I’ve bought the game twice- once on PC and again on PS5 to enable easier couch co-op with my fiancé. The love and effort they put into this game is amazing. They’ve also made roughly a billion dollars in sales.

Did I suggest crunch? Did I suggest grinding down developers to the bone to get a game out a year sooner? No I did not, I am complaining about long development cycles without offering any solutions or much insight into game development. I know games have probably millions of lines of code that have to work together…

That is the wrong take. He didn’t say anything close to “the devs should just suck it up and endure crunch”. He said

The OP was advocating to “find a way” to cut down time. Not sure why you choose to assume 18 hour workdays or releasing a game that is a broken mess are the only solutions available.

Modern game development has got to find a way to cut down development times because I’m going to be an old fucking man before Shadow of the Erdtree, Elder Scrolls VI, Metroid Prime 4, and Silksong are released. Shit,  franchises only get about one release per console generation, two if it's being shared with last/next…

Hi fellow old, that’s a based choice. Marle for me, personally!

Growing up Tifa (FF7) and Miranda (Mass Effect) for sure. Beyond the obvious reasons, Tifa was grounded, modest, child-hood dreamer, could still respectfully kick your ass, and Miranda was total girl boss, she could kick your ass disrespectfully. But one person I don’t think gets enough love is Monika (Doki Doki…

...lucca from chrono trigger...

Look, I’m old.

Oh man, the certified Gamers™️ are gonna be mad about this. A playable woman, in their game? And on top of that, she’s black? And there’s a whole section of the game teaching about the history of black baseball players (or as they will label it as: “teaching woke CRT propaganda”)?

This is a really neato mode and I’m glad to see it’s back. Even as a baseball devout, I learned some cool stuff with the mode and Bob Kendrick is an engaging narrator

Yeah i agree. I was so sad when i found out i couldnt romance Cassandra in DAI but i still much prefer that kind of approach to the “everyone’s into you”/ playersexual approach.

I prefer the Inquisition take on game romance. It feels more real for the characters to have different sexualities. Not everyone is into the player character, and the characters can form their own relationships with each other. Sera can get with the dwarf scout, Dorian and Bull can end up together.

I think it probably depends on the person. Some clearly find it immersion breaking when characters are into every possible player character type, others find it feels like the developers intruding when a NPC who feels romanceable in a given way actually isn’t. I can’t say I felt particularly immersed when I found out…

Make available a player setting that allows you to choose “All romanceable” and “Characters have personal preferences”. You would make the game as an all romanceable game, and then add just a declining conversation for each character locking off the rest of their romances.

I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s the only way to really avoid the Kindness Coins Problem.

One of the problems for me in so many video game romances is the time compression of it all. A lot of these romances take place in what amounts to a few weeks, months at most, between people who’ve never met and are dealing with a high-stress situation. As a writer there’s only so much you can meaningfully say about…

What if rejection were made as interesting narratively/mechanically as succeeding? Would this issue with a player pursuing a character that’s not into them still be a concern?

Hear me out: romantic rejection roguelike. The Dark Souls of dating sims. You will experience rejection in place of You will die. 

For me, the Inquisition model is one of the more successful. Having a variety of characters of varying sexualities, so they can feel like real characters but the player still has choices. Obviously, everyone can’t do that because it’s expensive to fully flesh out that many romanceable characters, but like the article…

Fantastic read, thank you so much.

Playersexuality always struck me as a weird criticism when it comes to gaming. If I found narratives or characters that are shaped by my choices problematic I’d go read a book instead. It’s fine if a game wants to tell a more fixed story too but choice, or rather player agency, is such a core pillar of gaming that the…