Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

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rainbowcascade
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Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#1 Post by rainbowcascade »

I was reading on this subject before and it always bothered me in the back of my mind when I read this part of Christine Love's interview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/01 ... in-a-bind/

“Sort of like dating sims or the Persona games’ social links, but with a much more honest portrayal,” Love wrote. “Really, dating sims are inherently about manipulating other people — pick the right dialogue choices based off what you think they expect, learn about their interests so you can give them perfectly tuned gifts, make decisions based off whether you’ll impress them or not — but like to pass it off as being about romance. Well, fuck that. You can still do that in Ladykiller in a Bind; we’re just not going to pretend that it’s anything other than manipulation. It’ll have consequences.”

And this other comment nailed it down pretty well on visual novels in general:
most of them might as well just say "you're choosing this girl's path/you're choosing the arsehole ending" as they're just so blatant in presenting the choice.
Like automatically the MC of these games is this social manipulator/seducer that takes the obvious path to get the girl/guy of his/her choice.

I want to write romance VNs/dating sims but I don't want to write the romance interests as trophies to win or have the MC do inherently manipulative things. But in this genre that doesn't seem avoidable. What do you guys think?

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#2 Post by SundownKid »

If you want to remove the "manipulation" aspect, then remove anything like social links, or points you score when you increase their relationship, or even "correct" choices when talking to them. Just make all the choices equally valid and resulting in different situations, and make it possible for the relationship to decrease or increase depending on the progress of the story. Basically, just make it a more organic, novel-like story and less like a video game.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#3 Post by rainbowcascade »

SundownKid wrote:If you want to remove the "manipulation" aspect, then remove anything like social links, or points you score when you increase their relationship, or even "correct" choices when talking to them. Just make all the choices equally valid and resulting in different situations, and make it possible for the relationship to decrease or increase depending on the progress of the story. Basically, just make it a more organic, novel-like story and less like a video game.
Can you give an example of games like this? It's something I want to look into more and analyze for myself. There's gotta be some games like that with multiple romance interests but I can't think of any off the top of my head except possibly.... Katawa Shojo? In that game the main protagonist makes assumptions about the girl(s) he chases but they immediately call him out on his behavior, or if the player tries to take the sleazeball path, it ruins relationships. But still, Katawa Shojo still strikes me as a manipulation sim...

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#4 Post by Asceai »

They are manipulation games, but it's such a pointless designation because all games are about manipulation- manipulating the world, manipulating the actors in it. When I throw something in Thief I'm manipulating the guard to hear the noise and get out of my way so I can sneak past. When I choose to eat Senpai's bentou in generic-romance-VN-#13845 I'm manipulating her affection score with an aim towards getting on her route. It's all manipulation, just like the human interaction it's meant to simulate.
Video games are minor simulations, and in any simulation, once you learn the rules you can make decisions with a mind towards influencing the results. This is manipulation.

If you want to make a dating sim without manipulation you have to remove any causality between actions taken by the player and results. This results in something unplayable that nobody would like.

There are, on the other hand, romance VNs without manipulation. 'Koibito Doushide Surukoto Zenbu' and 'Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo' are two examples. They are free of manipulation as they are free of choices that change the result of romantic outcomes. Both games have one path and one winnable heroine. I'd also nominate 'Aster' and the NVL versions of RusK's two earlier games, where you choose the route / chapter at the start and that's the ending you get. Although isn't that itself manipulation? I think Cross Channel is also worth considering, since Sendback is explicitly manipulation, but it's still incredibly linear, despite appearances to the contrary. 'Oh, you want to send Miki back first? Good luck with that'

"Say no to manipulation / Say yes to kinetic novels!"

EDIT: If it'll make you feel better, I propose the Quantum Theory of VN Decision Points. It's a theory that removes the manipulation from VNs and by extension dating sims as well as explaining oddities like those titles where the girl you promised to marry when you were 6 turns out to be the heroine of whichever route you're on when you find out. Basically, the choices are not actually decisions made by you and acted out through the protagonist, but instead the act of collapsing the superposition of both outcomes, essentially narrowing down the world in which this particular run through the story took place in. Hence choices are allowed to change both events in the future and events in the past. It then comes down to _you_ manipulating the world - the protagonist is innocent =P

I actually think 'Meguri, Hitohira' is a blatantly explicit case of accepting the Quantum Theory of VN Decision Points. This is because the choices you pick from are actually the full text of the next several clicks of narration that would appear if you chose that choice. So sometimes you're actually choosing what characters other than the protagonist do, things like that.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#5 Post by kitsubasa »

Well, the thing about romance games of any nature is that they're systematising love. Systems, at their most basic, are defined responses to actions and scenarios. For example, you push a button (action) and it makes a sound (defined response). Games are systems designed to create interesting experiences, often mimicking other real-world actions. In shooters, the system allows you to fire a gun at an enemy (action) which will injure them (defined response).

So, taking this logic and applying it to romance... games can only ever create love within a system, which means a game version of love will always involve player action with a defined response. With enough practice and understanding of the love interests in a game, you can predict the response they will have to your actions. For example; a character likes chocolate, you give her chocolate, she gains more points which represent affection within the game's system. This is like the enemy being shot in a shooter game-- you've learnt how the system works and you know what action to take in it to achieve the win state you desire.

Because romance can only ever be a system, players engaging with it must be able to manipulate it to win. Just like you gain skill lining up your gun on an enemy in a shooter, you gain skill predicting which actions will affect which love interests the most. If you can't do this, then the game is either being randomised in some way (ie. preventing skill from being applied to it-- a scenario which players will consider frustrating in many cases) or the creator is intentionally making the romances jump around in an unpredictable fashion (ie. preventing their system from being learned-- another frustrating scenario).

To make a game about love you have to allow manipulation, or you're preventing players from learning your system. Even attempts to prevent players from doing so will just teach them to expect the unexpected-- you can only throw so many curveballs before even the appropriate reaction to them is learned and manipulatable.

In other words... there is no way to make a romance game with no manipulation, games are always systematised, systems are always manipulatable. It's not about writing the characters so they're not clearly telegraphed or anything like that, however your framework hangs off the system, there will always be one beneath it. So-- bearing that in mind, the real question is: what can you do to avoid a painfully transparent system? Well, the two ways that spring to my mind are having an incredibly complex system, or complex characters. One prevents mechanics from being manipulated without extreme experience, the second prevents characters from being predicted too easily on early runs of the game.

Also, just remember. Manipulation is inherent in games. It's what allows them to be played fairly. When we play games, we're manipulating them just by being players! While romance games are sort of problematic for this fact, it's a fact that will always stand-- at least until we have actual AI running the love interests. Just know your system and know what player actions within it could mean, and you should be able to avoid major pitfalls.
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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#6 Post by ArachneJericho »

I think there are two kinds of manipulation being spoken of here.

One is the manipulation inherent in games in general (unless we're talking kinetic novels), where you manipulate the system to get to specific outcomes.

The other is the crass manipulation of relationships in many VNs. A different beast entirely. Basically this is the difference between "Oooh, I'll make sure to take all the chemistry classes so that Attractive Person #3 will like me!" and "As a character, I am making a significant choice that will have consequences beyond Attractive Person #3 liking me."

What Christine Love seems to be saying is that in a lot of Visual Novels, your manipulations have no consequences beyond making such-and-such person more attracted to you. And that can lead to a shallow storytelling experience. And deconstructing that involves taking such manipulation to its logical conclusion in real life terms---hence, the new VN that Love is creating centered around that.

Consequences make stories deeper. They help make people care about the characters. They also make every significant choice an exercise in trepidation, which draws people in.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#7 Post by rainbowcascade »

Asceai wrote:They are manipulation games, but it's such a pointless designation because all games are about manipulation- manipulating the world, manipulating the actors in it. When I throw something in Thief I'm manipulating the guard to hear the noise and get out of my way so I can sneak past. When I choose to eat Senpai's bentou in generic-romance-VN-#13845 I'm manipulating her affection score with an aim towards getting on her route. It's all manipulation, just like the human interaction it's meant to simulate.
Video games are minor simulations, and in any simulation, once you learn the rules you can make decisions with a mind towards influencing the results. This is manipulation.
That's about manipulating objects, physics, weapons, skills, strategy. We're talking about manipulating people. Fictional people of course, but I don't like the idea of designing characters as kindness vending machines. You do some kind things for this person and they pop out sex, returned affections, etc.

This really interesting game called Kindness Coins ( http://www.freeindiegam.es/2013/04/kind ... hael-real/ )rebels against that premise.
There are, on the other hand, romance VNs without manipulation. 'Koibito Doushide Surukoto Zenbu' and 'Kitto, Sumiwataru Asairo yori mo' are two examples. They are free of manipulation as they are free of choices that change the result of romantic outcomes. Both games have one path and one winnable heroine. I'd also nominate 'Aster' and the NVL versions of RusK's two earlier games, where you choose the route / chapter at the start and that's the ending you get. Although isn't that itself manipulation? I think Cross Channel is also worth considering, since Sendback is explicitly manipulation, but it's still incredibly linear, despite appearances to the contrary. 'Oh, you want to send Miki back first? Good luck with that'
It seems like you can only be manipulation free if it's designed for a one true love type of game. I feel like a polygamy type of dating game would also be non manipulative. It'd be more balancing/caring for your varied lovers' feelings.
EDIT: If it'll make you feel better, I propose the Quantum Theory of VN Decision Points. It's a theory that removes the manipulation from VNs and by extension dating sims as well as explaining oddities like those titles where the girl you promised to marry when you were 6 turns out to be the heroine of whichever route you're on when you find out. Basically, the choices are not actually decisions made by you and acted out through the protagonist, but instead the act of collapsing the superposition of both outcomes, essentially narrowing down the world in which this particular run through the story took place in. Hence choices are allowed to change both events in the future and events in the past. It then comes down to _you_ manipulating the world - the protagonist is innocent =P

I actually think 'Meguri, Hitohira' is a blatantly explicit case of accepting the Quantum Theory of VN Decision Points. This is because the choices you pick from are actually the full text of the next several clicks of narration that would appear if you chose that choice. So sometimes you're actually choosing what characters other than the protagonist do, things like that.
Hmmmm.... interesting....

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#8 Post by Asceai »

rainbowcascade wrote:I feel like a polygamy type of dating game would also be non manipulative. It'd be more balancing/caring for your varied lovers' feelings.
Nope. I mean, in theory, yes, but in practice it's more a matter of getting the threshold right to score the maximum number of H scenes =P (Well, that's what it is in the macro. In the micro it's a lot of smaller manipulations like in a typical VN/dating sim, but spread across multiple characters and with a great deal more difficulty inherent, but you know people are going to be minmaxing it)

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#9 Post by rainbowcascade »

ArachneJericho wrote: I think there are two kinds of manipulation being spoken of here.

One is the manipulation inherent in games in general (unless we're talking kinetic novels), where you manipulate the system to get to specific outcomes.

The other is the crass manipulation of relationships in many VNs. A different beast entirely. Basically this is the difference between "Oooh, I'll make sure to take all the chemistry classes so that Attractive Person #3 will like me!" and "As a character, I am making a significant choice that will have consequences beyond Attractive Person #3 liking me."

What Christine Love seems to be saying is that in a lot of Visual Novels, your manipulations have no consequences beyond making such-and-such person more attracted to you. And that can lead to a shallow storytelling experience. And deconstructing that involves taking such manipulation to its logical conclusion in real life terms---hence, the new VN that Love is creating centered around that.

Consequences make stories deeper. They help make people care about the characters. They also make every significant choice an exercise in trepidation, which draws people in.
I'm trying to figure out writing multiple romance paths without making the MC sleazy or the romance interests prizes to be conquered. Your analysis seems closer to what I'm trying to figure out. I just need a solid example of a game that accomplishes this.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#10 Post by Asceai »

Well, how about any VN where the choices that matter for the purposes of route determination are only dubiously tied to the heroines? Fate/stay Night for instance

You still go after affection points, but it's to avoid getting killed, which is a far nobler purpose, I think =P

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#11 Post by ArachneJericho »

rainbowcascade wrote: I'm trying to figure out writing multiple romance paths without making the MC sleazy or the romance interests prizes to be conquered. Your analysis seems closer to what I'm trying to figure out. I just need a solid example of a game that accomplishes this.
While I don't like this title for other reasons, Hanako Games' The Royal Trap fulfilled this for me as a commercial title. I think one of the first choices, choosing to put on a necklace or not, is agonizing given the story context around it.

In fact, let's break down the necklace choice and what led up to it behind a spoiler tag.
First off, you are basically Oscar's female companion in Renaissance-like times, in the valet sense: politically aware (which affects the choices you're given) and handy with daggers in action situations. There is a significant problem that Oscar faces: what happens to him if he can't find a bride of suitable rank. You are not suited to him, because should he even deign to marry you given your position in the social order, he would be kicked out of his comfy noble position into the streets, as will you, and surviving will become a serious issue.

But he loves you. And there's the backstory between the two of you, well-written by the way so it isn't boring to go through, which establishes his character in a show manner.

In the present, he tells you to go to the room to fetch a message from a container, for you to read. You can choose to do so, and when you read it, you find his love confession, and a necklace. He knows that it's quite probably that either you don't reciprocate or you feel it's not proper or dangerous, but if you could wear the necklace, he'd know that things were still ok between the two of you.

But see, you two happen to be at a sort of convention of princes vying for the hand of a very politically important princess. If you wear the necklace, it's an obvious token from a lover. And since you are Oscar's companion, that's probably going to hurt his chances of getting the Princess's hand.

What do you do? Do you wear the necklace and possibly set into motion a subtle chain of events that will result in dying in the streets? Or do you not wear the necklace, and break kind Oscar's heart?

And then things get worse.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#12 Post by Mad Harlequin »

This is essentially my biggest problem with the "dating sim" mechanic/concept/whatever. You can sweet-talk your way into the arms of any given love interest if you say the right things. I'm not sure if this can really be avoided in any VN that includes relationships as a feature, because as others have said, we're turning relationships into stats to be managed. But what we can do is make the interaction between player and character less predictable, and make it so that it's not a trophy to be obtained. The characters should be able to stand on their own without player-character romance as well.
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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#13 Post by DesertSkald »

Kitsubasa beat me to it: it sounds like what you're worried about is how blatant/subtle the manipulation is. Manipulation is not avoidable nor inherently bad. If there isn't a basic level of manipulation it's frustrating to the player because it's unclear how to get what they want.
rainbowcascade wrote:I'm trying to figure out writing multiple romance paths without making the MC sleazy or the romance interests prizes to be conquered. Your analysis seems closer to what I'm trying to figure out. I just need a solid example of a game that accomplishes this.
In lieu of a game example I will offer advice: trophies are objects, lovers are people. If you want the romanceables to not be trophies, write them and use game mechanics that treat them like people and not achievable CG #6. The examples I'm thinking up all revolve around giving the romanceables agency in the relationship: they have the ability to/state interest in ending or furthering the relationship based on player interactions. Um... relationships are a team effort and the romanceables are people not sex dolls? It really comes back to treating them like people.
rainbowcascade wrote:It seems like you can only be manipulation free if it's designed for a one true love type of game. I feel like a polygamy type of dating game would also be non manipulative. It'd be more balancing/caring for your varied lovers' feelings
I am curious: how would an OTL game (or poly game, since that was brought up too) not have manipulation? The 'x kindness pts = hentai scene 3' is there regardless of the number of romanceables in game. =?

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#14 Post by Shinoki »

Well, dating sims are basically like manipulation, and most games are manipulation. If the problem is like how sweet-talking the girl and blah can get you an ecchi scene.... well, then can't you just add a scene where sweet-talking doesn't work? Or something like....
Depending on all the past choices that you've made, how well you've made them, how your relationship is.... sweet-talking can work or can't work... and if you try to sweet-talk the character, then the character will slap you and get mad. Like, if you're still kind of not so close, if you try to sweet-talk her, the chara won't take it nicely, but if you're close, then she might depending on the type of character she is.
Or just make harder choices?
I don't really do dating sim stuff, so I can't say too much.

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Re: Romance VNs/Dating Sims are dubious manipulation games?

#15 Post by Mad Harlequin »

It doesn't change the fact that the player is in the role of a manipulator (meaning that he or she knows just what to say to achieve X).
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