0:00 - introduction 3:33 - A (not) brief history of romance in games 48:01 - Looking for love in a video game 1:07:54 - Doukyuusei 1:23:52 - Tokimeki Memorial 1:38:19 - True Love 1:46:01 - Kanon...
0:00 - introduction
3:33 - A (not) brief history of romance in games
48:01 - Looking for love in a video game
1:07:54 - Doukyuusei
1:23:52 - Tokimeki Memorial
1:38:19 - True Love
1:46:01 - Kanon
1:54:15 - Amagami
2:12:25 - Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3
2:23:07 - Katawa Shoujo
2:33:08 - Hatoful Boyfriend
2:41:07 - Amensia: Memories
2:52:05 - Dream Daddy
2:59:35 - Our Life: Beginnings & Always
3:09:20 - Conclusion
Uh... these are all a very specific genre of game, which the title does NOT mention. They're all dating sim games, Visual Novels if you will. I actually thought this would be about romance in...
Uh... these are all a very specific genre of game, which the title does NOT mention.
They're all dating sim games, Visual Novels if you will. I actually thought this would be about romance in JRPGS, like FFVIII, Lunar, etc.
He talks about those in the first hour or so. But he wanted to focus on games where the romance is the point of the game, instead of optional content, thus why he deep dives into specific games...
He talks about those in the first hour or so. But he wanted to focus on games where the romance is the point of the game, instead of optional content, thus why he deep dives into specific games that are dating sims and visual novels
Is it worth watching if I've never even heard of a single one of these titles? Seems like an extremely niche video with a very small potential audience. I really enjoyed the ones he made about...
Is it worth watching if I've never even heard of a single one of these titles? Seems like an extremely niche video with a very small potential audience. I really enjoyed the ones he made about RPGs but might only watch the first 48 minutes of this one (since it's the history) as the rest seems very specifically about mostly anime type games?
The first hour, absolutely. It's general history about romance in video games, how the Japanese studios embraced it while the Western studios shied away; how it became somewhat expected for a JRPG...
The first hour, absolutely. It's general history about romance in video games, how the Japanese studios embraced it while the Western studios shied away; how it became somewhat expected for a JRPG to have romance, while western games were criticised for including it; how the stigma in the western market faded away little by little thanks to parody games and LGBT oriented visual novels; etc.
Eventually, he also talks about how some games included these mechanics. Some, have a linear story and the romance develops, regardless of you (player). Some, how only one character has personality and the other is a blank slate (player), so the character has to be written around a blank protagonist. Some, how mechanic and artificial the romance is, how if you keep giving gifts to a character eventually they sleep with you (and the sex being treated as a prize).
All in all, I think the first hour is worth it. But I'm biased, I have a soft spot for games with romance in them.
The rest, I couldn't tell you. I also didn't play any of them except for Katawa Shoujo, but I did play a few Visual Novels and dating sims years ago. I think that they were interesting, but then again, biased.
If there's at least one section that I would recommend, it's Katawa Shoujo. It's a story of a Visual novel that had everything to go wrong:
risky subject (it's about disabled girls)
made by 4chan volunteers (you know... Not exactly the embodiment of tactfulness)
virtually no budget and marketing
And it became... A success... Against all odds. It's one of the most mature romance stories I've read in general, not just in VN. It's a story about a protagonist dealing with becoming disabled himself, and learning that these girls are not defined by their disabilities.
Adding a second vote for Katawa Shoujo, which still gets my vote for most unexpectedly humane storyline considering, well, the exact reasons you give. Sure, it's imperfect, and the different paths...
Adding a second vote for Katawa Shoujo, which still gets my vote for most unexpectedly humane storyline considering, well, the exact reasons you give. Sure, it's imperfect, and the different paths are erratic in quality due to the nature of them being different authors. But you can tell they all to a one actually gave a crap, and tried to produce something that was real, not the farce you'd be tempted to think on first sight. It's heartfelt, no pun intended.
I'm watching to see what he says about Hatoful Boyfriend. Edit after watching FOUR HOURS of video: SA trigger warning around 1:20 -- the tone is rightfully negative and critical when talking about...
I'm watching to see what he says about Hatoful Boyfriend.
Edit after watching FOUR HOURS of video:
SA trigger warning around 1:20 -- the tone is rightfully negative and critical when talking about one of the scenes in Doukyuusei where not only is consent taken away from the anime girl being romanaced, it's also taken away from the player playing the game. -- suggestion: skip to the next section or don't read the screen text.
Four hours is a long time, but I feel like I still got the better end of the deal by not having to play the titles discussed in depth. Neverknowsbest did a good job highlighting the good, bad and ugly of each title, each of which should really be its own video by sheer length of it all. The intro and conclusion can be viewed without losing anything logically, imho. And at four hours, even tiny tangents felt overly indulgent - eg, yes you like pixel art and we all hate moe, but save those 30 or so seconds for a footnote.
Now. The meat of his argument, that western audiences/game makers are scared of romance. Yes, it's true. He points out that often games have to hide romanace away as a tacked on element to an RPG, or else subvert it with horror, violence, or even hiding it behind sheer wholesomeness to the point of being boring.
And my counterargument is that game makers SHOULD be scared of romance, not because of stigma, but because it's difficult, including some of the reasons he listed in this video: it's too subjective, and difficult to gamify.
He didn't like Daddy because the MC is too awful, felt out of the immersion in Katawa because the MC is too different. For games with lots of girls the MC is empty blank and that feels bad, and then in Our Life where the MC is himself, he didn't like the love interest. There's no winning here, I suggest, not because we're idiotically scared of the taboo, but because we're rightfully scared of the difficulty.
There weren't modern VR games in the 80s and there weren't video games in the 1800s not because we hated them and were scared of them, but because the technology just didn't exist.
Father child /other complex relationship games exist because they're easier human relationships to navigate: we aren't required to be as invested in and to love a partner as uniquely and intimately as romantic love. We can parent or be bros with a far far dar wider range of folks than we can fall in love with.
My prediction is that we've been working on it, and we're going to get a breakthrough + floodgate very very soon thanks to LLMs: pick a waifu/husbando of your type and all the dialogue will perfectly be tailored to your liking based on anime/media character types you also input. Get the virgin and the slut, the safe childhood friend and the cage -- an LLM sim that can pick up on what you feel like today and roleplay exactly that. It's coming.
To add my two cents, I've noticed romance tends to be a weak point in all mediums. Films, novels and comics often have pretty shallow romances, with even stories with it as a focal point...
To add my two cents, I've noticed romance tends to be a weak point in all mediums. Films, novels and comics often have pretty shallow romances, with even stories with it as a focal point struggling to feature good chemistry and development. I've participated in many discussions in fandoms where people prefer same-sex pairings just because there's more chemistry between best friends or rivals than the actual intended romantic couple. (And don't get me started on the debates over romance stories with multiple potential love interests...)
So add in how video games place the audience as part of the romance... Yeah, the challenge gets even harder.
Like you said, it's highly subjective. A lot of games that feature romance, either as the focal point or a sub-mechanic, are written with a "blank" protagonist in mind that players can customize. That means we typically look for the romance option that appeals to us, which... Don't always exist. I've played plenty of games where I had no interest in any of the romance options. I've also played games where I was more interested in a character who was NOT dateable.
Then if a game has a fully fleshed-out protagonist, the romance can be written like part of a story we're reading, but then it's still subject to the same issues with other mediums. At the same time, some players still can't fully separate themselves from the player character though, so fleshing them out and adding romance can create some mental dissonance. Or just lead to having two chances to dislike a character rather than one.
My overall takeaway: romance is just weirdly hard to write well, and video games add another layer of difficulty to it thanks to the immersion aspect.
I’m currently replaying The Outer Worlds and I really like how it handles romance: Not with the player in the role of romancer, but as matchmaker instead. There’s a really sweet companion quest...
I’m currently replaying The Outer Worlds and I really like how it handles romance: Not with the player in the role of romancer, but as matchmaker instead. There’s a really sweet companion quest where you help one of your allies meet and court someone. There are no direct romances for the player character but this is a well-written and touching twist.
I'm not totally sure that it's possible for media to be romantic. Falling in love is a fundamentally different experience from watching someone else fall in love, and I don't see how you can...
I'm not totally sure that it's possible for media to be romantic. Falling in love is a fundamentally different experience from watching someone else fall in love, and I don't see how you can capture that experience without somehow getting the viewer/player to fall in love with a fictional character — a character you cannot speak to, laugh with, touch, smell.... How do you fall in love with someone you cannot meaningfully interact with?
Of course, you can develop a crush on someone who barely knows you exist (we've all been there). I think a lot of games, books, movies, music, etc., can simulate the experience of developing a crush on someone — but they ultimately feel shallow and unsatisfying because that is the nature of crushes.
I have found that I enjoy romance media way more if I accept that it's just not going to feel romantic to me. If I treat romantic plots more like I'm watching two of my friends fall in love and I'm really happy for them, I drop any expectation of feeling romantic myself and I can enjoy it a whole lot more.
I don't think romance media is meant to give you the actual experience of falling in love, it's meant to be aspirational or nostalgic. "This is what I hope falling in love is like" or "this...
I don't think romance media is meant to give you the actual experience of falling in love, it's meant to be aspirational or nostalgic. "This is what I hope falling in love is like" or "this reminds me of the first time I fell in love". If you feel "I am genuinely falling in love with this character," that would actually probably be fairly maladaptive and maybe even something to take up with a therapist.
That's part of why shallow and underdeveloped romances are frustrating. Do you remember that time when, aside from talking about a task that you were both working on, you barely said anything to them despite spending a bunch of time in the same room, and then when the task was over you were both in love with each other despite barely knowing anything about each other? I certainly don't! Do you want romances in your life to be like that? Me neither! I want them to joke with each other, get to know each other, have things in common and reasons to care about each other, because that's what I remember and that's what I want in my own relationships.
Yeah, I don't think most romantic media is meant to give you the experience of romance, either — and when it does try to do that, I think it is much more likely to fall flat in the way that you...
Yeah, I don't think most romantic media is meant to give you the experience of romance, either — and when it does try to do that, I think it is much more likely to fall flat in the way that you describe. If one of the characters is meant to be a stand-in for the viewer so that they can feel immersed in the romantic feelings themselves, then the couple can't really interact in a natural way and develop chemistry. The stand-in character will always be stiff and vacant because if they show too much personality, odds are most viewers/players will stop relating to them.
I think the genre really only works when it's a story about two characters who are not you and are not trying to be you. Some of the most effective moments in fiction, in my opinion, arise from characters exhibiting the full force of their own distinct personalities and synergizing just right together.
If someone wants to actually experience (not just observe) romance through media, I think they should probably stop looking for it in complex storytelling media like novels and dating sims, and instead look for it in moment-capturing media, like music and poetry.
I strongly disagree with him about Dream Daddy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think his suggestion for it (basically making the main character less of a loser) would have ruined it. I think his...
I strongly disagree with him about Dream Daddy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think his suggestion for it (basically making the main character less of a loser) would have ruined it.
I think his mistake was going into it like it's a romance simulator where the main character is your avatar, but that's not really what it is. It would better be described as an interactive novel, more along the lines of something like Disco Elysium.
It's really a game about guiding a lonely single parent out of a depressive funk and helping him start living again — not just for his daughter, but for himself. I think Dream Daddy would have fallen pretty flat if the main character were just some suave dude who's already winning at life. The main character arc is such a huge part of what makes the writing so compelling.
Agreed, the main character being a bit of a schlub in Dream Daddy hit perfectly for me. For one, I was a college student when it came out, and that made the ways in which the MC was "a loser"...
Agreed, the main character being a bit of a schlub in Dream Daddy hit perfectly for me. For one, I was a college student when it came out, and that made the ways in which the MC was "a loser" weren't all that different from my day-to-day life. But also, there's something endearing about the MC being a little bit of a lazy fuckup in certain ways but still getting all these hot, interesting dads as friends and romantic interests. It's much closer to wish-fulfillment for me, myself a lazy fuckup in many ways, than having a stupidly suave successful MC would have been. But also I don't really like most romance simulator-type visual novels with "blank slate" protagonists, so that's probably contributing here. It also helps that Dream Daddy largely avoids my biggest pet peeves with this genre. I suspect the fact that Dream Daddy had reach beyond romance visual novel aficionados plays a role, since it has a different target audience imo.
I skipped around the video. There are a LOT of things that make this all so difficult, and so few examples of people that do them right. When they are, they can be such a personal, vulnerable...
I skipped around the video. There are a LOT of things that make this all so difficult, and so few examples of people that do them right. When they are, they can be such a personal, vulnerable thing as the video mentions - and it's difficult to get that to resonate across gaming audiences.
One of my favorite little love stories is in Fire Emblem 7, where there are three characters - Rebecca, Wil, and Dart. Rebecca and Dart are siblings, and Wil grew up best friends with Dart and Rebecca. But Dart has amnesia after being left for dead, and doesn't remember either. You have five support conversations to perform between characters as they spend turns next to each other in combat, and they max out at an A rank after three... But the three characters will only recognize each other in their A rank conversations. So by the end of the game at best two of them will rekindle their sibling, friendship, or romantic love for each other; one will never quite get to spend enough time with the others by the end of the war to learn the truth. Or, all three can continue on their separate ways with someone else. If Wil and Rebecca end up together, it's because Wil steps up and promises to never leave her vulnerable again - even though Dart is really there. It's this tragic little knife twist within the mechanics, and it's a great reward for playing the game a lot and caring about these little bit characters. I adore it.
BUT, this all gets slotted into a tertiary mechanic to the main game, is a side optional content that isn't the main focus so it isn't that crazy of an impact, and well, it has to be fairly metaphorical... Why couldn't the third wheel here just spend some extra turns with each other while you're grinding at the arena? Who knows! And this is a really delicate, specific balance too. Take the same mechanics in Fire Emblem Awakening, where they made matchmaking via supports an enormous part of the story. As such they made it so EVERY male-female pairing can have an unlimited number of A rank supports with each other character, and then if you want to marry them off they get a single S rank with one other. But that means that they had to force conversation between literally every M/F pair, with no regards to whether there's any good reason for them to talk, and (whether it's the writing or the translation) the supports are mostly these really hackneyed anime character tropes getting mashed into each other. Then you get the optional S conversation where they suddenly want to get hitched, even though every A rank had to sound platonic. The game sold like hotcakes! So the next game, Fates, was written pretty similarly awful.
It's really easy to fuck this all up. And as the main focus, it's especially difficult to keep a mechanic over some number of hours - especially when the span of an actual relationship simmers down after two people are together. To obfuscate the natural feeling of a relationship developing and attach mechanics to it, when such a thing often happens at its own pace or by accident, is also hard to nail as a primary gameplay element. It's no wonder to me that a lot of visual novels with heavy romance/h focus have some kind of fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, etc hook to them: you stick it in the middle of a nice plot and have the romance and plot pace each other, dangling the carrot til the end. And that's by doing the stereotypical reward of a kiss at the end of most media, or sex in an h-game; if not, you have to write the dialogue dynamically around people maybe loving each other. Who has the budget for that?
0:00 - introduction
3:33 - A (not) brief history of romance in games
48:01 - Looking for love in a video game
1:07:54 - Doukyuusei
1:23:52 - Tokimeki Memorial
1:38:19 - True Love
1:46:01 - Kanon
1:54:15 - Amagami
2:12:25 - Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3
2:23:07 - Katawa Shoujo
2:33:08 - Hatoful Boyfriend
2:41:07 - Amensia: Memories
2:52:05 - Dream Daddy
2:59:35 - Our Life: Beginnings & Always
3:09:20 - Conclusion
Uh... these are all a very specific genre of game, which the title does NOT mention.
They're all dating sim games, Visual Novels if you will. I actually thought this would be about romance in JRPGS, like FFVIII, Lunar, etc.
And my mind went to western RPGs like Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate 3.
He talks about those in the first hour or so. But he wanted to focus on games where the romance is the point of the game, instead of optional content, thus why he deep dives into specific games that are dating sims and visual novels
Is it worth watching if I've never even heard of a single one of these titles? Seems like an extremely niche video with a very small potential audience. I really enjoyed the ones he made about RPGs but might only watch the first 48 minutes of this one (since it's the history) as the rest seems very specifically about mostly anime type games?
The first hour, absolutely. It's general history about romance in video games, how the Japanese studios embraced it while the Western studios shied away; how it became somewhat expected for a JRPG to have romance, while western games were criticised for including it; how the stigma in the western market faded away little by little thanks to parody games and LGBT oriented visual novels; etc.
Eventually, he also talks about how some games included these mechanics. Some, have a linear story and the romance develops, regardless of you (player). Some, how only one character has personality and the other is a blank slate (player), so the character has to be written around a blank protagonist. Some, how mechanic and artificial the romance is, how if you keep giving gifts to a character eventually they sleep with you (and the sex being treated as a prize).
All in all, I think the first hour is worth it. But I'm biased, I have a soft spot for games with romance in them.
The rest, I couldn't tell you. I also didn't play any of them except for Katawa Shoujo, but I did play a few Visual Novels and dating sims years ago. I think that they were interesting, but then again, biased.
If there's at least one section that I would recommend, it's Katawa Shoujo. It's a story of a Visual novel that had everything to go wrong:
And it became... A success... Against all odds. It's one of the most mature romance stories I've read in general, not just in VN. It's a story about a protagonist dealing with becoming disabled himself, and learning that these girls are not defined by their disabilities.
Adding a second vote for Katawa Shoujo, which still gets my vote for most unexpectedly humane storyline considering, well, the exact reasons you give. Sure, it's imperfect, and the different paths are erratic in quality due to the nature of them being different authors. But you can tell they all to a one actually gave a crap, and tried to produce something that was real, not the farce you'd be tempted to think on first sight. It's heartfelt, no pun intended.
I'd also watch the conclusion, it still flows without having watched the reviews and rounds off the discussion nicely.
I'm watching to see what he says about Hatoful Boyfriend.
Edit after watching FOUR HOURS of video:
SA trigger warning around 1:20 -- the tone is rightfully negative and critical when talking about one of the scenes in Doukyuusei where not only is consent taken away from the anime girl being romanaced, it's also taken away from the player playing the game. -- suggestion: skip to the next section or don't read the screen text.
Four hours is a long time, but I feel like I still got the better end of the deal by not having to play the titles discussed in depth. Neverknowsbest did a good job highlighting the good, bad and ugly of each title, each of which should really be its own video by sheer length of it all. The intro and conclusion can be viewed without losing anything logically, imho. And at four hours, even tiny tangents felt overly indulgent - eg, yes you like pixel art and we all hate moe, but save those 30 or so seconds for a footnote.
Now. The meat of his argument, that western audiences/game makers are scared of romance. Yes, it's true. He points out that often games have to hide romanace away as a tacked on element to an RPG, or else subvert it with horror, violence, or even hiding it behind sheer wholesomeness to the point of being boring.
And my counterargument is that game makers SHOULD be scared of romance, not because of stigma, but because it's difficult, including some of the reasons he listed in this video: it's too subjective, and difficult to gamify.
He didn't like Daddy because the MC is too awful, felt out of the immersion in Katawa because the MC is too different. For games with lots of girls the MC is empty blank and that feels bad, and then in Our Life where the MC is himself, he didn't like the love interest. There's no winning here, I suggest, not because we're idiotically scared of the taboo, but because we're rightfully scared of the difficulty.
There weren't modern VR games in the 80s and there weren't video games in the 1800s not because we hated them and were scared of them, but because the technology just didn't exist.
Father child /other complex relationship games exist because they're easier human relationships to navigate: we aren't required to be as invested in and to love a partner as uniquely and intimately as romantic love. We can parent or be bros with a far far dar wider range of folks than we can fall in love with.
My prediction is that we've been working on it, and we're going to get a breakthrough + floodgate very very soon thanks to LLMs: pick a waifu/husbando of your type and all the dialogue will perfectly be tailored to your liking based on anime/media character types you also input. Get the virgin and the slut, the safe childhood friend and the cage -- an LLM sim that can pick up on what you feel like today and roleplay exactly that. It's coming.
To add my two cents, I've noticed romance tends to be a weak point in all mediums. Films, novels and comics often have pretty shallow romances, with even stories with it as a focal point struggling to feature good chemistry and development. I've participated in many discussions in fandoms where people prefer same-sex pairings just because there's more chemistry between best friends or rivals than the actual intended romantic couple. (And don't get me started on the debates over romance stories with multiple potential love interests...)
So add in how video games place the audience as part of the romance... Yeah, the challenge gets even harder.
Like you said, it's highly subjective. A lot of games that feature romance, either as the focal point or a sub-mechanic, are written with a "blank" protagonist in mind that players can customize. That means we typically look for the romance option that appeals to us, which... Don't always exist. I've played plenty of games where I had no interest in any of the romance options. I've also played games where I was more interested in a character who was NOT dateable.
Then if a game has a fully fleshed-out protagonist, the romance can be written like part of a story we're reading, but then it's still subject to the same issues with other mediums. At the same time, some players still can't fully separate themselves from the player character though, so fleshing them out and adding romance can create some mental dissonance. Or just lead to having two chances to dislike a character rather than one.
My overall takeaway: romance is just weirdly hard to write well, and video games add another layer of difficulty to it thanks to the immersion aspect.
I’m currently replaying The Outer Worlds and I really like how it handles romance: Not with the player in the role of romancer, but as matchmaker instead. There’s a really sweet companion quest where you help one of your allies meet and court someone. There are no direct romances for the player character but this is a well-written and touching twist.
I'm not totally sure that it's possible for media to be romantic. Falling in love is a fundamentally different experience from watching someone else fall in love, and I don't see how you can capture that experience without somehow getting the viewer/player to fall in love with a fictional character — a character you cannot speak to, laugh with, touch, smell.... How do you fall in love with someone you cannot meaningfully interact with?
Of course, you can develop a crush on someone who barely knows you exist (we've all been there). I think a lot of games, books, movies, music, etc., can simulate the experience of developing a crush on someone — but they ultimately feel shallow and unsatisfying because that is the nature of crushes.
I have found that I enjoy romance media way more if I accept that it's just not going to feel romantic to me. If I treat romantic plots more like I'm watching two of my friends fall in love and I'm really happy for them, I drop any expectation of feeling romantic myself and I can enjoy it a whole lot more.
I don't think romance media is meant to give you the actual experience of falling in love, it's meant to be aspirational or nostalgic. "This is what I hope falling in love is like" or "this reminds me of the first time I fell in love". If you feel "I am genuinely falling in love with this character," that would actually probably be fairly maladaptive and maybe even something to take up with a therapist.
That's part of why shallow and underdeveloped romances are frustrating. Do you remember that time when, aside from talking about a task that you were both working on, you barely said anything to them despite spending a bunch of time in the same room, and then when the task was over you were both in love with each other despite barely knowing anything about each other? I certainly don't! Do you want romances in your life to be like that? Me neither! I want them to joke with each other, get to know each other, have things in common and reasons to care about each other, because that's what I remember and that's what I want in my own relationships.
Yeah, I don't think most romantic media is meant to give you the experience of romance, either — and when it does try to do that, I think it is much more likely to fall flat in the way that you describe. If one of the characters is meant to be a stand-in for the viewer so that they can feel immersed in the romantic feelings themselves, then the couple can't really interact in a natural way and develop chemistry. The stand-in character will always be stiff and vacant because if they show too much personality, odds are most viewers/players will stop relating to them.
I think the genre really only works when it's a story about two characters who are not you and are not trying to be you. Some of the most effective moments in fiction, in my opinion, arise from characters exhibiting the full force of their own distinct personalities and synergizing just right together.
If someone wants to actually experience (not just observe) romance through media, I think they should probably stop looking for it in complex storytelling media like novels and dating sims, and instead look for it in moment-capturing media, like music and poetry.
I strongly disagree with him about Dream Daddy. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think his suggestion for it (basically making the main character less of a loser) would have ruined it.
I think his mistake was going into it like it's a romance simulator where the main character is your avatar, but that's not really what it is. It would better be described as an interactive novel, more along the lines of something like Disco Elysium.
It's really a game about guiding a lonely single parent out of a depressive funk and helping him start living again — not just for his daughter, but for himself. I think Dream Daddy would have fallen pretty flat if the main character were just some suave dude who's already winning at life. The main character arc is such a huge part of what makes the writing so compelling.
Agreed, the main character being a bit of a schlub in Dream Daddy hit perfectly for me. For one, I was a college student when it came out, and that made the ways in which the MC was "a loser" weren't all that different from my day-to-day life. But also, there's something endearing about the MC being a little bit of a lazy fuckup in certain ways but still getting all these hot, interesting dads as friends and romantic interests. It's much closer to wish-fulfillment for me, myself a lazy fuckup in many ways, than having a stupidly suave successful MC would have been. But also I don't really like most romance simulator-type visual novels with "blank slate" protagonists, so that's probably contributing here. It also helps that Dream Daddy largely avoids my biggest pet peeves with this genre. I suspect the fact that Dream Daddy had reach beyond romance visual novel aficionados plays a role, since it has a different target audience imo.
Looking at the model cards over at backyard.ai is pretty indicative of where people's minds are at, that's for sure!
I skipped around the video. There are a LOT of things that make this all so difficult, and so few examples of people that do them right. When they are, they can be such a personal, vulnerable thing as the video mentions - and it's difficult to get that to resonate across gaming audiences.
One of my favorite little love stories is in Fire Emblem 7, where there are three characters - Rebecca, Wil, and Dart. Rebecca and Dart are siblings, and Wil grew up best friends with Dart and Rebecca. But Dart has amnesia after being left for dead, and doesn't remember either. You have five support conversations to perform between characters as they spend turns next to each other in combat, and they max out at an A rank after three... But the three characters will only recognize each other in their A rank conversations. So by the end of the game at best two of them will rekindle their sibling, friendship, or romantic love for each other; one will never quite get to spend enough time with the others by the end of the war to learn the truth. Or, all three can continue on their separate ways with someone else. If Wil and Rebecca end up together, it's because Wil steps up and promises to never leave her vulnerable again - even though Dart is really there. It's this tragic little knife twist within the mechanics, and it's a great reward for playing the game a lot and caring about these little bit characters. I adore it.
BUT, this all gets slotted into a tertiary mechanic to the main game, is a side optional content that isn't the main focus so it isn't that crazy of an impact, and well, it has to be fairly metaphorical... Why couldn't the third wheel here just spend some extra turns with each other while you're grinding at the arena? Who knows! And this is a really delicate, specific balance too. Take the same mechanics in Fire Emblem Awakening, where they made matchmaking via supports an enormous part of the story. As such they made it so EVERY male-female pairing can have an unlimited number of A rank supports with each other character, and then if you want to marry them off they get a single S rank with one other. But that means that they had to force conversation between literally every M/F pair, with no regards to whether there's any good reason for them to talk, and (whether it's the writing or the translation) the supports are mostly these really hackneyed anime character tropes getting mashed into each other. Then you get the optional S conversation where they suddenly want to get hitched, even though every A rank had to sound platonic. The game sold like hotcakes! So the next game, Fates, was written pretty similarly awful.
It's really easy to fuck this all up. And as the main focus, it's especially difficult to keep a mechanic over some number of hours - especially when the span of an actual relationship simmers down after two people are together. To obfuscate the natural feeling of a relationship developing and attach mechanics to it, when such a thing often happens at its own pace or by accident, is also hard to nail as a primary gameplay element. It's no wonder to me that a lot of visual novels with heavy romance/h focus have some kind of fantasy, sci-fi, mystery, horror, etc hook to them: you stick it in the middle of a nice plot and have the romance and plot pace each other, dangling the carrot til the end. And that's by doing the stereotypical reward of a kiss at the end of most media, or sex in an h-game; if not, you have to write the dialogue dynamically around people maybe loving each other. Who has the budget for that?