Romance in video games always felt secondary to me. If I don't need to do it or if there's no big reward waiting for me after the romance storyline, I skip it. But after my recent chat with games and media researcher Amy Brierley-Beare, I'm inclined to go back to some titles and play them differently.
I found Amy after reading her paper The Language of Digital Love on Game Studies. She's a lecturer at the University of Adelaide in Australia and specializes in how romance and intimacy are represented in gaming. Her goal with this article was to categorize love relationships in video games so everyone can better understand how each type of romance affects player experience.
Since Amy often uses big games like Fallout 4, The Witcher, and Grand Theft Auto as examples in her paper, I've reached out to her and asked for games with great romance she'd recommend as an expert in the field.
Not only did Amy give me a list of great games, but she also gave me a tip on how to look at romance in games differently. Along the way, she gave great examples of the three types of gaming love she describes in her paper: limerent, domestic, and ludic.
Here are some of Amy's top romance game recommendations.
Dragon Age: Inquisition
One of the three types of romance Amy describes is called "limerent romance." It's about building a deeper connection and relationship with a character, as if you were deeply in love with them. You want to make the right dialogue choices and develop your relationship with the character the right way, even if that dictates how you play the game and the choices you make.
"Dragon Age: Inquisition is a good example of limerent representations as there are multiple, optional, in-depth intense relationships that are likely to be fairly all-encompassing," Amy explained. "So your focus here is going to be getting to know the character, their motivations, and you'll be working towards the development of the relationship."
If you're a passionate person who wants to fall in love with a character and build a relationship with them throughout the story, Dragon Age: Inquisition is a great game to try.
Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Starfield
Amy says that some Bethesda games are a great representation of what she calls "domestic romance". Unlike limerence, domestic romance has a generic emotional connection that features a utilitarian relationship. You are given items, buffs, and general benefits in the game in exchange for romance. It's about gamifying a relationship, essentially.
"The point here isn't a courtship," Amy clarifies. "It's about creating a family and the utility that comes from that. In this way, it is akin to a digital dollhouse where the focus is curating your character's house and family, more so than it is about actually developing a relationship."
While players lose the element of passion in domestic romance, they get more with customization and role play. They can choose to get married, to customize their house, have children, and decide on other aspects of their character's personal life that aren't covered in the main storyline.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon
The third and final romance category Amy mentions is "ludic romance." It throws away the goal of sharing a life with a character to instead join a game of flirting and romance with no long-term perspective. The focus is on having fun, which is usually represented with side activities and minigames.
"Ludic representations will also often encourage getting to know multiple partners rather than having one romance per playthrough," Amy reveals. "A fairly comprehensive example is Yakuza: Like a Dragon, where you need to raise your stats to enter into relationships, and you get boosts. You're rewarded to develop multiple relationships at once. In fact, to quote one of the romance guides for this game, 'the biggest bonus comes from romancing all six women at once.'"
Florence
Amy's paper focuses on video game romance mostly as an optional activity, which made me curious if she had a game recommendation where it was instead central to the gameplay.
"Florence is one I think is not only beautiful in how it explores developing relationships, but also the ending of a relationship," Amy said. "What was really impressive was the metaphors of the mechanics in the play. At first, puzzles are easy to fit when developing the relationship, but as the couple in the game were drifting, the tasks became more difficult, and then impossible. It's interesting to see players get so frustrated and sad they can't fix the relationship, and I think it's an excellent, simple example of subjective positioning in play."
Hades (1 and 2) and Date Everything
When I asked Amy about games released in the last five years that revolutionized or did something unique with romance, she categorically said we couldn't look into mainstream gaming to find it.
"I would encourage players to check out indie titles and experiences published on itch.io. These spaces allow for more boundary pushing and less copy-paste structure that happens in big-budget gaming."
However, she mentioned both Hades and Date Everything as honorable mentions in the big gaming space.
"Hades was excellent at showcasing different, diverse representations of romance with many different characters who had distinct desires, responses, and motivations," Amy said. "Date Everything is a fun example of something recently that straddles the line of satire while deconstructing popular mechanics and tropes found in dating simulators."
Baldur's Gate 3
Amy was quick to recommend Baldur's Gate 3, but for reasons that weren't obvious to me—so, not because of the bear scene.
"The game broke down popular game romance conventions of the time and surprised players with potential paramours who were motivated to romance the player rather than the player being the only one with agency," Amy explained. "If nothing else, looking at how invested fans are and the sheer amount of support and fan-content shows that the game was tapping into something some players feel extremely passionate about. "
Change how you see romance in video games
Wrapping up our interview, Amy gave a last piece of advice on how to look at romance in games with a critical point of view that will let you understand and enjoy games better.
"Something I would encourage all players to do when they're engaging with romance is think about what certain mechanics are making them do," she suggests. "Are they rewarded for getting married? Having multiple partners? Are you supposed to buy gifts for your potential paramour? Talk to them in a certain way? Or do you have to do something unrelated (is being good at something else signalling to the game that you're eligible to date?) Thinking about how these experiences make us feel and how we should react is helpful when being critical and working out why certain games are satisfying and/or interesting."
"You'll never know when you'll encounter romance in gaming," Amy concludes. "It has bled into a lot of experiences that could surprise you—it's really not just contained to a few styles of games. Some players aren't always happy to see romance, but I think it can be really fascinating to see how games are exploring this extremely nuanced, complex, and intimate element of life."
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