Priority pixels: the social and cultural implications of romance in video games

ABSTRACT

Video games are not immediately synonymous with romance, but role-playing games can present players with opportunities to flirt, establish digital relationships, and even experience intimacy with pre-programmed in-game characters. This project explores understudied elements of video game players’ emotional investment in games through romantic narratives using interviews and content analysis of online forum discussions. Although romance is not the primary motivation for many players, it can become an important element that builds on and interacts with broader narrative considerations. Romance adds emotional grounding for video game stories and its inclusion can become thoroughly engaging for players. It makes the narrative feel realistic, makes players feel closer to and invested in the game world, and gives players new opportunities to bond with one another outside of the game. Romantic narratives play an important role in emotional consumption of video games, but also present opportunities to explore gaming culture more deeply.

KEYWORDS:

• Video games
• emotion
• romance
• online culture

Acknowledgements

Thank you to my colleagues, the reviewers, and the editors for their invaluable insights.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mass Effect is a sci-fi RPG and Dragon Age is a fantasy RPG, both from the development company BioWare.

2 Immersion, though vague and broad, can be understood here as feeling a deep connection to the game and sense of psychological presence in the game world (McMahan, 2003).

3 Mordin is a character in the Mass Effect series.

4 Machinima generally refers to using official assets (e.g., from a video game) to make digital movies (Harwood & Garry, 2014).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Christine Tomlinson

Christine Tomlinson is a social science instructor and researcher at the University of California, Irvine. Trained in sociology, the author’s work focuses primarily on intersections of identity, culture, and technology, especially in the context of video games and online spaces [email: [email protected]].