Lavendermuse

This Valentine’s day I’ll indulge my usual tradition of playing a dating sim and eating some nice snacks. A holiday is a holiday. It’s the same reason Halloween is the one night of the year I play a horror game. But, especially for someone as chronically uninvolved in romance as me, what’s the appeal of dating sims? Why do we like them, and why do we seem to especially like the wackier ones? Is it just for indulging unrealistic romantic fantasies, or is there more to it?

The History

“What is a dating sim?” may seem too simplistic a question to need asking, but the title is actually quite contentious. Since the rise of Steam and its user-run tagging system for games, any game that gives players love interests to choose from has been dubbed a dating sim. This ranges from ‘adult’ simulation games, to RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3, to visual novels. However prior to digitalisation, especially in Japan where it ’emerged’, the dating sim was a genre, not a content tag. The player had to build stats and pass checks on those stats to progress the game and unlock options. A game with romantic options but no stat building would be another genre, regardless of how focused it was on romance.

So whilst in the modern, digital world, the Mass Effect franchise might be tagged as a dating sim, in the classic sense it would not qualify. It would be an action rpg with elements of romance. You can easily see this old divide by simply examining Hatoful Boyfriend – the bird dating meme game that arguably exploded the popularity of dating sims in the west. This game operates as a classic dating simulator. The gameplay is from building stats, because it is a ‘pure’ dating sim, not another genre implementing dating sim elements.

This does little to help us understand why we like dating sims, of course, but it does show us that the question may not be as simple to answer as we would think. If even the definition of a dating sim is contested, it must be even more complicated to definitively explain why we enjoy them.

Examples

Our first instinct might be to look for trends in popularity, but even then we encounter problems. Take Steam’s user tags, for example. Under this modern, open definition of a dating simulator, even The Sims 4 – despite lacking a POV player character or a pre-written story – is labelled as a dating sim. In fact, according to Steam, the top ten best-selling dating simulators right now are:

• Persona 3 Reload
• The Sims 4
• Slay The Princess
• Persona 5 Royal
• Coral Island
• My Time At Sandrock
• Sun Haven
• Freshwomen – Season 1
• Class of 09 Re-Up
• Crush Crush

So, we have Turn-Based RPGs, Life Simulations, Farming Simulators, and Adult ‘Hentai’ Visual Novels. Absolutely no ‘classic’ dating sims and quite a spread of genres. One thing they arguably have in common is they are games that aren’t especially stressful. Even the Persona games, while harder, are turn-based, therefore you have more time to think about the combat, and they also have so much content that they are meant to be experienced slowly.

The ‘famous’ dating sims of the west, in contrast, all seem easier to group together. Hatoful Boyfriend, Doki Doki Literature Club, Dream Daddy, I Love You Colonel Sanders, and Mystic Messenger are all visual novel games with a certain degree of irony, either purely visual novel elements (picking between branching choices, text-heavy games) and/or classic dating sim elements (stat building, stat checks). If this is the ‘face’ of the genre, then the modern definition suddenly seems much easier to explain.

The Appeal

One thing we can conclude is that dating sims are ‘relaxing’ in various ways. We can also assume gameplay is only a secondary source of enjoyment for genre fans, because the gameplay of these sims varies. Although the core visual novel elements are similar, they each deliver these elements differently. Some only offer dialogue choices, others involve minigames, and some use traditional stat building. Recently, games like Dungeon Boyfriend have combined the dating sim elements with other genres entirely.

So there isn’t a unanimous format of gameplay for dating sims, which means enjoyment of the genre probably doesn’t come from gameplay alone. Instead, players likely enjoy rich story content. This is backed up by how many games have seen fans create “spin off” dating simulators to explore their favourite characters in a deeper, more personal setting.

This brings us to another thing that makes it both easier and harder to explain appeal. Each of these dating sims has twists that make them really stand out. Mystic Messenger simulates group chats. Dream Daddy focuses on balancing parenthood with your romantic life. While this might suggest a lack of trends, it could also be argued that they prove people enjoy dating simulators most when they feel unique. Perhaps this is because players seek to emulate the real experience of dating, that every relationship is a unique experience.

(Equally, perhaps it speaks to how unhelpfully broad the definition has become. Although dating simulators are often indie titles created by small teams, their games have to be extremely unique to stand out when they compete with Triple A RPGs and Hentai Games in rankings, rather than being considered separate.)

In all of these examples, as well as Steam’s Top Ten games, a well-written story is vital. Apart from Sims 4, which seems an outlier in many ways, all these games are known for having strong writing and characters with depth. Players of dating sims enjoy feeling immersed in a story or growing attached to the datable options. Even in sillier examples, the writing of the characters is usually strong. In this sense, again, players emulate the real experience of dating.

Control – A Proposal

But then, why play these games rather than seek out those real experiences? Why do happily married people enjoy these games as much as singles? Even though there is such a broad range of games available, if their only appeal was in experiencing something the player isn’t in real life, they would be limited in popularity.

I propose their true popularity comes from the way these games allow players control that isn’t present in real life romance.

First of all, you enter a dating sim knowing you are there for romance, and all the options in the game will be willing to date you. There is no guesswork, no searching. Nobody’s feelings can be hurt by a misunderstanding. From a neurodivergent perspective, this already creates a much more relaxing atmosphere because it takes the most difficult part of social interaction out of the experience. I suspect the same is true even in neurotypical players.

Secondly, the romance is started by you and your conscious choices. Some dating simulators have you outright select your route before you start, others allow you to organically choose your partner. Both approaches put the power in your hands to pursue the relationship. Your romantic option is passive. For women or queer players especially, this can be novel, and take the stress out of the experience. You cannot be accosted without your consent. You are free to say no (or yes) to whoever you want without worrying about it.

Control – A Case Study

Take Mass Effect, for example. It isn’t what I’d call a dating simulator, but it has elements of dating sim in its gameplay. The only romances I enjoy in Mass Effect are the ones where your character has to initiate the relationship, where it cannot be sprung on you unexpectedly by the other character after a few positive dialogue options. I like options like Garrus Vakarian, where you have to follow a specific conversation path to unlock the romance option, where your character flirts first. I hate “stealth romances”, where the romanceable character initiates instead of your character. In fact, this was enough to ruin my opinion of whole characters.

There are elements of an RPG where you want the game to take some control away and surprise you. In Mass Effect you can fail talent checks and lose access to story options. These are key to the experience of an RPG. It is significant that what I want from the dating sim elements of the game differ from what I want from the rest of the game.

When Mass Effect Andromeda had an option for the player character to try and initiate a romance with two other characters, regardless of player gender, only to be turned down if they were the same gender, the decision was called ‘cruel’ and ‘unnecessary’. I tend to agree, why have the option there if it leads to denial? For realism? If that was the intention, then the negative reaction it created seems to settle our question. Realism is not why people want these options in games. People want to experience dating without the negatives. For example, the fear of rejection – however gentle or well meaning.

So, why do we like dating sims?

Although this may sound like a lot of scattered ramblings, we’ve actually stumbled our way to a conclusion. A key theme has cropped up throughout this piece. Dating sim fans want a wide variety of things, but they all want the experience to be relaxing, positive, and under their control.

Just as ‘farming simulators’ allow you to experience the pros of rural living without the physical cons, dating simulators allow you to experience something equally divorced from our messy reality. It is relaxing. It is safe. The player has all the control and power, and has no consequences to fear. It an unrealistic fantasy, and we know that.

A dating sim, then, is closer to a ‘romcom simulator’ than a simulation of real life dating. That explains the broad appeal of these games. They aren’t filling a lonely gap in people’s lives. They are providing the same escapism all video games do, presenting us with a safe, unrealistic fantasyland to play around in. This fantasy just happens to focus on romance.

This explains why ‘wacky’ dating sims keep getting more and more popular. Those ‘ironic’ sims carry an extra layer of protection for the player. If the game isn’t taking itself seriously, then the emotions experienced by the player can’t be too serious either.

This is a really broad overview of an entire genre, because I found it harder to describe what I liked about dating sims than it was to describe what I liked about life simulators, or beat ’em ups. The genre is just remarkably vast. Any discussion of it must be the same. So, this isn’t the end for this topic. I’ll see you later in the month for a deep dive into dating sims and queerness!