Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Modern romance is tough. There’s the wild west of dating apps, the obscure rules of “situationships” and, sometimes, the sad realisation that the seemingly perfect guy is actually a vacuum cleaner. Perhaps the name Henry “Hoove” Hoover should have been a clue. This is the surreal set-up of Date Everything, the latest addition to one of gaming’s most eccentric and misunderstood genres: the dating simulator.The game was inspired by a simple question that you’ve probably never asked yourself: out of all the inanimate objects in your home, which one would you date? In Date Everything, your character is given a pair of “Dateviator” sunglasses that transform furniture and appliances into personified characters with loud outfits and even louder personalities. The microwave is delusional. The fireplace is a hot mess of toxic masculinity. The toilet fancies himself a rapper. These are some of the 100 dateable characters crowding your home, which make for silly and saucy — but never lewd — fun.It’s far from the first time a dating sim has had such an unusual premise. If household objects aren’t your type, there are games in which you date cats (Purrfect Date), monsters (Monster Prom), pigeons (Hatoful Boyfriend), weapons (Boyfriend Dungeon), plants (Take Me or Leaf Me) and dinosaurs (Jurassic Heart). While these might sound like exercises in fluffy surrealism, dating sims have actually garnered a loyal fan base because they foreground character, writing and building relationships over violence and spectacle. Take Tusks, for example, a game about dating fantasy orcs, which has a poignant underlying message about learning to see the depth in creatures that most people judge to be monsters.The genre originated in Japan in the mid-1980s and quickly developed a formula: you play a shy, single adolescent at high school surrounded by a cast of possible paramours, and have a fixed amount of time to pick a partner and convince them to be with you. The characters were usually familiar stereotypes: sparkly eyed cheerleader, brooding dude with troubled past, library-bound intellectual with frizzy hair. Pick one, pursue their romantic story until the end, and then start the game again. Many people with long-term partners wonder what could have been if they had settled down with somebody else. Part of the thrill of these games is that you can find out.Last year, the formula was given a major glow-up in the form of Love and Deepspace by Infinity Nikki developer PaperGames, which updated the 2D manga-style portraits of traditional dating sims into a lushly rendered futuristic 3D world. Since then, it has amassed 50mn players and $400mn in global revenue.The strict conventions of dating sims also make the genre ripe for subversion. This can be comedic, such as the forthcoming Building Relationships, in which you play a house that goes on dates with windmills, tents and flirtatious bachelor pads. Other games splice in horror tropes, including genre classic Doki Doki Literature Club!, and You and Me and Her, in which a scorned lover breaks the fourth wall, lashing out by deleting your save files and preventing you from quitting the game. The genre has also provided fuel for cheap marketing, in the case of KFC’s I Love You, Colonel Sanders! A Finger Lickin’ Good Dating Simulator, which turns the chicken purveyor into a hunky young chef. It received tepid reviews.There have been problems with the genre. Turning the alluring unpredictability of romance into a set of gameplay mechanics is obviously reductive. Winning the heart of a dating sim character often involves simply selecting whatever dialogue options you think they most want to hear. Try this on a real-life date and it would be seen as borderline sociopathic. Then there’s a sub-genre of dating sims that veer into explicit sexual territory, some of them featuring hyper-sexualised female characters who are little more than animated sex dolls.But in large part the genre has moved on since those early days. Dating sims have become more emotionally complex and thematically adventurous. They create a space for diverse narratives, such as the exploration of South Asian culture in Thirsty Suitors, in which the heroine Jala encounters a series of scorned exes, or the wholesome LGBT+ storytelling of Dream Daddy, in which you play a single father who moves into a new neighbourhood and explores the local gay dad dating scene.Perhaps because of their perceived femininity, dating sims have long been stigmatised among male gamers — much like romance novels in literary circles. Today, however, the genre’s rising popularity is evident in the fact that you can choose and date romantic partners in some of the biggest role-playing games, from Mass Effect and Dragon Age to Baldur’s Gate 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. The industry is realising that interactive storytelling can be used for compelling romantic fantasies as well as power fantasies. Today’s games are striving to tell more mature stories of human experience, and developers are starting to appreciate that there is nothing more human than matters of the heart.
