love totem lite

Dating simulators are a genre of video games in which the main objective of the game is to pursue a romantic relationship with the non-playable characters (NPCs) in the game. With a particular popularity in East Asia (Song & Fox, 2016), dating simulators are now using new and innovative ways to utilise their format to perfectly simulate romantic human interaction and virtual relationships. Like all emerging technologies, dating simulators warrant a close look into their place within societal issues, such as gender, as the media, we are exposed to can shape us in our individual and private attitudes and opinions (Gerbner, et al., 2002). In this essay, I will be conducting a review of literature and case studies in order to make a deep and discursive analysis of where dating simulators lie in their social contexts. I will be exploring this topic through the lens of feminist media theory and will examine certain topics such as the underlying misogyny of the video games industry, Gamergate, and the concept of emotional labour. The idea of hegemonic masculinity is also relevant to this discussion and is defined as a ‘practice that attempts to legitimise men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women’ (Connell, 1993). Video gaming is a hobby I enjoy greatly and therefore has a great deal of influence on my creative practice as I make a lot of work in response to my favorite characters from role-playing games (RPGs) in particular. I love the opportunity that video games give you to build relationships with the other characters and be immersed in their story. As an enthusiast of dating simulator games myself, I am going to endeavour to parse out the appeal of these games to women in particular -whether they act as a substitute for human interaction or simply act as a way for women to enact their romantic fantasies with no threat of derision- and discuss whether they are a net positive or net negative in terms of their use of gender attitudes.

During the popularisation of console gaming in the 1980s after the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), the video game industry became the enclave of young boys and men (Kocurek, 2015), as video games were primarily focused on and geared towards them as their mainstay primary target audience. There were, of course, women who were video game enthusiasts, however, the ‘tacit assumption’ was that those ‘paying for a game were male’ (Chess, 2017). During this time in the gaming industry, there was very little attempt to challenge the hegemonic masculinity (Kocurek, 2015) that plagued it.

One example of this assumption in play was the American release of the Japanese arcade game Ninja Princess. Released in Japan in 1985 by Sega, it stars the titular character Princess Kuromi and follows her as she fights to escape a castle where she is being held by the evil warlord Zaemon Gyokuro, who she had been kidnapped by (Ninja Princess, 1985). However, when Sega released the game to American audiences in 1986 to the Master System games console, the name was changed to simply ‘The Ninja’, and the protagonist was changed to a male ninja named Kazamaru. Furthermore, instead of using his fighting skills to escape capture, he instead fought to rescue a princess from a castle, reversing the role of the main character (Symonds, 2019). This decision, as Shannon Symonds, contributor to the National Museum of Play’s online blog discusses, “only catered to the still-pervasive stereotypes that not only are video games primarily made for males, but that such males wouldn’t enjoy playing as a female.”.

During this period, the only company to attempt to diversify their audience by appealing to women and girls was Nintendo, who conceptualised and considered the release of an NES peripheral device, that when connected to the NES would assist knitting, 2017). The device was never released or shown to the public, however, on 30th August 2012, a former employee of Nintendo posted on his Facebook timeline a picture of the intended marketing material for the ‘Nintendo Knitting Machine’. The headline reads “Now you’re knitting with power” and part of the single-page advertisement reads “It’s not a game; not a toy; not something a young girl can outgrow in three or six months or even a year.” (Phillips, 2012). This advertisement was intended to promote the device to wholesale and toy companies (Chess, 2017). By specifying that this device was intended for ‘girls’, it is also interesting to note that although Nintendo had the intention to engage women in non-masculine play, it must insist that the peripheral is not a‘game’ or a ‘toy’, therefore relegating their female-targeted device to a tool to aid domestic labour, rather than leisure (ibid). This betrays a certain prejudice and attitude within the gaming industry in the 1980s, the attitude that the primary way to engage women in gaming was through domesticity and utility. This illustrates the role girls and women were expected to play in society and in the home. For example, a data analysis studying three national UK time use surveys found that in 1975, girls aged 8-16 spent almost double the amount of time participating in housework than boys in the same age range, and girls spent less than half the time that boys did on screen-based activities (Mullan, 2018). Society and the video games industry have a mutually shaping relationship, the misogyny we see in technology is both a cause and a consequence of our societal issues (Wajcman, 2004). Therefore, it is no surprise that social attitudes of women’s role within a household bleed into how video games are produced and marketed.

Despite the fact that Nintendo was attempting to encourage the inclusion of women and respond to the overwhelming male dominance, it did so by relying heavily on reaffirming common gender stereotypes - rather comically - and perpetuating the framing of women as “consumptive of specific styles and themes while simultaneously mocking those very media objects designed for and marketed to them” (Chess, 2017, p24).

The attempt to market the Nintendo Knitting Machine, though it was never released to audiences, effectively illustrates the relationship between societal issues and emerging technology, as well as male-dominated attitudes within the industry. In more recent years the market for video games has diversified greatly, with the majority of players being women (Jayanth, 2017), based on a study by the Internet Advertising Bureau. However, video games with female protagonists are in the minority, and “even being able to play as a woman is considered an optional extra by developers” (ibid). To give one specific example, the video game development company Ubisoft came under fire in 2014 when Ubisoft creative director Alex Amancio steadfastly insisted that women were ‘too hard to animate’ when discussing the upcoming release of the game Assassin's Creed Unity (Polo, 2014). Amancio told Polygon in 2014:

“It’s double the animations, it’s double the voices, all that stuff and double the visual assets. Especially because we have customizable assassins. It was really a lot of extra production work. Because of that, the common denominator was Arno [the white, male protagonist]. It’s not like we could cut our main character, so the only logical option, the only option we had, was to cut the female avatar.” (Amancio, 2014)

This seems to betray an underlying attitude of the male as the foundational default and the female as a secondary variation or auxiliary of man, which is not a modern idea. The very foundations of Western civilisation has undercurrents of this attitude throughout - in the Old Testament, Eve is an aberrant deviation from Adam, in Greek legend, Pandora is an aberrant corruption/variation of man. It was Greek philosopher Aristotle’s (384-322 BC) belief that women are ‘incomplete’ or ‘deformed’ males and were ‘defective by nature’. “The slave is entirely deprived of the freedom to deliberate; woman does have it, but she is weak and powerless,” he states (De Beauvoir, 1949). This belief influenced philosophers and thinkers for almost two thousand years (Tuana, 1993), and echoes of this sentiment are still felt in the media in present times.

One example of this attitude demonstrated in the present day is the controversy surrounding the lack of female-coded robots in the Transformers film series. In the first installment, ‘Transformers’ (2007), the five core robots are coded male, as they are all voiced by male voice actors, have visible male secondary sex characteristics (such as large pectorals) and also use male pronouns. A female-coded robot, Arcee, was planned for the first film but scrapped and replaced with the male-coded character Ironhide (Ellis, 2017). Transformers screenwriter Roberto Orci explained this decision in an interview with IGN in 2007. In this interview he stated:

“I would have liked to have seen Arcee, but the idea of a female transformer needs its own explanation, and there just wasn’t going to be enough time. It would have just been like ‘Oh that’s convenient. They’re trying to appease women with a pink transformer.’ So rather than that happen, let it just be a straight shot and speak for itself right now.”

As online video essayist Lindsay Ellis (2017) discussed in her video essay on the topic of gender in Transformers, it betrays the sexist attitude of men (or male-coded characters) being “coded default” and “accepted by the audience without question but a female robot is aberrant and begs an explanation”.

Despite making up the majority of the current market and audience, the video gaming industry remains somewhat hostile for female players, remaining heavily male-dominated with negative attitudes toward women that are hard to eliminate (Paaßen, Morgenroth & Stratemeyer, 2017). These misogynistic undercurrents in the video game community bubbled up and came to a head in 2014, wherein the online harassment campaign ‘Gamergate’ emerged. Gamergate was a ‘movement of hate speech’ (Chess, 2017) that spanned across all social media platforms, most notably targeting women and minority video game characters, enthusiasts, and critics and seemed to accuse the increasing number of women, LGBT and minority players of a shift in quality and content within the industry (ibid), and were perceived as threats to the quality of the traditional video game style (Murray, 2018). One example of Gamergame rhetoric is the Breitbart review of the 2014 Bioware release Dragon Age: Inquisition, a review which is extraordinarily right-wing and contains such criticisms as:

“Practically every release from BioWare now contains dozens of gay and lesbian romance storylines or sex scenes, which many young gamers find baffling... Many of BioWare’s customers wondered whether more time could have been spent on a satisfactory ending and less on irrelevant lesbian sex themes.” (Yiannopoulos, 2014)

This reactionary review of a diverse video game seems to suggest that the mere existence of LGBT video game characters is ‘baffling’ and somehow inherently political and threatening to the integrity of video games’ quality to those who subscribe to the Gamergate rhetoric. This also highlights the sentiments that ravaged social media during the Gamergate era and illustrates how hostile the video game community was during this time, especially towards games that even made vague gestures towards elements that may appeal to women, such as the romantic storylines that Bioware games are renowned for. This attitude could be linked to a broader prejudice that mass media and wider society have towards female-oriented media. As Shira Chess, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia, discussed in her 2017 book ‘Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity’, there are certain forms of media that are specifically targeted towards women such as ‘melodramas, ‘chick flicks’, romances and soap operas’ and are relentlessly mocked and are held as “inferior to popular formats that are perceived as more masculine” (Chess, 2017). This links to how Gamergate proponents attacked any media that felt vaguely ‘feminine’ as it was viewed as stylistically inferior and an infringement on story integrity.

Another example of this is the vitriolic backlash surrounding the Twilight saga, which Twilight screenwriter Melissa Rossenberg discussed in an interview with Women in Hollywood in 2012:
“When you start to read the criticism of Twilight it’s just vitriol, it’s intense, the contempt. From critics both men and women... We’ve seen more than our fair share of bad action movies, bad movies geared toward men or 13-year old boys. And you know, the reviews are like okay that was crappy, but a fun ride. But no one says “Oh my god. If you go to see this movie you’re a complete fucking idiot.” And that’s the tone, that is the tone with which people attack Twilight... It’s also because it’s female it’s worthy of contempt. Because it feels female, it is less than. And that is simply a reflection of our society. That’s not relegated to just movies.” (Rossenburg, 2012)

However, there are efforts in emerging games to appeal to this demographic. As women gravitate more so to opportunities for social interaction with non-playable characters (NPCs) than combat opportunities (Lopez-Fernandez et al., 2019), more and more mainstream video games are incorporating optional romantic storylines into their games. For example, the video game series Harvest Moon, a farming simulation game series that incorporates a relationship element where player characters can woo and marry certain NPCs by giving them gifts (Harvest Moon, 2007-2019). Another example is the video game series The Witcher, a fantasy role-playing game in which the player controls the actions of the male character Geralt, and can choose to engage him in a relationship with one of two NPC characters, Triss or Yennefer (The Witcher, 2007-2015). The player can also choose to initiate sexual scenes with prostitute NPCs in all three games by visiting a brothel. The video game development company Bioware (who mainly produce single-player role-playing games) is also well-renowned for the romantic elements of their games (McDonald, 2015), most notably for the inclusion of same-gender romantic and sexual opportunities, as well as a diverse inclusion of characters who are explicitly bisexual, gay, lesbian, or transgender. In Heidi McDonald’s survey of 1,572 players, when asked whether or not respondents romance their true sexual orientation when playing romantic video games, 46% responded always, 52% responded sometimes and 2% responded never, so it follows that some players are experimenting with sexuality through their gameplay. As McDonald stated in the findings, “the data reconfirms my original finding that single-player RPGs provide an important safe space for people to experiment with sexuality.”. Therefore, romance in video games not only appeals to women’s desires for social interaction but also for queer players to explore and experiment with their expression and preferences.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the genre of female-oriented dating simulators, an originally Japanese genre, it is one of the only video game genres to specifically cater to the desires and needs of female players (Yi, 2019), thus explaining the appeal for female players. Therefore in some ways, this genre acts as a refuge or sanctuary from an industry that does not take into account the voices of women (Kim, 2009). The companies that develop these games are cognizant of this. The website of dating sim development company Nix Hydra specifically states that they “wanted to make games for teenage girls & young women not just because it is an under-served market, but because those are the games they love to play” (Nix Hydra Games, n.d.) and the mandate of the Korean game development company Cheritz is clear: “Sweet solutions for female gamers!”.

A typical female-oriented dating sim is in the Japanese ‘Visual Novel’ format, a video game format prevalent in Japan (Visual Novels made up almost 70% of Japanese PC game releases in 2006 (Hirameki International Group Inc., 2006)). The gameplay style of a visual novel is typically narrative-based, featuring a text-based story in which the player is represented by an avatar or sprite and controls the story by choosing pre-programmed choices and responses to dialogue prompts from NPCs. In female-oriented dating simulators, the player controls their avatar with the ultimate goal of achieving romantic relationships with the game characters, which compared to the real world, ‘present images of ideal partners, love styles, and other romantic elements’ (Taylor, 2007). These games also feature an element of different story ‘routes’, with each dialogue choice contributing towards the achievement of a different ‘ending’. For example, in the mobile dating simulator game The Arcana, players’ choices throughout the story can culminate and result in either an ‘Upright’ ending or a ‘Reverse’ ending for each romantic partner (The Arcana, 2016), and this is typical of games in this genre. Players will often restart the game after finishing and choose different choice options in order to get different endings and experience all the content possible (Andlauer, 2018).

The first female-oriented dating simulation game is generally acknowledged to be the Japanese game Angelique (1994). It was created by an all-woman team and set the standard for later games in terms of ‘a focus on romance, easy controls, and use of other multimedia’ (Kim, 2009). Early female-oriented dating sims borrowed a lot of their story elements from the conventions of shoujo manga (McDonald, 2018), a genre of manga (Japanese comics) that is targeted towards young, often teenage, girls. Since the world of shoujo manga forms the basis for the conventions of female-oriented dating sims, its tropes and messages regarding gender and sexuality invites a close and critical examination, in order to better understand the political and social context of dating sims as a genre.

Shoujo manga, in general, is heavily dominated by ‘the normative practices of heterosexual romance’ and ‘masculine/feminine gender roles’ (Hurford, 2009). There is often a very large emphasis on ‘pure, sexless, tranquil romance, and on a peaceful, stable setting’ (Kim, 2009). The typical story conventions of shoujo manga rely heavily on traditional gender attitudes about what Japanese femininity looks like (Ogi, 2003) and shoujo heroines are often passive, virginal, bashful and are “waiting for someone to lead them and love them” (ibid, p789). This idealised version of Japanese femininity has cultural roots in the traditional idea of Yamato Nadeshiko, a phrase used to describe ‘the epitome of pure feminine beauty’. Yamato Nadeshiko women are often typified by a devotion to household chores, modesty, “being passive and silent, there to please the viewer with his cultured gaze” (Kakihara, 2014). An example of the tropes that have been discussed can be found in the shoujo manga series ‘Itazura na Kiss’ (1990-1999). The story follows the character of Kotoko Aihara in her singular quest to earn the love of the smartest boy in school, Naoki Irie. Later on in the series, once the two characters are married, Naoki decides to become a doctor. After contemplating her ambitions, Kotoko decides she would like to become a nurse in order to help him within his own ambitions. In the 2013 live-action adaptation, the character of Kotoko states to Naoki:

“I’ve been thinking of what I want to do the most... The thing I want to do most is to help you with your job. In other words, a nurse... I want to help you. I want to be useful to you!” (Mischievous Kiss: Love in Tokyo, 2013)

The main protagonist of the entire series is so submissive to the male romantic lead that after contemplating her goals and passion in life, arrives at the decision that her life will be best spent assisting her husband in a secondary role. She pleads him to ‘let’ her become a nurse so that she can spend her life supporting his career and ambitions and be a ‘useful’ wife and vassal to him. This presentation of gender roles in the household is very typical within the genre of shoujo. This is somewhat linked to the Freudian approach to gender, which concludes that a woman will find ‘happy self-fulfillment’ when she succumbs to ‘amourous submission’ and her ‘desire to be dominated’ (De Beauvoir, 1949).

Having discussed the long cultural background of female-oriented dating sims and the traditional gender stereotypes and conventions that the genre is rooted in, there is also a subversive side to the politics of dating sims that begs discussion. Hyeshin Kim (2009) concluded in her research article ‘Women's Games in Japan: Gendered Identity and Narrative Construction’ that female-oriented dating sims had the potential to ‘promote gender equality and diversity’ and ‘offer pleasure to women players through the adventure of romance’. It can be argued that one particular subversive aspect of female-oriented dating sims is how it utilities players’ agency. As previously mentioned, a traditional gender attitude dictates that women should yield submissively to others, while men are supposed to play a dominant role in sexual and romantic relationships (Kiefer & Sanchez, 2007). However, this is somewhat turned on its head in female-oriented dating sims as male characters take a passive role as they are ‘chosen’ by the player who takes agency in initiating a sexual relationship (Yi, 2019). While these games allow women to enact and explore their desires and fantasies, there is are ‘limits’ to the fantasies and identities that are ‘allowed’ to be carried out (McDonald, 2017), therefore one of the most popular entries into the genre of female-oriented dating simulators should be closely interrogated in relation to its place within feminist media theory in order to gain a better understanding of the nuances of this genre.

One immensely popular dating sim that deserves to be examined closely is the Korean game Mystic Messenger (2016). The game achieved 2.5 million downloads between its release in July 2016 and January 2017 (Cowley, 2017) and it’s this extreme popularity that has attracted careful and critical consideration of its position pertaining to gender stereotypes and attitudes from journalists and academics. Mystic Messenger was developed by the Korean company Chertiz, the first game development company in South Korea to be composed solely of women (McDonald, 2017). In general, the amount of women who work in the video game industry is shockingly low - in Britain, only 12% of game designers and 3% of programmers are women (Jayanth, 2017). Mystic Messenger is a mobile game that simulates the UI of a smartphone, and the player communicates with the characters via text messages, phone calls, and chat rooms, with the player choosing from pre-programmed responses. There are six male characters that the player can pursue a romance with, and one female character, Jaehee, whose story route ends with her and the player being ‘best friends’, however this was rectified to be a romantic relationship in later content due to fan feedback (McDonald, 2017).

Part of the core appeal of Mystic Messenger is the real-time gameplay. Characters have real-time daily routines and may not respond to players’ calls or log-on to a chatroom when they are ‘at work’ or ‘sleeping’, cleverly simulating a real-life digital romantic relationship and bringing a level of complete immersion that lends itself to players forming deep emotional connections with the characters. It feels as though the characters are speaking directly to the player, not just a player stand-in. However, this use of real-time play has also drawn criticism for ‘gamifying emotional labour’ (Schwartz, 2017; D'Anastasio, 2016; McDonald, 2017). Eileen Green, Professor of Sociology at the University of Teeside suggests that with women there is often a ‘blurring of lines between work and leisure’ (Green, 2001), which can complicate the experience of play and leisure, as women are expected to take on the role of emotional labour in games (Chess, 2017). Emotional labour was conceptualised by Arlie Russell Hochschild in ‘The Managed Heart’ (1983) and is defined as the managing of emotions and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a task or goal or to produce “the proper state of mind in others”. For example, a waitress may engage in deep breathing to control anger, and smiling to try and induce feelings of happiness. This concept typically applies to jobs that require the employee to suppress their true emotional reactivity in order to produce an artificial positive emotion, mostly jobs that require face-to-face interaction with the public (Hochschild, 1983). However, this concept has been expanded upon in recent years to apply to household tasks and domestic scenarios.

Heidi McDonald in her 2017 book Digital Love: Romance and Sexuality in Games discusses the concept of emotional labour in relation to Mystic Messenger somewhat. McDonald argues that “gameplay for these romances all involve a certain amount of emotional labor [sic], since all the male characters have their own insecurities that the player will have to assuage. Bad endings happen when the player ignores the romanced character...”.

In addition, Cecilia D'Anastasio, contributor to the video game review website Kotaku, wrote an article discussing this topic titled ‘Hit Dating Game Mystic Messenger Makes A Game Out Of Emotional Labor’ (2017). In this article D’Anastasio states:

“I became [the character 707’s] emotional ashtray. It was my worst-case-scenario dating situation, presented as the female romantic fantasy. Mystic Messenger is a brilliant, brilliant game, but is also emotional labor, gamified....The idea that we want to be cheerleaders for virtual boys’ misguided emotional states strikes me as sad.”

D’Anastasio is referring to story elements such as how, to win the character Zen’s Good Ending, the player must continually encourage him throughout the difficulties of his career. Additionally, the game requires the player to trust the character 707 despite his secrets and pursue him persistently even when he pushes the player away. There is a possibility here that the concept of emotional labour is being somewhat conflated with the traditional gender attitude that a woman must be subordinate and supportive of her male partner at the expense of her own self (as discussed earlier in the case of Itazura na Kiss and Freudian theory), which is also in itself a negative gender stereotype that the game could be argued to perpetuate. However, when choosing a positive or supportive response option in the game there is no requirement for the player to use cognition, body language, and emotional expression to suppress their own inner emotions and expression to produce a positive response in the characters, one is simply choosing one of two responses, either a good response or a bad response while playing a game for pleasure. The game cannot focus on the emotions or insecurities of the player as the possibilities of the players’ circumstances are too vast to be addressed in a game that relies on a flowchart format. Thus, the main focus being on the male NPCs is simply a result of the limitations of the game’s format, therefore I am fairly dismissive of this criticism, as I would argue that the player is not being alienated from their own emotions. As a fan of this game in particular I am prone to defend it, however Hochschild herself, when revisiting the concept in an interview with The Atlantic (2018), discusses the widening of the definition of emotional labour and believes that the term is being ‘over-applied’, thus making the concept ‘very blurry’. When asked if providing counsel to friends and people relying on you to help solve their problems ‘counts’ as emotional labour, Hochschild stated: “If you’re the one that people are turning to for advice, chances are you’re good at giving advice. Chances are you’re gratified at being able to help people, and there’s nothing inherently alienating about being such a person.” (Hochschild, 2018).

However, as any piece of art or media, Mystic Messenger cannot escape the cultural norms of the culture that created it, thus there are more misogynistic aspects of the game, such as the male characters' gender attitudes towards the player, something sociologist Judy Wajcman, author of TechnoFeminism (2007) is evidence of how the relationships between video games and the culture that make them are constantly ‘in flux’, perpetuating underlying gender conventions and stereotypes yet also acting as a space for women to experiment with their fantasies and preferences.

The work I have produced alongside this module is based on the concept of a ‘Love Totem’, a small pink object that bears a QR code in the shape of a heart. Once scanned, the QR code will bring to a video of a handsome mullet man who professes love to the viewer, and reassures them that their love is real and valid. I wanted to create an interactive concept that encapsulated the commercial side of dating sims, while being true to its idealised romantic roots. The actual physical work I produced to go alongside this concept was an animated video that I created on photoshop of a character I created professing romantic and caring sentiments directly to the viewer. I mostly used the colours royal blue and crimson as they are very evocative of early technology such as MS paint and DDOS. My practical work has been most influenced by my case study of the game Mystic Messenger (2016). For example, the reference to paying for premium content was influenced by the in-game currency players must use to unlock additional content. The poetical and romantic language in the animation was conceptualised in order to imitate and exaggerate the type of sweet nothings that dating sims use to appeal to players’ romantic inclinations. Furthermore, the synthesis of my practical work and research comes primarily from the way my work has been influenced by the perspective of academics such as Hyeshin Kim, who have a positive perspective about the opportunity dating sims have to bring ‘pleasure’ and ‘adventure’ to players (Kim, 2009).

As the interests and desires of women continue to be mercilessly derided and mocked by critics, media, and wider society - as in the case of Twilight (as mentioned earlier), boy bands, pumpkin spice lattes - there is much to be celebrated about women’s contributions to the ever-shifting world of emerging technologies. Much to the chagrin of some, women are fast becoming the primary taste-makers in an industry once so deeply rooted in misogyny and hegemonic masculinity that the very notion of a female protagonist was seen as a move that would instantly kill a game’s profitability. Women now make up the majority of video game players (Jayanth, 2017), however, despite the cultural changes that have allowed more space for women in video game communities, there is still far to go as the inclusion of women, LGBT characters and minorities continues to result in pushback from certain sectors of video game enthusiasts, and there remains very little women involved in the design and development of video games (ibid). My own personal interest in dating sims has undoubtedly shaped the way I produce much of my own creative output, namely in the self-indulgence that often motivates the making of my work. For instance, I have a strong interest in drawing fan art for video games that I enjoy, especially the romantic partners of the Dragon Age series, as I feel a strong connection to these characters through the romantic story arc I pursue with them. It was this kind of self-indulgence and intimate romantic feeling towards an artwork on a screen that formed the basis behind my practical output for this project. After all, as Japanese writer and dating sim enthusiast, Honda Toru stated in an interview in 2014: “This future will be about knowing that we are in love with fiction and accepting it … Someday we will be able to accept that the world of dreams is a good world, with a warmth and solace that cannot be found in human society.” (Toru, 2014).

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