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just some guy, age 23
-yuri is life
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just a passing thru kamen neko...

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iiotenki
@iiotenki

If you're wondering why I haven't had anything to say about the household object dating sim thing or whatever from the English Nintendo Direct that people were capital d Discoursing about earlier, it's mostly because: 1. I'm kinda discoursed out from doing that whole rodeo for like five years straight on Twitter every time an April Fool's came around and 2. compared to a lot of that stuff that just tended to take the piss out of a genre the devs didn't really understand, that game doesn't strike me as being that egregious. I have no desire to play it whatsoever, but at least I don't feel like it's making fun of me for being a Tokimeki Memorial liker, y'know? And it really is unfortunate timing that thing had to get showcased at basically the same time as Konami dropped that particular bomb. Those devs couldn't have known their game would be in that particular line of fire and I think it's unfair to treat it as some weird zero sum game that that game is coming out while that Tokimemo redux may or may not remain in Japan.

The main thing I would say at this point, and I've said it before on there, is just that I think a lot of western devs that try to dabble in that genre tend to have a bad habit of pursuing overly twee premises. Part of that is probably just a consequence of how much these western games tend to align with the whole "cozy games" movement, which I have my own fair share of mixed feelings about as a whole, but I think the easy thing to miss about dating sims if you don't sit down and play the old Japanese stuff and study that history insofar as you can is that the best ones with the most lasting impact have tended to be the most narratively and conversationally sincere games. Even the ones set in fantastical settings typically succeed most when they focus on the fundamentals of characterization and using those mechanics and how players interact with them to portray different kinds of relationships.

Are old school Japanese dating sims sometimes a little starry eyed and nostalgic or idealistic? Sure, these are games that were often made by developers reflecting on younger periods of their lives. But the games with contrived premises or overly gimmicky relationships tend to fizzle out because they're so focused on being attention grabbing at a surface level that there's little else to latch onto once you're in the thick of things, no real substance to speak of mechanically or narratively.

And I think most crucially, a lot of classic dating sims, the ones with die hard followings still today, don't align cleanly with that wholesome or cozy games movement. The best dating sims usually strive to be more than just comfort food, they're outright cathartic. It's why clearing your first Shiori run in Tokimeki Memorial still feels so monumental today on one end of the historical spectrum and it's why a lot of a lot of Amagami ends are such heartfelt tear-jerkers on the other end. People don't play these games purely to be indulged; there can be a real rawness and humanity to the stories they tell and even the way the mechanics tell them along the way.

If you wanna know why I don't cover the sort of western stuff that tends to populate things like Directs and Sony State of Plays, that's the reason. Because for all their differences with the historical Japanese games some of them might think they're building upon, in many ways, they resemble more the scant few new releases we see here today in the genre: skin deep and deferential to its player base and their perceived needs to a fault. And it'll frankly take far more than a single localized Tokimeki Memorial port to fix that. For my part, I'm too busy still studying this rich genre and drawing inspiration from it in my own work even seven years later to fuss all that much about what some game or other is doing that'll blow over before long anyway. :eggbug-relieved:

(And if you're a developer interested in making such a game for yourself and want to talk to someone who actually knows his history when it comes to Japanese dating sim, I'm open to consult for your game! Just hit me up on the contact form linked in the first pinned post on my profile and let's talk. :eggbug-wink:)


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in reply to @iiotenki's post:

a bad habit of pursuing overly twee premises

Real, so many games focusing on being comfy is incredibly tiring and most of the time completely insincere 💀...
It's a kind of emotional ironic detachment, but with a 'uwu~' instead of 'heh.'.