It would be impossible to reduce the history of queerness in dating sims to a neat line of progress. Yes, there are more dating sims built with queer players in mind these days than there were twenty years ago, but that doesn’t mean the history of queerness in dating sims is a simple story of positive growth. There were trailblazers, outliers, and ups and down over the years.
Today, of the 6000+ games tagged as “dating sim” on steam, 650+ are also tagged as LGBTQ+. If we can take this as a reflection of the trends of the industry, that number actually seems surprisingly small. The internet impression of dating sims seems to be that they are drowning in queer stories. So why don’t the numbers reflect that? Well, probably because they don’t need to for even a minor increase in inclusion to be treated with suspicion. But more than that, dating sims in the west have gained a reputation for ‘weirdness’. When the dating sim genre is accused of being extremely queer, it is often actually being accused of being extremely weird. To many, queerness is “weird” and silly.
But whilst there might be correlation between growing diversity in dating sim rosters and growing weirdness in dating sim themes, there certainly isn’t causation. In fact, the increasing LGBTQ+ themes in dating sims are likely caused by a lot of the same things we discussed in my last article.
Broadening Genre
The opening up of the dating sim, from a clearly defined genre to a broadly applied definition of ‘anything with romanceable characters’, has had both positive and negative consequences. On the downside, it makes it harder for games to be seen when they compete for storefront space with games that they have little in common with. Before this modern definition took off in the west, there were a variety of distinct categories that dating sims and visual novels could fall under.
- Otome Games: Aimed at a heterosexual female audience, with solely male candidates available to romance.
- Bishōjo Games: Aimed at a heterosexual male audience, with solely female candidates available to romance.
- BL (Boy’s Love) Games: Aimed (in theory, at least) at a heterosexual female audience, with gay and bisexual male characters romancing each other.
- Eroge Games: Games with explicit sexual content, often aimed at heterosexual men.
In the most popular modern digital storefronts, these games would all be grouped together. It is – ironically – harder for a game to stand out when every game in one ‘genre’ can have such a different audience. However, although there are definite downsides to simplifying these categories into one big group, there are also very real benefits.
Notice the gender segregation in these games, the heterosexist assumptions they make merely by grouping themselves together. Where could you place a non-binary player character? How could you get a queer project off the ground if it didn’t fit into these pre-established categories that publishers targeted? There is no space for queerness – an inherently fluid spectrum – in such a rigidly defined space, govered by gender and sexuality norms. At best it ignores queerness, or presents it solely for consumption. At worst it is actively hostile to it.
While these categories still exist, and many of their associated games now offer a more inclusive experience, there is a good argument to be made that it was the decrease in their usage which opened up room for queer identity in these games.
Case Study: Mystic Messenger
Like a lot of other people who were dumb teenagers around the year 2016, I downloaded Mystic Messenger, got told to get in the cage by Jumin Han, and realised some things about myself. This mobile otome, which told its stories using false chat rooms, texts, and phone calls, was something of a viral sensation. It emulated new technology, it engaged you in its world by acting like any other app on your phone, and it had the classic hidden, dark story that sometimes feels obligatory to dating sims. It was an instant classic.
And yet, while I was playing it, I couldn’t shake off a strange feeling.
It wasn’t that the game made me uncomfortable. I enjoyed the lighthearted distraction it provided, I found the characters funny. Something was just… wrong. But I wanted to have fun and play the game everyone else was playing, so I ignored it. Sure, it bugged me that the player character couldn’t actually romance the female ‘romance option’, only befriend her, but I also appreciated having a route with lower stakes. The jokes about Jumin being gay got old fast, but they didn’t upset me.
Then, last year, I went back to it. Immediately, several things clicked into place.
I had been uncomfortable because, although the realisation hadn’t set in for me at the time, I am not a cis woman, and the game was very determined to treat me like one. It almost rubbed it in my face, like it knew it was a sore spot. Characters constantly asked me for a “woman’s” opinion, or a “woman’s” touch. That had been the strange feeling brewing in me. Dysphoria. It also explained why Jumin – the character accused of being gay throughout the game – was the only character to capture my attention. Of course I wanted the character who could feasibly desire me if I wasn’t a woman.
So, even before I was aware of my own identity, it manifested in my experience with the game. When I came back to Mystic Messenger and found art of a trans male player being tender with Jumin, I felt like a cut I hadn’t even noticed had been healed. The alienation a dating sim can cause with casual assumptions – not even intentionally harmful ones – is surprising. These are games that deal with deeply personal areas, after all.
Case Study: Mask Of The Rose / A Date With Death
Compare and contrast how gender is handled in more recent dating sims. A Date With Death sees you charming the grim reaper himself. Not only does it have a character creator, but you can pick your gender, your pronouns, and what sort of descriptive words you prefer to be called. The examples given are beautiful (feminine), handsome (masculine), or captivating (neutral), and you can input custom words instead if you’d like. This gives you massive control over your gender presentation. And, as we discussed in our last talk, the more control a player has in a dating sim, the better.
Mask of The Rose, a dating sim set in the existing ‘Fallen London’ universe, offers romanceable characters of multiple genders. (And some Not So Human options too.) Your own gender expression can be as diverse as theirs, just as it can in A Date With Death. Lots of games have done away with the ‘single gender’ format in dating sims like this, and most of them allow you to date every candidate regardless of your own gender.
Where Mask of The Rose is particularly interesting, however, is that it is a dating sim that never requires you to date. Instead you can just form friendships with the candidates. You can even set some of them up with each other, as your character works as a matchmaker.
Not only does this give you more control, it allows for an aromantic experience and narrative to take shape in your game. That tracks with what we established last time: dating sims are about fantasy, not filling a gap in reality. It makes complete sense for an aromantic person to enjoy stories about romance, or just games that focus on story and character, even when they don’t want that for themselves. Mask of The Rose dares to engage with our questions about the appeal of dating sims, to accept that the things people enjoy about the genre, and the reasons they enjoy them, are complex.
In a genre so centered around romance, aromantic representation would seem to be a low priority. We can see by its inclusion just how far the genre has come toward making space for queer identity. There are other games on the market that allow you to skip the romance entirely, and their existence shows how much more considerate the genre is becoming of the variety of players out there.
Conclusions
Dating when you’re LGBTQ+ can be even messier, more confusing, and difficult than it is for other people. This means the safety a dating sim provides is even more appealing. But that safety can be ruined when a game reminds you – without intending to say anything at all – of the barriers you’re facing in your real life.
Thus, dating sims have the potential to be great escapism for an LGBTQ+ audience, but they also have the potential to be extremely alienating. Something meant to be a bit of silly fun can easily make you feel ‘wrong’. It’s this sort of fine line, how intensely these topics can affect us, that causes us to create dating sims in the first place. Art provides a home for any strong emotion.
I don’t know if simplifying a variety of genres into a single ‘dating sim’ category is a good or bad thing. But I do know that when it comes to the inclusion of queer identity, it has done more good than bad. Maybe the reason modern dating sims feel so queer, is that taking rigid categories and blurring them all together is exactly what queerness is all about.