistair sacrificing himself for his lover in the endgame.
By virtue of their connection to the main plot, Morrigan’s and Alistair’s romances are given more significant narrative weight. They have more meaning. And, in a narrative defined by player choice, that means they ultimately feel more “canon” or “real” to the player in the broader scope of the story.
Diversity & RO Cast Composition
The execution of a romance’s storyline is only one part of a successful romance. Which romance option a player romances is often an important and personal decision, one they feel very strongly about. Players want to play a romance arc that is fun, that speaks to them, that works for their player character—and, ultimately, is with a RO who appeals to them in terms of looks, personality, and character trope. This is inherently a good thing. As a developer, I want players to be excited about the romances they encounter in my game. When a game’s characters and relationships are just as important as the story and mechanics, nothing can sink a game faster than an unfulfilling, shallow romance.
However, there is a grey space that falls between developers and players when romance is involved. And that space has to do with the very complex relationship between diversity, player expectation, and player entitlement.
Interactive fiction is very popular among the LGBTQ+ community. There’s something fundamentally queer about the medium—it’s indie, it’s outside the norm, it’s this weird thing clinging the edge of the gaming sphere (and some folks don’t even consider interactive fiction games because they are text-based). There are more opportunities in interactive fiction to explore gender identity, sexuality, and many other marginalized, intersecting identities that are overlooked by mainstream media*. This is one of the reasons I love interactive fiction so much—the stories told in this medium are ones that you can almost never find in traditional gaming.
* I should note here that diversity includes so much more than just LGBTQ+ representation, but intersections of race, class, and disability are more than what I can cover in a single article, so I’m going to focus on gender identity and sexuality.
The creators and players of interactive fiction want diverse romances. Implementing diversity, however, is a much more difficult task than it seems at first glance. When romance is involved, there is a natural desire for players to see characters with similar experiences represented as interesting and desirable people. But identity is complex and human experience covers a much vaster breadth than can be captured in a single game. The more planned content you have, the more work you have to do and the longer it takes to develop your game. At some point, the developer is going to have to choose which character types they implement, what experiences they represent, and which ones are left off the table.
There are three main methods interactive fiction games handle this challenge of content vs. workload:
1. Multiple romances.
The developer puts as many individual romance options into their game as possible, sometimes numbering up to and beyond 8 different romances. These games may sometimes employ other romance mechanics (such as gender-locking straight, gay and lesbian characters). They tend to offer a greater pool of romanceable characters with a broad scope of experiences, character types, and tropes.
2. Bisexuality.
The developer has fewer romance options, but they make them accessible to all players regardless of gender by making them bisexual. The ROs will always be attracted to the player character. These games often have a smaller pool of ROs, but have the opportunity to create romances with a deep scope.
3. Gender-selectability.
The developer has fewer romance options, but they make them accessible to all players and make them fit all gender identities and all sexualities by allowing the player to select the ROs’ gender. The ROs will always be attracted to the player character and player can always play as their preferred gender identity and still romance whoever they want (for example, if the player wants to play as a straight woman, the game’s ROs will all be male). Gender-selectable romances can sometimes be seen as the best of both worlds. By making the ROs’ gender and sexuality configurable, they can showcase a broad scope of experiences while also having the time and energy to create storylines with a deep scope.
The first two are common practice in traditional video games as well as interactive fiction. The Dragon Age series has utilized both over the course of the series, with Dragon Age: Inquisition creating 8 unique romances (giving players two bisexual options and employing gender-locks for gay and straight characters). Its predecessor, Dragon Age 2, utilized the bisexual framework (four characters, all “bisexual”, who are available to both the male and female renditions of the player character, Hawke). Dragon Age 2’s format is itself a re-working of the four character (one straight man/one bisexual man, one straight woman/one bisexual woman) arrangement used in Dragon Age: Origins.
The third is (as far as I know) unique to interactive fiction gamebooks. And with good reason: it utilizes the strength of a text-based medium. With little to no visuals, changing a character’s gender is as simple as changing the variables that control their pronouns and descriptors. This is a massively different task than visual games, which would require multiple sets of sprites, artwork, and character models to implement gender-selectability.
While I can’t say for certain where gender-selectable romance options began, this mechanic was certainly popularized in Seraphinite Games’ Wayhaven Chronicles (four ROs, all gender-selectable) and remains a popular way of handling romance in current in-development interactive fiction games (both ChoiceScript and other platforms).
Multiple Romances
To have a diverse cast, you need to have enough characters to diversify it in the first place. It makes sense, then, for developers to add multiple romance options who represent many walks of life. There are two main benefits to having a large RO cast:
1. More unique characters and character designs.
This ensures a game has ROs that reflect a wealth of experiences. A large cast allows the developer to play with multiple narrative and character tropes, and ensures there is at least one RO to appeal to every player.
2. Representation of specific sexual orientations.
When you have a large cast, you can incorporate gender-locked romances more easily. Gender-locked romances are exactly what they sound like: romances that can only be unlocked if the player is a specific gender.
Gender-locked romances are everywhere in traditional gaming, but typically only as straight romances. It’s far less common to see the same for gay and lesbian romances. When there is queer romance, the game will typically make the queer ROs bisexual. This fills a same-gender attraction quota while still making those characters available to opposite-gender players.
I think it is incredibly important for LGBTQ+ games to have gender-locked same-gender romances. I will discuss this in more detail in the bisexual and gender-selectable sections below, but the trend of making all ROs bisexual (or playersexual) actively hurts queer representation. We need gay and lesbian romance options. There is a wealth of stories to be told through queer romance, and gay and lesbian ROs are integral to that. These stories fundamentally cannot be the same if all queer ROs are made bisexual.
Creating and managing multiple romances is very difficult to pull off well, particularly if a game is being created by a small studio or—as in most cases with interactive fiction—one person. Writing multiple rich, rounded, and in-depth romances takes time and resources, and, ultimately, developers may not have enough time to bring all those romances to fruition, leading to shallow writing or imbalanced romances (where one RO is clearly favoured by the text to be the “true” option over other ROs with less fulfilling or desirable content).
The more characters there are, the more work the developer has to do. That work grows exponentially when you have branching paths and player choice involved. The impulse to keep adding romances can be very difficult to squash, particularly for indie IF game developers with public development blogs, forums, or servers.
While there are many benefits to community engagement as you build your game, the downside is that sometimes players feel entitled to shaping your game because they have involved themselves in the process. Players following public in-development games may start to ask for specific elements, particularly what they personally want to see for the game’s romances.
These requests are challenging to handle in the long run, especially if you are working by yourself. Where is the line between making a decision that aligns with your artistic vision, and making a decision because it would make your game more marketable and draw more players to it? Furthermore, depending on how community engagement is handled, player requests can get aggressively entitled when a developer refuses a certain idea (such as making a non-romanceable character romanceable, or requesting a polyamorous route between the player’s favourites).
As a developer in the middle of my game’s creation cycle, it’s a difficult balance to maintain when romance weighted so heavily in the eyes of the player base. The decisions you make about romance can turn potential players away from your game. How do you stay true to what you want to do as a creator, while not actively harming your game’s potential success?
I understand players wanting to see certain types of people as ROs, particularly for marginalized or underrepresented groups (trans, nonbinary, polyamorous, and asexual folks come to mind). I understand the frustration that happens when a game doesn’t include a RO a player wanted to see. But I think there also needs to be a middle ground for developers to focus on the characters and romances they want to create.
If you want to develop deep, meaningful characters and story arcs, you will eventually have to cap how many romances you put into a game—which means that not every experience can be represented. I know players who really want to see polyamorous romances in every game they play; but not every developer is interested in writing polyamorous romances, particularly because of the additional coding work it takes to implement. A developer’s choice about what romances they choose to focus on should be respected. Public requests for having specific romances or making certain characters romanceable put developers in a position where they feel like they need to add the player’s request, otherwise they are building a “bad” game.
Having a large amount of romances to satisfy player requests (or what the developer thinks players want—such as adding polyamory because they see a lot of players discussing the wish for more games with polyamory) can harm the game more than it helps. Either multiple romances extends the developer’s work to the point where they may never finish it, or the romances become shallow and surface-level to off-set the amount of work that needs to be done. And when diversity—especially queer diversity—is involved, shallow romances can end up feeling like tokenism rather than the representation they were intended to be.
It is always more important to focus on a small group of experiences and write those well, than to stretch a game thin over a giant cast to satisfy community requests or tick identities off a list to meet a representation quota. The saying “quality over quantity” comes to mind here.
If the argument against multiple romances is that it creates shallow romances, then how can developers create deeper romance arcs while still accommodating representation? I believe this is where bisexual ROs and gender-selectable ROs come into play—as mechanics to decrease RO cast size (and workload) while maximizing diversity as much as possible.
Functional Bisexuality
Bisexuality holds an interesting place in gaming. By making the ROs bisexual, a game can accommodate more players’ preferences with fewer characters. However, when bisexuality becomes a game mechanic, it is thought of as a game mechanic first and a sexual orientation second. There are many bisexual ROs in gaming, but their bisexuality comes with some fine print:
- They are bisexual so they can be romanced by player characters of any gender.
- Their bisexuality attraction is not addressed in-game. The unspoken rule of a RO in interactive fiction is that the character never discusses attraction outside of the player character.
- The character shows either straight or gay attraction based on the player character’s gender.
Bisexual romances—particularly when all ROs are bisexual—have been criticized for not being a true representation of bisexuality. These criticisms raise an important question: when bisexuality is implemented for the sake of game mechanics, is the character in question actually bisexual? If there is no in-game confirmation of their identity (such as expressing attraction to multiple genders outside the player character), does it count as representation?
Functional bisexuality in gaming creates a RO whose sexuality is relative to the player’s gender. They are functionally bisexual—in that player characters of any gender can romance them—but in the text of the game, the character is straight-coded when they’re romanced by an opposite-gender player character and queer-coded when they’re romanced by a same-gender player character.
Possibly the most infamous example of functional bisexuality comes from Dragon Age 2. In the early stages of his romance, Anders will mention his past relationship with a male character, Karl—but only if the player character is male. This dialogue never triggers if the player character is female. While the lead writer did later state that Anders’ past relationship with Karl always exists regardless, the text of the game overrides it as this information literally does not exist when the player is a woman. Without the acknowledgement of Anders’ relationship with Karl, the player can freely imagine him as straight.
When sexuality is treated as a game mechanic first, it does the characters and the identities they represent a disservice. It takes away meaning to their identity and makes it hollow. There are many bisexual romances in gaming, but many of these characters are not textually bisexual. If their attraction to multiple genders is never addressed in the game itself, then where does the mechanic end and the character begin?
Dragon Age 2 was released over a decade ago and attitudes surrounding LGBTQ+ representation in games have shifted significantly. And as interactive fiction games are generally more queer-friendly than mainstream games, I think most of them aren’t nearly as strange and offhanded about their queer romances as DA2 had been. However, even the most well-meaning developers—even queer developers—can still make their bisexual characters functionally bisexual.
Media is created within and in response to cultural norms. Even if the game in question is set in a fantasy world where there is gender equity and no discrimination based on sexual identity, the audience will—consciously or subconscious—apply their cultural norms and assumptions to it. In western media, the assumption is that characters—like people—are straight and cisgender until proven otherwise. For representation to be representation, marginalized experiences must be acknowledged in the game itself, not hidden behind mechanics.
Bisexual romance options can be a worthwhile method of reducing workload. By making an RO’s romance content accessible to players regardless of gender, it can drastically minimize the time taken to bring that romance to fruition and gives you more time to flesh out romance arcs and create satisfying, meaningful relationships. However, I do think care needs to be taken with an all-bisexual RO cast. Bisexuality should be represented and reflected in the characters as part of their characterization and history, not simply a game mechanic. When a character’s identity revolves around the player, it is no longer part of the character.
They become “playersexual”.
Playersexuality is a term used to describe ROs who romance the player character regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. It is often associated with bisexual ROs, but I think it also applies to gender-selectable characters.
Gender-Selectable Characters
Gender-selectable characters are exactly what they sound like: characters whose gender can be selected by the player. Gender-selectivity is not out of the norm for video games—RPGs do it all the time for the player character. But interactive fiction games have found a new use for it by applying it to romance and letting the player select their RO’s gender.
If this mechanic sounds odd, you are not alone. In the vast majority of fiction, a character’s gender is off-limits to the audience. With functional bisexuality, the player may be able to determine a romance option’s sexuality (gay or straight), but the player cannot change their gender.
Gender-selectable characters bring a lot to the table. While functional bisexuality makes its ROs available to all player characters, this mechanic favours bisexual player characters. There are still instances where a player may view an RO as unromanceable (even though the option is open to them) because the character is the wrong gender. In Dragon Age 2, male Hawke can romance Anders, but a player playing the character as a straight male will not because Anders is not a woman.
Gender-selectability removes gender as an obstacle. It double downs on the concept started with functional bisexuality and puts the player’s desired experience front and centre. By letting the player select the gender of their romance option, they can shape the exact experience they want, regardless of identity. On the development side, gender-selectability also cuts down on time and resources. If you have four gender-selectable romances, you can have any combination of straight, gay, or bisexual relationships, satisfying requests for LGBTQ+ representation while keeping RO cast size down.
This mechanic is a unique staple of interactive fiction games. While changing personal pronouns, names, and character descriptions is much easier when there are no visuals involved, it still requires a certain amount of work and attention to detail. Gender-selectable ROs are not always gender-inclusive, often operating on a binary and the player choosing either male or female (even in games where the player can be nonbinary).
This could be, in part, related to background mechanics. If nonbinary characters are using they/them pronouns, then there needs to be a function to conjugate grammar in the plural. This is much easier to do for the player character, especially if the interactive fiction game is written in first or second person—the player character’s personal pronouns don’t come up nearly as many times as they would if the text was written in third. I could see how they/them grammar can potentially deter new developers from providing nonbinary options for their gender-selectable ROs if they aren’t confident in their coding skills (I think it’s important to acknowledge that interactive fiction is a young medium and many of its developers are new to coding).
With that in mind, there are two primary ways interactive fiction games handle gender-selectability:
1. Automatically setting all romance option genders based on the player character’s gender and the gender they are attracted to.
The game will make all ROs female if the player character is attracted only to women; it will make all the ROs male if the player character is attracted only to men; and it will make the ROs a mix if the player character is attracted to both men and women. Very rarely are nonbinary ROs included in this, and I’ve yet to see a game that sets all ROs to nonbinary.
In these contexts, the mechanics of gender-selectability can negatively impact player experience when a player uses a bisexual or nonbinary player character. If gender-selectability is left up to randomization, it can be very difficult to get the ROs back to their original gender configuration if players have to restart the game. But if gender-selectability has pre-determined configurations (for example: when the player character is female, Character A and Character B are always male and Character C and Character D are always female; when player character is male, Character A and Character B are always male and Character C and Character D are always female), then it defeats the point of having gender-selectability in the first place.
Regardless, this automatic gender-selectability based on the player character’s gender and sexual orientation makes for seamless gameplay. There are no instances where the text awkwardly asks you to select whether the person you’re talking to is male, female, or nonbinary. Gender is taken into account before the player begins the game, crafting an experience similar to games where gender cannot be selected.
2. The game asks the player to manually set each RO’s gender, either as they encounter the characters or before the game starts.
This type of gender-selectability gives control directly over to the player. While the mechanics may not be as seamless as setting gender based on the player character’s gender and sexuality, it curbs the potential negative gameplay for bisexual player characters.
It also allows the player to set the genders of ROs they do not want to romance to genders they are not interested in. As most games lock the player to a specific RO, if a player has their heart set on that RO, then it doesn’t matter what gender the unchosen ROs are. One of the faults of gender-selectability is creating a lopsided main cast (especially in all female or all male cases; I’ll discuss this more thoroughly below). Making gender-selectability manual from the beginning circumvents this problem.
Gender-selectability is an attractive concept, particularly for romance-focused games. It allows the game to market itself to anyone and everyone. By putting the romance options’ genders into the player’s hand, the game encourages players to pursue their ideal romance arc however they please without being weighed down by gender and sexuality.
But there is something about gender-selectability that gives me pause. Despite the popularity of the mechanic, I can’t get on board with it. After playing several games with gender-selectable ROs, I can’t help but feel this is an extension of the playersexuality concept so condemned by gamers. Perhaps even more grievously than functional bisexuality.
Gender is important. Social construct though it may be, gender affects how we view ourselves and others. Our personal relationship to gender is often complex and multifaceted. As with other social norms, we bring those views into the media we consume. As I discussed earlier, even when we are presented with a story set in a fantasy world with gender equity, we are still going to interpret that story through our own understanding of gender and the greater cultural context at hand.
Gender is so much more than changing pronouns and descriptors. Even when gender doesn’t matter to the story, a character’s gender will shift the context of every scene. Romance options are often the most important characters in interactive fiction games. They are the core, the companions, the major characters whose relationships to the player character drive the story forwards. When gender-selectability is compounded with the game’s main cast, it creates a dynamic that can completely shift the story’s tone and implications depending on gender.
For example, if the player character is a woman and all her ROs are men, the game is now a male-dominated story with a single main female character (the player). If the ROs fill an advisor-type role (they’re stronger, they’re more knowledgeable about the new world/situation the player character is thrust into), then you now have a story where it is the male characters who are in positions of power, which has a greatly different read than if the genders were reversed. The context shifts. And context matters.
Then there is the question of LGBTQ+ characters. Regardless of the developer’s intentions to make a queer game or not, most games with gender-selectable ROs can be played completely heteronormatively. The game doesn’t just leave a character’s sexuality unspoken like functional bisexuality, it conforms to whatever the player wants. While gender-selectability opens the doors for queer players, it shuts the door on authentic representation. If I can choose to remove queerness from the game completely, how queer is the game? Is it that different from Dragon Age 2 hiding Anders’ in-game bisexuality from half their playthroughs?
To further this point, there’s a kind of strange gender essentialism that—unintentionally or not—lies beneath gender-selectability. Trans identities are almost never part of the discussion. Nonbinary options are infrequently included. And gender-selectability is often presented as a choice between a cisgender man and a cisgender woman. Combined with the fact that gender-selectability is only ever used in the context of romance and sex (non-romanceable characters are, as far as I’ve seen, never gender-selectable), this gives the mechanic some pretty uncanny implications. There are times—especially with 18+ games that include interactive sex scenes—when it feels like gender-selectability only exists to make sure the player’s ideal romance option has the correct body and the right genitals.
Which is… weird?
Strange…?
…Uncomfortable?
The most difficult part of writing gender-selectable characters is considering how they are impacted by gender. What makes the male version different from the female version? From the nonbinary version? This is a question all interactive fiction games face because the player character themself is gender-selectable. But I think there is a major different between writing the player character and writing an NPC. You’re in the player character’s head, you’re writing from their point of view, and you’re inviting the player to see the game through their character’s eyes. The player character requires far more flexibility than NPCs because they need to fit every player’s imaginations, and imaginations are infinite. You, as a writer, need to make room for the player to inhabit their own character.
I write Wayfarer’s player character as gender-neutrally as possible for two reasons: 1) I need them to fit as many interpretations as possible, and 2) Wayfarer’s world is a fantasy where real world gender norms don’t exist. However, I do have to check myself because it’s easy for me to slip into a default where I write the player character as myself. Though I have a very detached relationship to my own gender, I still identify as a woman. And sometimes—either through phrasing or flavour text descriptions—I find myself writing in things that read as traditionally feminine in western culture. I then have to edit those out or find different phrasing that reflects a more neutral state that the player can then interpret however they want depending on the character they’re playing.
It’s a very delicate balance, one that I don’t think is present in gender-selectable ROs—simply because the player is not in the ROs’ heads. They are not in their point-of-view. They are not playing the ROs. They are interacting with them. Because of this, extra care needs to be taken with gender-selectable ROs.
Gender-selectability is strange. It is strange to write this way. It’s unconventional, and almost never seen in other mediums. I think even when a developer has the best intentions in mind, it’s still easy for them to steer towards writing a default version of the character and then switch out the pronouns because it feels unnatural to write a female character and a male character and a nonbinary character all at once. I have played games where even though I could select the genders, there were characters that felt like they should be male and others who felt like they should be female. Something in the context combined with the flavour text descriptors created a dichotomy between the character presented in the text, and the pronouns I had assigned them.
This dichotomy goes beyond just the developer’s writing; it also factors into player perception. Different gender versions of the same RO are going to be perceived differently by the player. When you can select gender, there’s an underlying desire to know what the developer’s intentions were, what gender the character would be if the developer hadn’t made them gender-selectable. (Just look at when Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey came out and fans were relentlessly arguing with each other about whether Kassandra or Alexios was the canon mysthios). First impressions are extremely impactful for a game, and I find that players will often associate a gender-selectable character with the gender they had when first encountered.
For example, I saw Wayhaven Chronicles fan works long before I played the first game. My first exposure to M was through the male version of the character, Mason. In my head, the male version of M is the canonical version. That is what I think of when I think of that character. When I played the game for the first time, I played as a lesbian and made the whole of Unit Bravo women. I romanced Morgan—the female version of M—and the entire time I felt like I was watching a false version of the character.
If you take developers writing unintentional defaults and players’ first impressions into account, gender-selectability can end up feeling cheap. This is particularly true if the heteronormative versions of the romances feel like or are treated as the default by the author. Regardless of the developer’s intentions, this gives the impression that gender-selectability was only added to give the game credibility with queer audiences and capitalize on their interest. If the game can be played heteronormatively from start to finish and the gender-selectable ROs are the only queer characters (or the only important ones) in the game, then I really question whether the game is LGBTQ+.
I am being harsh on this mechanic. And while I am biased because I don’t like it, I do think it is overused and often used without care. Developers need to craft their romance options with extreme care if they want to use this mechanic. They need to be aware of all the moving parts—unintended biases and implications included. They need to weigh the benefits of gender-selectable characters against the drawbacks, and ultimately choose what serves their game the best. Gender-selectability shouldn’t be implemented as an easy way to cater to players or to avoid the problems that come with multiple romance options. It is a decision that impacts all aspects of a game and the developer needs to fully commit to it.
But there is something of value within the mechanic. It adds something no other gaming medium can do. Recent WIPs are handling gender-selectability differently than older published interactive fiction games. Instead of making the whole RO cast gender-selectable, they will sometimes have only one or two gender-selectable characters among a cast of romance options with defined genders. I think this is a good choice; it off-sets some of the contextual problems that arise when all the major characters are set to one gender by providing a balanced gender ratio in the rest of the main cast. More and more games are breaking away from the gender binary and including nonbinary options for their gender-selectable romance options. And I would love to see a trans developer’s take it.
Romance in games is complicated. Not only do game writers need to deliver an impactful, enjoyable, and interesting romance storyline, they need to do it multiple times over while taking non-linear story structures into account. They have to take important elements such as gender identity and sexuality into account, and balance player expectation against the characters they want to write and the stories they want to tell.
Ultimately, romance in my own game is a composite of a number of different problem-solving elements. Having too many romances, especially in a large game, can either sink the game or lead to shallowly-written romances. But I have many characters of a multitude of different identities who have interesting romance content within their storylines. So, I split my romances into two types: core romances (who have romance content throughout the entire plot of the game and most closely resemble a traditional game romance structure) and secondary romances (which are shorter, intentionally experimental, and outside the main cast so the romanceable character isn’t going to be at the player character’s side 100% of the time).
I’ve seen the issues that can arise from making all your romance options bisexual, so I intentionally made the core four romances (Alexia, Ren, Calla, and Melchior) bisexual so they are open to as many players as possible, but I have also worked their bisexual identities into their character arcs. Their sexuality is not player-determined, and will be made explicit in the text. Most of the secondary romances are gender-locked and are intended to explore different identities and situations beyond what is possible with the core four.
(And we’re not going to talk about Aeran.)
Will this plan work? I don’t know yet. I hope it does; but that’s the best you can do on a large-scale, long-term project—plan in advance, do the work, and hopefully it doesn’t fall apart at the seams. And if it does start to fall apart, make cuts where necessary so you can put it back together again.
If I can make any kind of conclusion after almost ten thousand words of rambling, it’s that romance writing is hard. Writing a game romance is even harder. I don’t have answers on how to make it happen. There’s no set path for writing and executing a good game romance; there’s no magic recipe that will make your romances successful. Even if you tick off all the boxes, it still may not work. And there are absolutely elements that will make an in-development game popular on social media and in forums straight out the gate, but they don't matter if you can’t deliver in the end.
In the end, I can’t help but wonder that maybe we put too much weight on romance. If it wasn’t placed on the pedestal we put it on—making it larger than life, making it one of the most important aspects of a game, making it the thing that can deter players from your game if you mess it up—then maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to execute in the first place.
Comments
thevikingwoman
I love all your thoughts here. The "player sexuality" is really not that inclusive, and it's certainly not bisexual representation (let's not about how old I was before I saw ANY fictional character canonically and explicitly bisexual, esp if we exclude bisexuality as code for 'morally corrupt'). Also replaying ME1, Liara is handled so AKWARD, but it was 2005, I forgive them. After reading this I have two thoughts , which are connected: about the importance of romance and about selecting "bits". I think there is a time and place for the importance of romance, and there is a time and place for selecting things you want. Sometimes you want something specific, and I think that is alright (and this is what ao3 tags can be used for). I think however, as you said, are the characters then true to themselves? and this takes me to the romance thing - is romance a thing that needs to be in the story? In the end, I think both things are suffering from "Everything Must Be For Everybody" - and I get it from a marketing perspective (whether you're Idrelle or Disney), but in the end stories are BETTER when they are allowed to do a specific thing. I mean, I hate horror, and I especially hate jumpscares - this doesn't mean there should be no horror movies with jumpscares for those who love them, it just means there are movies out there not for me. I think we as consumers/readers need to lean into Not all things are for everybody - and not be upset because something specific is not including, or even has romance? I think it's important to not expect something from a genre for instance - and respect that creator should tell the story they want to tell. (there is, as you mention, an issue with being applealing to different audiences, but if we let that rest for a moment). Not all good stories are going to check all the boxes you want, though to me there is nothing want with wanting specific boxes - as long as you acknowledge this means not every piece of media is for you.
