The Quest for Love: Dating Sims over the Years
When someone thinks about video games, their first thought is likely to be action platformer or first person shooter. But what about games where the objective isn’t to physically fight and defeat a strong enemy? What is the appeal of a game where the objective is a character’s affection? Through an analysis of its history, I believe that a dating sim’s strongest selling point is how it breaks down a complex idea like love into a self indulgent, tangible, and rewarding system.
To prove this, I will explore the evolution of several types of dating sim games, the general audience’s perception of these games, and its influence on LGBT+ game developers. As a quick disclaimer, I personally only have experience with casual otome games and games including dating sim elements. I’m writing this article as a learning experience, and I have no plans to delve into H games or problematic variations in the genre.
Another thing to note is that dating sims are not exactly simulation games that portray a couple’s relationship, but typically an adventure and management game where love becomes a measurable resource that must be earned through correct player decisions and character stats within a predetermined time limit. Dating sims are often also social sims, as both games involve making choices that affect the player character’s stats and relationship with other characters. However with dating sims, the end goal is expected to be a confession scene. Often times, dating sim games will also skip the “dating” aspect of the relationship and show characters at a wedding, in the bedroom, or with kids. It should be emphasized that because dating sims are highly unrealistic; a typical Eastern dating sim does not explore healthy relationships.
It’s not a surprise that dating sims originated in Japan, where there is a stronger focus on creating identifiable characters compared to the Western sphere. After all, Japanese games like Pacman and Donkey Kong were the first games to include cutscenes and narrative within the game. Already in Donkey Kong, the goal of the game has been to “save the girl” and it is implied that in doing so, the player character will earn her affections.
One of the first games considered to be a dating sim is Girl’s Garden (1984), a game about a girl trying to win the affection of her crush by gathering flowers. The developers, Yuji Naka and Hiroshi Kawaguchi, had been asked by their supervisors at SEGA to make a game targeting the young female audience. It was a technologically impressive attempt to gamify a fictional character’s love into several fetch quests.
One year later, Tenshitachi no Gogo (1985) was released by JAST as one of the first bishoujo games. The intended audience was incredibly different: young adult men. As a result, there were pornographic elements and the game followed the modern “anime”-styled art and narrative structure of its adult manga counterparts that were also popular during the time. The game revolved around an unnamed protagonist character whose goal is to seduce a popular girl in the tennis club, by befriending and gathering information from her friends using text commands. Players can calculate their progress in the game by checking the number of characters befriended and the amount of information received. With this method, Tenshitachi no Gogo sets the precursor for adventure-styled dating sims and influenced the modern dating sim structure.
From 1992 and onward was the release of the Doukyusei series, a collection of adult dating sims that included an option to create a harem. Instead of aiming to win the heart of one girl, the first Doukyusei game included 14 possible love interests, as well as rival characters that fought with the protagonist. It allowed players to uncover several types of personalities and character story, instead of focusing on just one. The game also encourages pursuing multiple girls at once, allowing players to fulfill the fantasy of forming harem-like relationships. As a result, the game was popular enough to spawn sequels.
In the early years, dating sims were fairly text heavy due to technological limitations, and were often viewed interchangeably with visual novels. Selecting the right choice at the right time simply leads the player down the route that wins the heart of the love interest at the end. However, as game technologies increased, players were given more strategic and complex options.
In 1994, Tokimeki Memorial was released as a popular dating sim with a highly praised, nonlinear game progression. It focused on a stat-raising and time management gameplay, where every player decision counts towards the confession scene at the end of the school year. There was also a notable “bomb” feature, where if certain girls don’t receive enough attention for a period of time, they will grow jealous spread bad rumors about the player character, ultimately decreasing affection points from all characters. As a result, the game encouraged careful planning and allowed dating sims to be much more strategic, rather than playing like a linear visual novel. While the mechanic remains unrealistic to real-life dating relationships, the game is considered to be one of the biggest dating sim franchises, spawning multiple games, some very recently.
1994 was also the birth of otome games, dating sims specifically catered towards young girls. Created by an all-women team, Angelique “set up the specifics and conventions of women’s games: a focus on romance, easy controls and utilizing other multimedia”. There was a fantasy element, where the goal of the game was to become an almighty Queen that rules the cosmos. The main character is a candidate who must properly manage the lands she’s given with the help of Guardians. While the Guardians are potential love interests that the player can bond with on the side, choosing a partner forfeits the candidacy and result in a different ending to the game. The game also ended up becoming popular with the slightly older female audience, creating sequels, remakes, and spinoff games.
While Angelique was a dating sim, the main goal was not specifically to get a love interest. It had social sim elements of similar to Princess Maker (1991), where the stat-raising gameplay elements come with the purpose of becoming a better royal figure, attracting a certain individual is a bonus reward.
This popular structure of dating sims in the East also influenced other types of games to include romance elements into their gameplay. In 1996, Harvest Moon was released as a farming simulation game with dating sim elements. Players mainly focus on restoring and maintaining a farm passed down by the main character’s grandfather. However, there is an optional goal where the player can marry a villager in the town by fulfilling certain requirements such as attending certain town events, buying a large house, and gifting items every now and then to increase a love interest’s affection points.
In 2006, Persona 3 was released as a popular JRPG and social sim, that included dating sim options. It coined the term “social links”, a bond formed with secondary characters indicating various levels of affection. The player can hang out with certain characters and pick correct dialogue choices to raise the level of their links and create stronger demons to fight with. Social links are arguably what attracted a lot of more casual fans into the game. There’s a self-indulgent appeal to measuring popularity in terms of other people’s affections.
Similarly, in 2012, Fire Emblem: Awakening became a hit worldwide due to the inclusion of “support conversations”. While past Fire Emblem games have included short cutscene dialogue between members as support conversations, Awakening had a marriage system where offspring from the future will also join the party to fight. The inclusion of the marriage system allowed characters to become more personal and helped the company sell merchandise.
While dating sims have been popular mostly in the East, there has also been some attention and even attempts at creating them in the West and worldwide. Many times, western dating sim games will also follow Japan’s “anime” art style and structure, but there have been a few variations.
Ciao Bella (2007) was created by the Canadian game company Frima Studios, to be a social sim game where the main character, Bella, has to raise stats and money in order to manage her life, deal with her wild family, and eventually impress her date in Little Italy. Rather than affection points, the game divided the relationship into game levels, where each level spanned a week and a date awaited at the end. Perhaps because this was a Western game, the game takes place when the two characters are actually seeing each other (rather than newly met classmates), and the ending scene is a marriage proposal and wedding.
In general however, dating sims have not been well received for the general audience in the West. Sims that do receive attention are often a strange variation of the genre, where there is an unexpected premise or ending.
The well-known example is Hatoful Boyfriend (2011) where all of the suitors are birds but retain human speaking capabilities and common otome game personality tropes. Due to its wild setting and dark plot twist, the game has garnered a cult fandom that spread in popularity due to word of mouth. It inspired other strange dating sim games where a player can enter a romantic relationship with a T-rex, horse, or even types of poop.
Doki Doki Literature Club (2017) has also been a recent game that garnered a lot of attention for its surprising scenes and fourth wall game breaking mechanics. However, it’s not considered to be a true dating sim since the game has no intention of providing the player a romance route, but a horror experience with meta commentary that doesn’t have much to do with romantic relationships itself despite the typical dating sim setup and similar tropes.
Dating sims, however, have been popular with indie game developers for its accessibility and easy game mechanics. There are a lot of resources to make a visual novel dating sim, hence there has been more character representation within the genre than any other type of video game.
Katawa Shoujo (2012) was a game created by Four Leaf Studios, a development group that met on 4chan starring a cast of characters with various disabilities. The game is noted to be well written and respectful of the topic, and tells a story of the main character overcoming his negative bias towards disabilities as he gets to know and understand his classmates on a more personal level.
Because dating sims tend to focus and emphasize on characters and relationships, it allows players to form personal connections and understanding with a diverse cast.
A lot of LGBT+ game developers also included dating sim elements in their games in order to represent themselves. Heaven Will Be Mine (2018) is a sci-fi romance visual novel that explores gender identities, sexuality, and self-actualization through text-based choices (some leading to romance).
As the years progress, more modern dating sim games tend to subvert the typical expectations of a romantic relationship, either with strange characters or surprising plots. It can be said with confidence that most dating sims don’t actually simulate the process of dating. Rather, in order to spend time to get to know a character, players are simply required to raise stats, send gifts or become personal therapists.
Of course, this raises questions as to why dating sims mechanics have been so voyeuristic, often giving players the ability to play God. The ideal of gamifying romance into neat and measurable systems is entertaining but comes at a cost. At it’s worst, dating sims are not much different from power-hungry games, granting players the feeling of entitlement that they can be loved by all through simple acts of choice.
But done right, dating sims can allow for character immersion and exploration. Players can grow to love a character, rather than forcibly the other way around. And with the popularity of dating sims and romance games in the indie industry, I hope this is the direction the genre can continue to take in the future.
This article was published as a requirement for the History of Digital Games course at UC Santa Cruz with A.M. Darke. Please be kind.
