Visual novels, as soon as a distinct segment with an extended historical past earlier than the final decade, have develop into a preferred selection amongst gamers over the course of the 2010s and 2020s. It’s a story model that covers all types of recreation genres inside an interactive, dialogue-driven story — from sci-fi, journey, and horror, all the way in which to romance.
That range is very mirrored within the romance style of visible novels, which has a lot of video games that embody queer illustration — that means that gamers are free to pursue a variety of various characters in a romantic sense in video games like Dungeon Boyfriend, First Bite, and Our Life: Our Beginning and Always.
While visible novels alone aren’t the one type of recreation the place gamers can discover queer romance tales, they do appear to be extra plentiful within the visible novel house. Steam alone has 802 visible novels which are tagged as LGBT whereas Itch.io, a web based market that hosts indie video games, has 1,289 LGBT visible novels (as of December 7, 2022).
Stories like this could require further care from builders. They can current distinctive necessities for writers seeking to create visible novel storylines and characters — particularly when taking up the duty of making tales that characterize the LGBT+ group. From conversations with a handful of writers, it shortly turned clear that there’s a mix of specific components that come together with writing queer characters and the everyday writing struggles that writers face on the every day.
On scope and participant company
There was a variety of matters that got here up in the course of the discussions we had with creators about engaged on queer romance tales, however the early growth course of stands out as an space to spotlight — particularly by way of scope and the completely different approaches to participant company that writers can take.
Boyfriend Dungeon – Launch Trailer
“I feel like one of the most important things to keep track of is, honestly, scope and timeline,” Aeene Schumann, who wears a number of hats on the First Bite Games workforce, tells Digital Trends. “Luckily, all 4 of us [the First Bite team] are seasoned writers, and the writing itself is one thing we’re all very used to. But it’s understanding when to chop again or the best way to hold your venture on a sure timeline so it really will get completed, that’s what all of us wanted to be on prime of throughout First Bite. “
For Kitfox Games, the studio behind final 12 months’s Boyfriend Dungeon, figuring out scope additionally performed an necessary position in how they selected to prioritize early on. “The development of Boyfriend Dungeon took much longer than we initially thought it would. That being said, I do think it saved us a LOT of time (years, potentially) that we decided very early on what the scope and impact of choices would be in the dates,” Tanya X. Short, director and designer at Kitfox Games, says. “I decided we would prioritize the feeling of emotional agency of the love interests, and humanize their struggles, rather than prioritize the player agency and their control.”
A bit reverse to Short and Kitfox Game’s strategy to participant company in Boyfriend Dungeon, Kris Wise and Souha Al-Samkari, each creators and writers for First Bite, shared that completely different decisions and routes a participant may take can affect their writing selections early on, even when story and character decisions might change in a while within the growth course of.
“It really depends on you and your process. For me, they [player choices and routes] are, because I tend to compose my stories around certain experiences I want to provide (wouldn’t it be cool if you had to do x, y, z) and then I angle them that way,” Al-Samkari tells Digital Trends.
“I personally tend to map out my choices in a very basic way when drafting. Just loosely figuring out what experiences we want to give the player more agency in,” Wise says. “But more often than not those choices will change form when I actually get into the meat of writing the story so I try not to get too attached to them.”
Writing queer characters and their romances
Within the LGBT+ group, there’s undoubtedly a variety of various identities represented. And on the subject of writing queer love pursuits in visible novels, curiosity arises about whether or not or not the creators stored something particularly in thoughts as they labored on the romanceable characters that may be discovered of their video games. That consists of making an allowance for how gamers themselves might establish and the way which may have an effect on the alternatives they make whereas taking part in.
The most necessary factor to remember is that we as queer persons are not a monolith.
And simply as with scope and participant company, there have been similarities and variations in how every creator approached writing each the characters and romance tales within the visible novels they work on. For Boyfriend Dungeon, Short discusses that every potential love curiosity had no less than two flags that the creators would set based mostly on a participant’s decisions that might be referenced sooner or later.
“The most basic and frequent check was whether the player had confirmed they wanted to be Platonic or Romantic (which was sometimes kept perhaps a bit too obscure), but for example, there’s one character that notices if you reject their offer of tea, and will then instead always offer you other beverages instead,” Short says.
For Short, the main focus when writing facilities extra round romanceable love pursuits. “Usually if I focused on the character, and what they were interested in. The gender/sexuality of the player didn’t need to matter so much, because in some ways they’re almost more of a supporting character, whereas the love interest is the protagonist, when it comes to their own life and decisions, you know?”
A key level that arose throughout these conversations was the strain that creators can really feel when creating queer characters. The online game trade as an entire has seen adjustments in LGBT+ illustration over the previous couple of years, however that doesn’t essentially imply that the strain is gone, particularly when a variety of that illustration can typically really feel like an afterthought. For Wise, that serves as a great reminder a few key factor to remember throughout their writing course of — which facilities round participant selection and viewing the participant character as extra of a clean slate.
“There’s a great deal of pressure when creating queer characters — especially where romance is involved — to provide good representation,” Wise tells Digital Trends. “The most important thing to keep in mind is that we as queer people are not a monolith, so although we might not be able to offer every queer person who plays something to fully relate to, they might be able to see a little part of themselves in the characters and their stories.”
“Ensuring the player’s choices matter and providing the payoff at the end, even if it’s in a small way, gives the player more satisfaction. Our player character in First Bite is kind of a blank slate in terms of motivation which is … they want to have some ‘fun’ with some vampires, so this particular instance of game writing isn’t necessarily that deep but it’s fun and horny and murderous, but also inherently queer at the core.”
Changes and challenges
The queer visible novel house, simply as every other a part of the gaming trade, is constantly altering — be that by way of challenges that creators face, the sorts of tales being informed, and the type of strain that Wise talked about. When it involves the strain round creating correctly represented queer characters, on a regular basis writing struggles nonetheless exist. “For me generally, my struggles are just regular writing struggles, which can be just finding the ability to push through mental blocks or life stuff and just writing the damn thing.” Al-Samkari says.
All you are able to do is attempt to current an genuine expertise, for the views you do present. That must be sufficient.
But along with your on a regular basis writing struggles, there additionally gave the impression to be consensus on approaching writing characters with authenticity throughout the board.
“The more diversity and inclusion you try to account for, the more you have to be wary of tokenism and stereotypes creeping in,” Short tells Digital Trends. “And the main solution to that is to always add at least two examples of every kind of character/marginalization, but then of course your cast gets huge very quickly. There are either infinite sexualities and genders, or uncountably finite amounts, so you really can’t provide all the kinds of representation. All you can do is try to present an authentic experience for the perspectives you do provide. That has to be enough.”
Short was certain to level out that creators must be conscious that they open themselves as much as extra intense scrutiny. “It can feel unfair to be held to higher standards than much bigger, less-sensitive stories,” Short says. “But really, the more you signal that you’re trying to do something, whether it’s queer or otherwise, the more people will then evaluate you for whether or not you successfully do that something.”
“And that’s fair, even if it’s not always kind.”