We Need to Talk About Otome Games and Queerness

Pride season is officially over, but it’s not time to stop talking about weirdness.

Some games are amazingly gay. Baldur’s Gate 3, still image game very popular In 2024, three years after its release, “weirdest game ever” It is clear that queerness in games, beyond the purpose of inclusivity and representation, is also an economically advantageous aspect.

But many dating games, especially aimed at women, are keen to avoid that. Especially in otome games.

For those who don’t know, an otome game literally translates to “maiden game” and is a story-based video game where the primary demographic is female. To paraphrase a comment on Reddit, these are the soap operas of our generation. Many of them work as dating sims. Basically, it’s the same thing you’d get if you focused only on the romance subplot in games like: dragon age. Typically, you play as a female character, choose who you want to court based on your dialogue choices, and can form a romantic relationship with that character. In other words, otomes are the best part of your favorite video games.

straight femme mens in dark court

I recently played Voltage’s otome game, dark court, I was given a catalog of 13 potential love interests. I was happy and surprised to see one of the characters there, Dia. Dia is a figure with long pink hair, plump lips, and an overall decidedly feminine design compared to the other choices, which are decidedly male. My joy turned to disappointment when I learned that Dia was actually another man. There are no female love interests.

This is despite the fact that there are two characters: Shelly Invidia, the sister of one of the love interests, Roy Invidia, and Violet Muller, the squire of the main character, another love interest option, Fenn Laxua. absolutely I was attracted to to.

And it’s not like there aren’t interested fans. Many people are looking for routes with these two women. The vibe I get is that many players prefer Violet to Fenn, who is a Master who can actually romance her, and his route is often played just to find out more about her charms. However, even the character Fen feels queer-coded, as she is constantly cheating on almost everyone in the cast, regardless of gender. Unfortunately, otome games generally lag behind in terms of queer representation.

rose blood+ give me scraps

Would you like to go on a date, girl? rose blood+ It received some praise for including a female love interest…yet that number was only two out of a cast of approximately 32 people. And even those two weren’t always available. like dark courtmany of the male love options have distinctly feminine designs and even names, and it feels like a way to avoid strictly heteronormative romance without actually fully embracing queerness.

do mystic messenger Are you gay?

Cheritzs maiden mystic messenger It’s probably one of the most well-known examples of otome games struggling with queer representation.

Out of about 7 routes, there is one female route option, Jae Hee Kang, but her relationship with her is… ambiguous. In her main route, her feelings for the player character are relegated to subtext, as she claims that she is only looking for a friendship, not a romantic relationship, and when another character 707 comments that the two appear to be dating, he quickly corrects her. This was the only route that wasn’t overtly romantic, and after fans asked for a more overt romantic storyline with Jae Hee, they got…a scene where the MC kisses Jae Hee on the cheek, and a scene between the two of them. locked in the closethurray hurray. These were DLCs, not even the main routes.

The game’s attitude towards queerness is also reflected in its treatment of potentially queer characters. In the bad ending of Character V’s route, the player character may end up in a relationship with Rika, V’s ex-lover, which is decidedly more romantic than the one shown with the game’s standard female option, Jae-hee. The problem is that Rika is also the main villain of this story, with destructive obsessions and mental instability. So now we’re getting into the realm of depraved bisexuality and all the shitty implications of that trope. Also, this is bad endingso it’s not even desirable.

Cherits has 707, one of his main love interests, revealed to be pansexual.

However, we only learn about this in supplementary materials and not in the game itself. The only hints we get about this in-game are the occasional flirtatious jokes about other men, similar to the aforementioned Fenn.

The problem is that 707 is a very, very obnoxious guy who likes to joke about everything. Fen’s character description dark court In that respect, he doesn’t change too much, but he has the added problem of being very disturbed, which fits into the trope that all queers are disturbed. 707’s propensity for cross-dressing is also used primarily to increase his status over other men. His weirdness is a joke, used to make other guys uncomfortable about their sexuality and masculinity, rather than an actual aspect of his character.

And when games aren’t avoiding or demonizing queerness, this is doing it to mock it. One of the game’s classic gags is “Is Jumin Han gay?” Meme. This is a joke at the expense of another man’s lover, Jumin Han, who wonders if he, who has no interest in women, is gay and well. That’s the punchline of being gay.

Behind the scenes of otome games

Voltage Entertainment USA, the U.S. subsidiary of otome development company Voltage, helped the company advance in homosexual representation with the development of the app. Lovesick: Choose Romance, A variety of characters with different genders and sexual orientations appeared as love interests. But when it comes to the company’s actual treatment of LGBTQ people, the 21 contractors who worked on the book love struck had to go on strike Voltage is significantly underpaying while imposing difficult deadlines and initially refused to honor these demands until workers organized, calling for 21 days for better pay and workplace transparency.

Emma Kinema, leader of the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), part of the Communications Workers of America (CWA) effort, noted that all of the strikers were “either women, nonbinary, LGBTQ, or people of color.” That means they’ve been marginalized, and this proves that even the otome game industry can’t escape from many aspects. toxic video game culture. And who’s working behind the scenes has a huge impact on the content included in the game itself.

I understand that many of the issues are cultural. Otome games like this are produced in countries such as Japan and South Korea. Queerness is far more controversial in South Korea than in many Western countries. Still, like anything about queer representation, it’s worth discussing.

Like many works in the romance genre, otome games are targeted at women, but creators need to accept the fact that not all women want to date sexy men. only I want to have a relationship with an attractive man, but not all players who want to have a relationship with an attractive man are women. And these consumers deserve just as much respect as the players who requested and earned the romance routes of these games’ main villains. mystic messengers V and Saeran.

I’ve made this point before, but I’ll say it again. We don’t deserve queer baiting, our queerness is not a joke or a sign of deviance. And that’s who we are, legitimate enough to justify admitting more people.

Image via Voltage Inc. and Cheritz.

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