That’s right “industry execs” — you just need to turn down the romance by 40% and the sex by 15%, add 50% more friendship and 25% more adventure, control for the desired level of political correctness, add just the right variety of behavioural feedback loops, and you’ll have a maximally profitable game.
Yes daddy
What part of turn the romance down by 40% didn’t you understand?
It’s the Nuclear Gandhi bug all over again. By dialing down their romance by absolute 40%, you’ve gone through the floor and interger overflowed to 255%.
UwU
maximally profitable game
See, it really is just an algorithm that can be nailed down perfectly, and I’ve got an entire floor of statisticians and market analysts that agree it’ll make me berjillions!!!1!!
Lpt: they’re also telling me more statisticians and market analysts will help boost my numbers too! Jackpot!
-an executive, somewhere, in nearly every corporate office
Just because you really enjoy golf doesn’t mean you want every movie to have a half-assed awkward golf game stuffed into it.
It’s not just games, it’s TV and movies too.
Cramming sex into everything made sense when we weren’t constantly 5 seconds away from being able to see pretty much any kind of porn someone could imagine.
Now tho, that stuff isn’t a reason to watch a show. If you just cared about that, you’d watch the clip online
lol are you equating romance in media to porn
Like do you watch the x files and whip out some porn every time the two mains chars have romantic tension
Yeah, isn’t rule 34 made for that?
Personally I try to get through the whole episode of family guy before I man handle my ham candle
… Have you not heard of Tumblr? DeviantArt?
Gooning or swooning to shipping fanfiction and fan made eroge / nsfw art has been a huge component of many fandoms, of all kinds, for at least two decades.
The reaction from a whole lot of more modern media is to just capture a lot more of that in the official media itself.
In anime in particular, this is called ‘fan-service.’
Porn is absolutely a giant competitor in the ‘digital media consumption / attention’ market, and it completely makes sense that for people who believe in making every digital media product with as broad an appeal as possible, that there’s been a trend toward an analog of fan-service outside of anime.
Maybe I’m too cooked right now to give this reply the attention it deserves but this was a trip.
Like did my original comment give you the impression that I didn’t know people rule 34 every goddamn thing possible?
Maybe I’m really old but you suggesting that anime is the reason we stuff sex into shit is just so funny to me. I once heard someone say “every generation is the first generation to think they invented sex.”
The comment I replied to was like why romance if porn exist which was also funny
Anyways if I misread your comment then my bad it’s been a day
Like did my original comment give you the impression that I didn’t know people rule 34 every goddamn thing possible?
In the context of the reply you were replying to, basically yes.
I read what you said as hyperbolic, but generally dismissive of the idea that characters in media have sex appeal and/or vicarious romance appeal, often generally, and often to such an extent that it drives people to make and share their own erotic spin offs.
I think it is silly to not realize how much a popularity of a show these days can be reinforced and strengthened by appealing to the fanfic crowd, to not realize that many network execs have realized that they have a better shot at cultivating a… well, cult like fanbase, if they make their show in a way that appeals to that kind of crowd.
Maybe I’m really old but you suggesting that anime is the reason we stuff sex into shit is just so funny to me. I once heard someone say “every generation is the first generation to think they invented sex.”
I didn’t suggest anime was the reason we stuff sex shit into more western media for more broad audiences.
I said that doing that, stuffing overtly sexual and will-they-won’t-they, romantic tension type material into media, is called ‘fan-service’ within the realm of anime, and an analagous or similar thing is happening outside of anime.
The comment I replied to was like why romance if porn exist which was also funny
I think the unstated thing that I could have said, but did not, because I assumed it was common knowledge, would basically be:
For quite a long time, men have been the main consumers of video and still image pornography.
And women have been the primary consumers of erotic novels, in the US at least.
The American media approach to attempting to make the viewer feel aroused thus differs based on the sex they are appealing to:
Straight men, as a market demo, generally go for visual sex appeal and sex acts, overt or covert lewd gestures, tight fitting or revealing clothes etc.
Straight women, as a market demo, generally go for on screen romance, for the build up to and moments of dramatic sexual tension, will they won’t they scenarios, the context around a relationship that builds up to the actual sex, etc.
In general, for men, sex appeal is direct, physical, literal, and for women, it is more cerebral, more about mental framing and constructing scenarios that feature, or could potentially feature wish fulfilment, being desired by a person with preferred character traits, etc.
These are of course not absolute truths with no exceptions, there are many exceptions, and yes I am aware that creating the media environment in this way reinforces the norms themselves.
Nonetheless, this is still quite true in general, in aggregate, when you run the numbers.
So… thats why it makes sense to conflate sex and romance from the perspective of a media exec designing a show.
Sex sells, you just package it differently if you’re appealing to men or women.
To most media execs:
Men want the sex.
Women want the story about why the sex is happening.
I read what you said as hyperbolic, but generally dismissive of the idea that characters in media have sex appeal and/or vicarious romance appeal,
Of course I was being hyperbolic…
often generally, and often to such an extent that it drives people to make and share their own erotic spin offs.
…but jfc you’re adding layers to this that no one else even mentioned and then building off of those layers to have your own weird anime rants
No shit sex sells - that was never the contention
The point of my original comment was poking fun of the vibes I got from the comment I replied to which felt like “there’s no need for sex or romance in media anymore when you can watch porn so easily”
Also, everyone plays golf differently and someone will watch a pro take a swing and so try it themselves, only to fail awkwardly and in public. The lessons to be learned are misconstrued as golfing lessons when in fact it’s just an exciting story about how hard that kind of shot really is. Folks don’t seem to understand that a story isn’t giving directions but advice.
When there isn’t a need, there isn’t a reason. And egregious golf is gross.
Oh my god, yes, this! So much this! We all know what teens want, and it’s Olympic curling and nothing else.
You’re starting on the wrong end.
People want games that the devs care about making. Whether it has sex or friendship or romance or relativistically-accurate jiggle physics.
People don’t know what they want until it’s in front of them, but devs know what they wanna make.
I think you hit the nail on the head with those points.
I’ve seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out.
For the original Halo they surveyed people who played who pretty much universally described the AI on the harder difficulties as being significantly “smarter”. In actuality the only thing changed was enemies health pools and damage output and it was identical AI.
Gamers usually have a holistic experience with the games they are playing. There’s definitely a place for user feedback to work, but devs don’t look at a game the same way that people playing them do. Asking people who don’t know how something works for feedback will give you perspective, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to informed design decisions.
“I’ve seen 5+ clones of Papers Please. I doubt that if you surveyed people describing the mechanics that they would be interested especially if Papers Please never came out.”
I think this is a great example. You can’t distill things down to a formula because these things exist in conversation with each other. An example that comes to mind is the game “Not Tonight”, a Brexit themed Papers Please clone. Mechanically, it does very little to distinguish itself from papers please, but narratively, that’s sort of the whole point: It being a clone specifically leverages the energy of “Glory to Arstotzka” to satirise the UK’s institutional racism.
Surveys don’t capture that games like this aren’t just clones of Papers Please, they’re actively in conversation with Papers Please
I as a video game enthusiast do not want my character to experience romance. It doesn’t happen in real life the way it is portrayed in media, and it’s fucking boring seeing it over and fucking over again. Gimme tragedy, gimme a problem I can solve, a mystery, or a war to fight. But romance, and sex, have not a damn place in those things. Developers of apparently every damn media have gotten it drilled into their heads that we want to read, watch, play thru, and otherwise experience their mental masturbation. Well I for one, don’t fucking want to experience it at all. Gimme a story, and if you can’t do it without pointless sex scenes then you don’t have a fuckin story, you have a story about fuckin.
I dunno. problems, mysteries, and war aren’t usually portrayed realistically in video games, either.
Sometimes it’s fun
Well this is funny sex humor
Not romance
This is the same thing TV shows figured out ages ago: you give people a flirty relationship and it’s generally fun to watch. You turn that flirting into an actual relationship and it’s boring + usually some fan service where the authors of the show try to get their female coworkers as naked as they can be manipulated into getting. And then they always need to make that same female coworker get pregnant and force her to fake giving birth.
Tldr it doesn’t matter what the fans want, authors are fucking pervs.
Did romantic feelings have any place in Max Payne 2?
1000% agree.
This came up, I want to say last year? In regards to movies and TV shows as well.
Aha - 2023:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208435267/sex-teens-tv-movies
“Looking for ‘nomance’: Study finds teens want less sex in their TV and movies”
This is where I’ve found myself, too. It’s not that I am prudish or against the inclusion of sex scenes in shows and movies—I think some of them are pretty well done—but we’re at the point where it feels like a lot of media are just adding in sex scenes for the spectacle of it without it serving any particular purpose for narrative development or characterization.
I mean, the Marvel stuff has all been gigantic and proves you don’t need sex scenes. In fact, the one Marvel movie with a sex scene (Eternals) did the worst.
I don’t think the mere existence of a popular franchise (made primarily for kids at that) which happens to lack sex scenes is related to the trend being acknowledged here, though.
but we’re at the point where it feels like a lot of media are just adding in sex scenes for the spectacle of it without it serving any particular purpose for narrative development or characterization.
This has been a thing in movies since they existed. A bit less common, but still there, in books and TV. It isn’t anything new, but at least it is becoming less common.
That’s because OPs article is citing the second annual Teens and Screens report from the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Your NPR article from 2023 is citing the first annual Teens and Screens report.
That makes sense then!
A romance story is good if’s not half-assed and a game doesn’t depend on it. 16-bit RPG’s did it well.
Actually. Sometimes it is. The actual problem is that you’re trying to figure it out at all. If you’re trying to engineer the perfect product, it will always be a shit game. Good games come from passionate developers who have an idea, not from board meetings and focus groups.
I mean, maybe my friends are just weird, but I’m looking at the success of mass effect trilogy, BG3, the older dragon age games, etc and a huge talking point was always all the companions and possible avenues of romance and sex. That should never be the focus of the game, but it can be a substantial part of the overall experience and add a lot.
Teens these days.
I played and enjoyed BG3 too. but I’m an adult…
that’s only true because most of you motherfuckers do robotic gamified romances that don’t feel natural, heartfelt or interesting.
kids these days don’t want sex they want to be held as they curl up in a ball and cry
Hey, me too
No one wants to admit they want that stuff in a survey but those are always super popular
This feels like such a non issue because games and movies these days have basically zero sex appeal or romance
It was a pleasant surprise that you could romance people in BG3
And a major disappointment you couldn’t romance in Cyberpunk and the romance in Outer Worlds felt so half assed. Romance can be a great part of a game.
You can romance in Cyberpunk, but the romances have gender preferences. Judi and River will only romance women, Kerry and the other one I’ve never actually met will only romance men.
Really? Fair enough, I don’t recall there being any options to romance anyone when I played, but I must have just missed it. I remember the forced gay scene, which, like, fine, but I’m not gay, so it would have been cool to get at least one chance with a girl, lol, but it never seemed to come up no matter what I did with female companions in tow.
Panam is the other romancable character. If you do her entire side story (which is quite good) and choose the right options throughout, you’ll have the option to romance her near the end of the game. She’s only attracted to characters with a masculine body.
The romances in general are very easy to screw up. You lock yourself out of several right at character creation unfortunately. Here’s what you need for character creation to get each romance:
Judy: Feminine voice and body Kerry: Masculine voice and body River: Feminine body Panam: Masculine body
As long as you meet the requirements, you can romance 2 people in vanilla, though there’s something at the end of the game that requires you to pick one of them
You also need to do their side missions, but you meet each of them in the course of the main story. There’s also 4 romantic encounters that sadly don’t go anywhere serious.
You can get it on with Meredith Stout, the militech lady who threatens you near the start of the game. If you don’t insult her, you can get another mission from her in act 2. There’s also 3 encounters that can happen, but those are potential story spoilers
I really hate when game devs don’t make all characters opportunistically bisexual.
Remember when all those internet duds were mad that Dragon Age 2 was “sHoVinG tHe gAy aGeNdA dOwN oUr tHroAts!!!” because the NPCs would romance the PC regardless of gender? And they absolutely lost their shit that Anders might express interest and, if you’re not interested, you’d have to politely turn him down once?
Those are the worst sort of people and I frankly wish them ill.
Agreed. Give me my Judy, Panam, and River harem damn it!
I thought you said Outer Wilds.
Big mainstream games that are heavy on sex, like Baldur’s Gate 3, are a recent phenomenon.
Heavy on sex? Just which mods did the author install?
You can romance and have sex with pretty much anything with a heartbeat in BG3.
Yeah there’s some romance, but there’s barely any sex. You can only romance one character at a time and there’s like one short cutscene per character, with some being a fade to black, in a 100 hour long game.
When was the last time you saw a game that was more than that outside of porn games and maybe dating sims? The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Cyberpunk 2077.
I always think of this kind of stuff when these kinds of polls come up because they’re always by big corporate companies who put the most shallow of these themes in. People want this stuff like they want strong female leads: they want stuff that actually puts the effort in to make it good, not half-baked content just to maximize market reach or that one gay side character with one line of dialogue mentioning his husband who never actually appears in the movie.
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There’s not a bunch of full frontal nudity or raunchy sex scenes, that’s true.
But the game is shamelessly horny. All characters were designed to be maximally fuckable and they’re all desperately tryna fuck. The sexual tension is palpable and several of the MC outfits wouldn’t be out of place at a sex party.
Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t call the game softcore porn by any stretch, it’s just… canonically horny. Which is perfectly fine.
Does it need a heart beat?
Asterion?
It’s fairly accurate isn’t it? Every single companion (bar Minsc and Jaheira - though the Jaheira romance was cut content) lusts for you with the uncomplicated ferocity of a hormonal teenager, some after having exchanged barely a sentence or two with you (looking at you, Halsin). There is a bear fucking scene, Mizora wants you for some reason and hell, you can even bang a god damn mind flayer.
The bear-fucking scene will always be my answer to things like this.
You can’t look at BG3 and go “yup, wholesome family fun for all ages”
Yeah, but you don’t HAVE to fuck the bear.
Joking aside, if romance and sex aren’t your thing, you as the player have control in most games to just not do those things.
The characters keep throwing themselves at you though.
It really sucks when I’m playing a game with my girlfriend and there is a half-naked demon lady trying to bang me despite me being an asshole to them in every interaction.
Baldurs Gate 3 is one of my favorites games ever, but I would enjoy it a lot more without the awkward horny stuff it throws in my face.
What does your girlfriend have to do with anything?
You don’t see how that makes it even more awkward? This is a game with co-op that will throw the horniest scene at you out of nowhere.
I can see it being awkward if it was like… my parent or someone i don’t know well. My partner? No, we joke around, decide what to respond together, discuss what we like and don’t like about it, you know, couple shit.
Bear’s Gayte 3
EVERYONE!
bg3 was literally one of the biggest games of the year…
also the sims 4 has been going for years
Hades was also HUGE and I find it hard to believe it was mainly for the gameplay as even I, a gameplay purist, have always been drawn in by Supergiant’s storytelling.
The romance was the worst part of BG3, imo.
Too forced, every dialogue option is either slightly flirty (at least) or just telling them “fuck you and die”.
Even when you say you just want friendship and avoid the most flirty options, it won’t stop the game from trying to throw you in a romance. I hated that.
Yep. It did depend on the companion a bit, IIRC Shadowheart and Astarion’s romances wouldn’t be triggered unless the PC picked the flirty dialogue. But then there were some companions who would pursue the player. I hated how I couldn’t just be Gale’s Bro, and Halsin is just plain creepy.
Gale has a problem where he interprets interest in his backstory as romantic interest. Which is kind of realistic, but no one wants to be on the receiving end of that in real life or in a game.
Like bro, put your dick away and tell me some gossip about Mystra.
The upside I guess is that a lot of cis straight men got to experience how uncomfortable unwanted advances are.
Maybe it was deliberate and intended to give some self awareness to some people who won’t take no for an answer and keep trying.
Bets that it wasn’t because of the romance.
I completely avoided all of the romance and loved the game because it’s a fantastic game.
I think it’s cool that it’s there for people that enjoy it though.
I don’t hate games that have it- though I do wonder what better content there would be if the developers didn’t focus on all the mechanics and coding involved in making it work.
Who cares what teens want?
They don’t have any money.
Is that why no one cares what I want? Because I don’t have any money? 🤔
Money is the old economy. Teens have something that adults don’t have that is infinitely more valuable than money: attention. This is how, despite having no money, teen taste and culture is so over-represented today.
They also will become adults. So hook them now. They might also have access to their parents’ money.
I genuinely think that money is no longer the goal of the top economic echelon. Techniques for controlling how people spend money can be generalized into controlling all their behaviour; total power.
I mean, that’s what fanfiction.net is for if you want to ship Bowser and Peach.
