It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single hero in possession of a pirate ship (or a magical artifact, or a plasma gun) must be in want of a heroine.
Examples of love in videogames abound, from Harvest Moon's set of collectable wives to Mario's Sisyphean quest for the elusive Princess Peach. And certainly, games feature more sex now in the HD era than ever before, from the tasteful applications (the one-night stand in Mass Effect) to the simply titillating (Dante Inferno's exquisitely rendered corpse-boobies).
But genuine, believable romance -- an intimacy between two characters that can be passionate or pragmatic; long-simmering or sexually explosive -- remains elusive in all but a select few titles. And for good reason: Writing love stories is hard.
"Conveying romance [in games] requires much more nuance than more primal emotions, like anger or fear," explains Amy Hennig, creative director of Naughty Dog's Uncharted franchise. "A subtle thing like love or romance is very unforgiving... and if you get it wrong, it's like the Uncanny Valley of emotional authenticity."
But despite the risks, a juicy love story keeps players engaged, and a good romance can be its own reward. "If you care about the characters," Hennig adds, "I think you're motivated to continue playing, just to enjoy their company."
Romancing the Pixel
Videogames have featured love stories almost since their conception -- and we're not just talking about that hapless plumber chasing after his hard-to-get royal, either.
In particular, adventure games, with their emphasis on rich characters and interactive dialogue, provided an ideal platform for the earliest digital romances. A handful of titles -- most notably, Infocom's Plundered Hearts -- put romance on center stage. Others gave it a secondary, yet still important, role; the Monkey Island series, for example, features a drawn-out, screwball love story between protagonist Guybrush Threepwood and his beloved Elaine Marley.
Romance remained far from ubiquitous in early games, but it appeared in computer games with relative frequency, at least compared to arcade or console titles. But as flashier graphics evolved and more visual genres like first-person shooters elbowed aside text-heavy adventure games, story took a temporary backseat to gameplay. With it, romance lost what little relevance it had had in the world of game narrative. A properly developed romance required a level of character development and narrative detail that had become out-of-place in a world of Doom clones.
It didn't help, either, that the late '80s and early '90s saw a shift in the typical gamer's age. Previously, due to the knowledge required to operate PC hardware, computer games had generally attracted an adult audience. But as consoles succeeded PCs as the gaming platform of choice, the average age of gamers dropped precipitously, and more mature narratives -- such as love stories -- lost their target audience.
Even beyond that, however, romance has always had trouble meshing with some videogame archetypes; namely, that of the lone protagonist who solves riddles or fulfills quests in a world that is only occasionally, if ever, punctuated by dialogue. Myst, for example, had little room for a love story.
"These stories are essentially plot-driven rather than character-driven, because there are no other characters around for the hero to relate to," says Hennig. "You could never make a film like that. Hell, even Tom Hanks had a volleyball to talk to in Cast Away."
This prevalence of solo, silent protagonists in early games hints at a deeper challenge faced by developers of the time: that of improved technology that still fell too short. To depict romance in text-based games was simply a matter of choosing the right words. But graphics eventually became so essential to game design that players started expecting games to tell stories primarily through their visuals, rather than text. Yet the hardware still wasn't strong enough to tell a good love story visually. The Commodore 64 may have been a graphical powerhouse, but its innards couldn't yet render two characters kissing, embracing, or even engaging in a one-on-one chat in anything but the most abstract manner.
Bridging the Uncanny Valley
While technology has vastly improved since the 1980s, creating love stories for videogames remains a technically daunting task, says David Gaider, BioWare senior writer and lead writer for the Dragon Age franchise. And it still comes back to visuals: Dialogue and narrative may move a romance forward, but if a game's graphics aren't up to par, then the player won't even give its story a chance.
"Novels create pictures in the readers' heads, but games have to display it all on the screen -- and we're not quite up to the level of approaching what a reader can imagine," he says. "We're getting closer, but ever since we moved to 3D models as the norm, we started having to deal with the Uncanny Valley."
The Uncanny Valley hypothesis suggests that people prefer realistic human avatars, but only up to a point. When the animated models become too lifelike, the viewer is disturbed, even repulsed -- and since we're adept at noticing even the slightest imperfections in digital representations of ourselves, the Uncanny Valley becomes an increasingly bigger challenge as the technology to render lifelike avatars improves.
Health Top Tips Nutrition Love Lifestyle Happiness Weight LossNowhere is the Uncanny Valley more obvious than in an animated display of affection. Kisses, caresses, and other embraces require intricate motor skills, fine-tuned gestures, and subtle facial motions -- all difficult to accurately represent with 3D models. "We try to avoid showing two characters actually kiss, because facial deformation technology just isn't sophisticated enough yet," says Hennig. "Two mannequins bumping into each other is generally awkward and creepy -- an express train to the Uncanny Valley."
Developers still try to surmount the Uncanny Valley, and today's next-gen design technology gives them a better shot than ever at success. For example, for Uncharted 2: Honor Among Thieves, Naughty Dog hired professional actors to wear motion-capture suits and act out several in-game scenes, using the results as a base on which to model the animation. But the tools are still evolving. "We have to be careful not to push the technology in ways where it's just not going to hold up to scrutiny," Hennig says. "If our facial rig couldn't support subtle emotion, then the failure of that animation would be off-putting."
The other option is to eschew the Uncanny Valley altogether by taking a more stylized approach to the game's visuals. Recent examples include the new cel-shaded Prince of Persia reboot, or Braid's cartoony 2D graphics.
I Did It All for the Love Score
Far trickier than the technical hurdles, however, is the task of actually writing a believable love story. "When you're talking romance, it's about appealing to the player personally, rather than simply on an aesthetic level," says Gaider. "But the kind of romance that a player will respond to is very subjective, and there's no way around that."
Romance in games usually falls into one of two categories. The first follows the traditional model put forth in books or film, in which the player-character falls for a static love interest. Sometimes, that character asks the player to go on quests to prove his love (a la Princess Peach); other times, he or she is an ally in a larger adventure. But either way, the player cannot choose the object of the protagonist's affection.
Some games instead offer players the choice of romantically pursuing one (or more) characters via optional conversations or quests, thus lowering or raising an "affection meter" or "love score." This generally results in a romantic cut-scene with that character, or some additional stat boosts. Harvest Moon famously used this mechanic, but it's been featured in everything from Final Fantasy VII to Sid Meier's Pirates! (both new and original vintage).
Both approaches have their pros and cons. "With a single character, you get to focus your resources, so you have a lot more leeway for quality scenes and plots," says Gaider. "But you're going to miss out on a lot of players," he adds, who may not emotionally connect to the predetermined romantic subplot.
Multiple potential partners, on the other hand, allow players to tailor their protagonist's love interest to their own tastes: the bad boy or the girl next door; the noble knight or the charming rogue. It also opens up the possibility of same-sex pairings, a still touchy subject that has been increasingly explored in newer games, like The Sims and Dragon Age: Origins. "All romances in our games, gay or straight, are completely optional and require active interest in order to occur," says Gaider. "A player is only going to experience the kind of content they want to."
The player's act of choosing a love interest inherently imbues that character with some of the player's own wants and desires, which inevitably gets him or her more emotionally involved. "It can lead to intimacy that goes beyond a scripted experience," says Gaider.
A Personal Connection
In the end, that intimacy is really what matters most, says Hennig -- not a game's graphics. Well-crafted animations and character models may strengthen an in-game romance, but only insofar as they convince the player to suspend disbelief. "Realism is not the ultimate goal," she says. "Believable emotion is."
And it's here where videogames have an advantage over traditional media. Unlike books and film, which present their audiences with a static, unchangeable storyline, games are inherently interactive experiences. Games pull players into a given situation and force them to solve puzzles, rather than letting them witness their resolution from the sidelines. No other media allows for such personal involvement. And it's that interactivity that should make games ideally suited for emotionally authentic love stories, ones that "speak" to the player personally.
And while it will take a little more experimentation and evolution to find the Holy Grail that perfectly balances story, visuals and interactivity, we'll easily know when we've gotten there, according to Gaider. "If you can get players to feel emotional about how a character is reacting to them, you've stepped beyond the area where a book can go," he says. "At that level, there's potential that we've only begun to tap."