Baldur’s Gate 3 is the latest big game to follow an inclusive (but divisive) trend in video game courtship
I’m personally not too keen on the playersexual approach, though this article does provide some interesting viewpoints from creators of a couple of games written that way. Still, this admission from one of those creators
“What ends up happening is it feels not only like everyone is a little bit pansexual, but also nobody even sees gender, which is not real. That’s not an authentic way to build the world.
…and this from David Gaider
“We didn’t like how [playersexual] made the characters feel like they existed in service of the player; like they were there in the game to be a toy. […] We felt like that wasn’t why those characters existed. That wasn’t the kind of game we were making. These characters were characters first, and they had their own stories, and the player could interact with them, but it wasn’t always about the player.”
pretty much summarize my feelings on the matter. And yes, I did feel this way about BG3 too.
Great quotes and I totally agree. I think it’s a good example of how things that can seem really inclusive on paper sometimes go so far they swing around and feel exploitive in a different way.
I could imagine one way they could try and still have the playersexual thing, but maybe make it feel better, is if the potential partners are as picky as real life people. So in other words, it’s possible to court anyone, but you have to really nail it to get any of them at all. No idea if it would fix the issue, but it sounds interesting to me to see how that would feel.
That lends itself to narratives that sexuality can be overridden by someone being good enough at romance. Like the old trope of a straight guy telling a lesbian “you just haven’t had a good dick yet” or an asexual “one day you’ll meet the person for you”.
If I was developing a romance game, I’d have to know that at some point a misogynist incel creep is going to play it, and I don’t want to feed into the idea that if they just savescum or use a walkthrough or choose the perfect pickup line, they can change someone’s sexual preferences. That’s how you get Tate fans thinking they can use pickup artist tricks to get women in the real world.
I think that’s definitely true, though I would say it’s less so than the current versions of playersexual talked about in the article, which basically imply if you flirt with someone even a little they will completely fall for you.
I think my hope with that idea is that if it’s fairly difficult, you may not even know who the romanceable characters are in some cases, so it’s trying to have the cake and eat it to, which is maybe impossible.
It’s not a simple thing I don’t think, and whatever approach is taken has problems it seems like.
I genuinely prefer when the companion characters aren’t playersexual, since it makes them feel for real to me. It also gives me a reason to switch up things like gender or sexuality for my character on replays. The only reason I’ve ever played as BroShep in Mass Effect was to romance characters I couldn’t as FemShep.
I was watching a video on YouTube yesterday of someone’s favorite romances in video games, and all I could think watching it was, “You’ve never once played as a female character, huh,” because all his favorite romances were for straight male characters, and that just felt so, I dunno, limited and boring to me. Romance Garrus, romance Dorian, try to role play and not just play as yourself.
This is a really fantastic article with a lot of great quotes and examples. It seems like a really nuanced topic, and I found myself agreeing with many things said on all sides of the discussion.
As someone who likes immersion and grounded fantasy, I do find myself more taken with the dragon age inquisition approach, but I also think it’s great to have some games out there that do take the playersexual approach. As long as people can understand it’s ultimately wish fulfilment, then I think having it out there can be very fun and even empowering for people.
Look, there’s a simple solution to this problem:
Make it so party member NPCs can only be bi or gay or ace.
Now you’re not erasing any queer identities, and there are no queer players who feel excluded by straightness. Everyone wins.
I prefer playersexual. I think some being bi and some being unspecified is great. But maybe that’s just me being sick and tired of the lesbian love interest sucking
And I’ll point to Dragon Age Inquisition as my example. The writer for Sera clearly didn’t like lesbians and especially not her and Josephine had by far the least content of any romance option
My suggestion would be to just…. DON’T. It’s incredibly unnecessary at best/ and embarrassingly cringy at worst.
