Thank you so much for your post! It’s so nice to hear from gamers who are ALSO romance novel readers!! :)

I agree that it is very difficult to find romance games in the US – it’s a successful industry in Japan (at least.) I felt that Shenmue did an exceptionally good job of making me feel invested in the people and the Legend of Zelda games usually do, too. Although, those relationships weren’t so much about romance… which is exactly your point. :)

I would like to know what you think of the Harvest Moon games! They’re resource management style games… and I know that can be a very polarizing gameplay mechanic (in the LOOOOOOOVE it or HAAAAATE it kind of way), but they do have some romance in them.

While I was playing Dragon Age, I was trying to build any kind of relationship with anybody… I admit it, I was shamelessly all over everyone in that game. ;) I was just glad to have options, though.

I think that the point you bring up about the differences between men and women writing romance is very, very interesting. I’ll definitely have to check out that blog! And would love to hear of any other info you have! Stuff like this fascinates me. What makes something entertaining to one person or group of people and not to another?

Thanks for the support!

-Mari

Thanks to my mom, who loves romance novels, I’ve been reading them since the 7th grade. (I’m now 28. Got great scores on my verbal SATs, though!) And thanks to my dad, who loves video games, some of my earliest memories are of that dang dog from Duck Hunt, laughing at my terrible hand eye coordination. (I’m now a software engineer. Got cut from all sorts of sports teams. Go figure.)

Anyway, as you point out in your blog, these two entertainment spaces seldom, if ever, overlap. And even when they do, like in Bioware’s Dragon Age, the stories are written by men (maybe for men). This is a problem, since I believe men and women look for different things in their romantic fiction. One of my favorite authors, Lois McMaster Bujold (who has her own well written thoughts on the difficulties of combining the romance and fantasy/sci fi genres) points out in her blog that romances written by men tend to end tragically, with the man free to love again, while romances written by women, for women, always end with the woman and man building a future world together.

I am deeply a partisan of the second, happy ending. :) I believe that romance novels are wonderful because the ending is certain, and as a result, the reader can relax into the intricacies of the plot and enjoy a deep trusting vicarious identification with the heroine. Video games are wonderful because they are all about exploration and deep identification–be that of situations, emotions, or moral dilemmas. I imagine that a video game that combined the two would be deeply immersive, and amazingly gratifying to play.

Unfortunately, there are no video games like this today. As Alistair lay dying at my feet at the end of Bioware’s Dragon Age–punishment, no doubt, for the fact that I simply *could* not allow him to sleep with that witch/skank Morrigan–I thought: “Dang. I’m pretty sure Jayne Ann Krentz could have come up with an ending for this story that would not have required a box and a half of tissues and a therapy to get over the guilt-trip. We need some romantic interactive fiction written by women, for women.”

And here you are! I will go home and download Tiger Eye immediately. :)

This post was mentioned on Twitter by mcvane: “Unfounded Vilification of Hobbyists” (at @PassionGames blog) http://bit.ly/b56bL5 (re: gamers and romance readers)…