Romance in Gaming, Part I: Why Romance?

It’s hard to think of a gameplay element more beloved in story-driven roleplaying games than romance. When gamers discuss a new RPG, there’s usually two questions that that come that come to mind first, two questions that dominate the discussion and are talked about with more passion and excitement than any other: 1) who is your favourite character? and 2) who did you romance?

Reviews of Mass Effect and Dragon Age are never complete without mentioning the romances. Video essays on the Witcher 3 have been debating the Triss vs. Yennefer choice since 2015. I’ve had friends pass over the first Pillars of Eternity installment and proceed directly to Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire because it is the entry that includes romantic attachments. RPG fans lamented the lack of romance options and “serious relationships” in The Outer Worlds, despite this being a conscious choice from the developers that allowed them to focus on other areas of the game.

And that’s just in traditional video games. In the indie scene, many interactive fiction games (visual novels included) are dating sims or otherwise romance-focused. Non-romance games usually include romance of some kind. Regardless of where you look for your games, role-playing and romance tend to align one way or another.

This is a two-part series on romance in gaming. Part I will explore romance as a popular game mechanic and storytelling tool, and the impact it has on interactive fiction development. Part II will focus more closely on how romance is presented in interactive fiction, and discuss the good and the bad that comes from elements such as player-sexual characters and gender-selectable romance options.

Why Romance?

So, what’s the big deal about romance anyway? Why is it such a beloved mechanic?

I think the crux of it comes down to characters and characterization and how they are used to enhance the player’s experience with the story. There’s a world of difference between how romance is handled a Dragon Age game compared to a Fable game, despite both series being fantasy RPGs. Dragon Age: Inquisition has fully actualized romances and uses romance to further character development and relationships. Fable III does not have fully actualized romance; romance is instead used as a jokey caricature, where the romanceable NPCs are little more than exchangeable dolls and you get some crass humour in your character stats out of marrying multiple people, catching STDs, and having children for a quick laugh.

Players who enjoy fully actualized romance are often people who enjoy character-driven stories. They are playing a game to enjoy the characters and story first, and game mechanics second. Games that include in-depth romance storylines are usually character-driven to begin with. These games place either an equal amount of importance on character/story and mechanics, or put character/story before mechanics.

From my own experiences as a gamer and conversations with others, there are four things that make romance a desirable part of the game for the player:

1) Romances feel good to play.

I’m not a scientist and there’s not really a study on this (that I could find at least… and I did look), but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of endorphin rush involved when playing romances. Successfully unlocking new scenes in the romance’s progression can be extremely satisfying for the player, particularly when there’s an approval system involved and your effect on a character is made tangible.

2) Romances are fun to roleplay.

A large part of roleplaying is creating a character and exploring all aspects of their life. Whether you’re roleplaying a fantasy version of yourself or someone completely unconnected, there is usually a desire from the player to flesh out their character and understand them fully.

For many people, romance is an extremely important part of life and it is an element they want to include in their roleplay for a variety of reasons. Sometimes this is to create a satisfying character arc, other times it is to explore and empathize with experiences that are not your own.

3) Romances make character more interesting.

Romances in games often function as additional character content that under certain conditions (take the right dialogue options, get the right amount of approval points, unlock the right bond rank, etc). Because romances are written as additional, optional content, they expand on the romanceable character’s foundational characterization. There has to be something new for the player to unlock, otherwise why add the romance in the first place?

The end result is that romanceable characters become more interesting when they are romanced. This can be structured in a way where in some games, you miss out on crucial character details if you don’t romance the character.

In Dragon Age: Origins, Morrigan is a tempestuous character who can be difficult to get along with. Her romance gives the player completely new insights about her, and the player character develops a personal connection that is far deeper than if she remains just a friend. These insights ultimately impact Dragon Age: Origin’s endgame and a particular decision Morrigan makes.

Another example is Dimitri from Fire Emblem: Three Houses. While his character arc is complete if you pursue the Blue Lions story route in the game, there is a significant detail that you will miss if you don’t unlock his S rank scene.

I don’t want to spoil anything, but in very vague terms: Dimitri is a character who struggles with an immense amount of trauma throughout the entire game. If you don’t unlock his S rank, the end assumption is that his journey concludes with him healed and whole, and he’ll never have to deal with his trauma again. If you see his S rank scene, the result is the opposite: he admits that he is never going to be fully healed, that his trauma is something he will have to carry for the rest of his life. Considering that much of his story and journey is about how trauma shapes a person, this is the more significant end result for his character arc—and it can only be accessed if he is romanced by the player character.

Even when you can access similar information about the character through a friendship path, I still feel like I am missing out on content if I don’t romance a character. This is not necessarily good or bad. From a gameplay perspective, this is undoubtedly a good thing as it adds to the game’s replayability. I have played all entries in the Dragon Age series multiple times because I want to see how all of the romances play out and invest more time in characters I may have otherwise ignored on my first few playthroughs.

On the other hand, it makes romanceable characters and their additional content more important than friendship paths or non-romanceable characters. Are romanceable characters more interesting because of the romance? Or is it because their romance gives the player more content and more time with them?

If that’s the case, then maybe it’s time game writers question how non-romance content is structured. Friendships can be just as important and interesting as romances, but in games they are not often written as such.

The only game I have played recently that attempts to put romantic and platonic relationships on even footing is Boyfriend Dungeon, which offers romantic and platonic versions of all its character paths. Despite being a romance Visual Novel/dungeon-crawler hybrid, you can play the game to its full extent and invest fully in the characters and their arcs without doing any of the romance paths (and I think that’s neat).

4) Romances personalize your playthrough.

In most games with romance, you can only romance one character. Sometimes this takes the structure of a romance “lock”, where after you gain a certain amount of points, you choose who you want to romance, choose a dialogue option to lock into it, and romance prompts for all other ROs disappear from the game.

Other times, a game may employ a jealousy system, where you are eventually forced to choose between your romance options. And then there are games that actively punish the player character for romancing multiple ROs (Witcher 3 has Triss and Yennefer work together to reject Geralt completely and you are banned from further romance content; Persona 5’s “harem route” has all of the romanceable characters gang up on the protagonist on Valentine’s Day ). And finally, there are games that allow you to romance as many characters as you want without consequence.

Pursuing a specific romance path makes the player’s experience unique. Because this choice affects the story and character relationships, choosing who you romance is much more of a personal choice than other types of choices in an RPG (such as what class you are or what weapons you use). Additionally, if you are playing an LGBTQ+ character, romancing queer characters as a queer person makes it even more personal.

This personalization effect makes games with multiple romanceable characters and a player-defined player character very different than games that include a single romance between a pre-defined player character and their love interest. Gamers are going to be more excited to talk about their romances for a character they created than a pre-defined romance. 

For example, Dragon Age fans will be a lot more excited to talk about their characters and their romances across three games than, say, Uncharted fans are to talk about Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher’s relationship. It’s the difference between personally shaping your character’s story yourself and watching one play out before your eyes.

Great (Romantic) Expectations: Is Romance the Default?

Romance’s popularity in traditional gaming extends deep into the interactive fiction scene. After a quick look through Choice of Games, Hosted Games, and itch.io’s visual novel and interactive fiction pages, you could argue that romance is the dominant genre in the interactive fiction scene. Even if a game isn’t a romance game or dating sim itself, it often include romances as a subgenre or additional game mechanic.

I have a few ideas why this is the case. Outside of the general “romance is popular” argument discussed earlier, player demographics for interactive fiction are predominantly female and LGBTQ+. Not only is romance already popular within these audiences, but marginalized gamers also seek out interactive fiction games because they are the only place where they can experience in-game romances that reflect their own lives. Romance is an undeniably important part of this medium since interactive fiction can offer a broader, deeper, and more nuanced approach to gender and sexuality than is found in traditional, AAA games.

While it’s good to have players invested in their favourite mechanics, there is an unintended downside. Just as the expectation for modern fantasy RPGs is to have an open world level design (whether it’s needed or not), I find that there is an expectation among visual novel and interactive fiction players for their games to always include romance.

Whether this expectation comes from potential players putting it on developers or developers putting it on themselves is a moot point; regardless of where it comes from, the end result is the same. Interactive fiction games often list their romance options directly on their landing page, include them in their promotional material, and otherwise display them front and centre. Considering the romance’s popularity and how it is often the first thing players are excited to talk about, this is a good marketing move. You want people to talk about your game. You want people to be excited about your game.

But as a developer, there are many frustrating aspects that come along with this. When all interactive fiction games are structured the same way, players start to make assumptions about what “makes” an interactive fiction game. Potential players may assume that “the main cast” (the major characters of the game) is synonymous with “romance option”, regardless of whether the game is actually a romance game or not. They may judge your game solely on which characters are romanceable, regardless of your game’s other qualities. Which characters are and are not available as romances can make or break an in-development game—particularly if you’re doing your outreach and community management on platforms like Tumblr and the Choice of Game forum, where the assumption is romance options first and everything else second.

My feelings about this are very complex. On one hand, I am frustrated that romance is the single most pervasive gameplay element that players want to talk about. It affects my engagement, which affects my game’s growth and reach. Yet on the other hand, I absolutely understand why players love talking about romance, because as a player, I also enjoy talking about romance. It is one of the most interesting aspects of roleplaying games.

I like romance. I really enjoy the types of stories that can be explored through romance. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have put it in Wayfarer, and I certainly wouldn’t have has many optional romance paths as I do. But I also really dislike when development is hampered by assumptions. Tumblr has been an excellent platform for building a community, but it is also an echo chamber. I see time and time again players and other developers who assume that “interactive fiction”—which is a medium or type of video game, not a genre—is synonymous with “romance game”. This idea is reinforced when questions directed to developers are primarily concerned with romance, romanceable characters, and romantic scenarios between the romance option and the player character.

And the effect of this is that new developers assume that they have to put romance in their game because that’s what all the other games are doing. The expectation is there, so you have to deliver, otherwise you’re not making an interactive fiction game.

Romance is complicated enough to pull off in traditional media; choice-based, non-linear storytelling makes it even more complex. It’s important for interactive fiction developers to fully consider how romance content will enhance their characters and storylines in the early stages of development. It should be an intentional choice, one that is integral to the game’s mechanics and design—not one made because the developer is put in a position where they feel like it should be there.

So How Do You Write a Romance for Interactive Fiction Anyway?

Though interactive fiction shares many similarities with writing a novel, implementing romance is completely different. Not only does a choice-based narrative shift how the story unfolds, but player interaction immediately changes how a romance will play out. In traditional writing, the author controls the when, the how, and the why of the plot and character arcs. In interactive fiction, player choice immediately changes how the romance plays out—in order to make it interactive, the author needs to give the player some level of control over the romance’s progression through their choices.

These choices can take different forms. It can be about the dialogue options you choose, when and where you unlock certain scenes, or how quickly you gain or lose approval points. Some games give the player more control, some give them less. But regardless, the most important option—and the one players are most likely to talk about—is which character the player chooses to romance.

The inclusion of several romanceable characters is a major defining difference between romance in interactive fiction and romance in traditional media. Typically in interactive fiction games, there are a handful of characters for the player to choose from. These romance options are usually from the main cast of characters and present throughout the course of the game. As each romance needs to feel like a unique experience, developers may use a number of tools to ensure there is no overlap between a particular RO and their counterparts:

• A defined look that is different from the other ROs
• A character/romance trope for each RO (i.e. Soul Mates, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Forbidden Love, Jerk with a Heart of Gold, etc)
• A side story or subplot revolving around the RO dealing with some kind of personal problem that only the player character can help them resolve (sometimes this subplot compliments the main plot, sometimes it is a separate issue)

However, I think the mark of a good romance—beyond anything else—is how the character is written into the game. When romance becomes the sole focus and the primary reason why a character is included, the character runs the risk of becoming purposeless.

In some games, there’s a rush towards romance and romance elements, a tangible pressure to “get to the good bits” first—and then there’s nothing substantial outside the romance itself. To be a good romance, a romance option needs to be a good character first. They need to exist on their own terms, outside the player character and beyond their romance arc.

I’ve learned this lesson myself the hard way. When I was originally developing Wayfarer’s characters, I took a romance-first approach—an approach which I regret, because it ended up making me waste a lot of time. Early in development, I felt pressured to focus on romances since it was the question everyone wanted answers to: not just who was in the game, but who was romanceable, who they were attracted to, and what their romance would look like.

While I’m sure these questions from players were well-intended, it became slowly became more and more frustrating. I was creating lists of characters and laying them out on a grid so I could count how many female, male, and nonbinary romances I had and figure out the ratio male-attracted characters to female-attracted characters. I spent weeks stressing over representation, whether I had enough, whether I had too little, whether it would be good enough for players.

And at the end of it, it felt like I wasn’t treated characters as characters, but rather as ticks on a list. I was effectively tokenizing my own cast. It didn’t matter who these characters were, but that they existed to be romanced.

This was not a good approach to character development, let alone romance development. The foundation of a good romance are the characters—you need solid characterization first and foremost. And I don’t think you can build good characterization if the first thing you do is focus on ticking off boxes.

Something about this whole process rubbed me the wrong way. I have never developed a cast of characters based on what their romance looks like because you would never approach character writing this way in any other medium. I knew from the moment I started sketching out Nelani and Felix’s backstories and character arcs that a romance arc wouldn’t work for them. Nelani has other things to be concerned with, and Felix is ten years younger than the player character and not in the right mindset for a romance. Forced romance actively detracted from their character development and didn’t make their role in the game better.

I think it’s important to keep in mind that just because you can make a character romanceable, it doesn’t mean that you should. This is why I stress treating a romance option as a character first and a romance second. Interactive fiction developers need to know who their characters are beyond romance. They need to know how they develop if the player character chooses not to romance them. They need to know how their characters affect the plot, and what trajectory their development takes throughout the course the game.