Dating Simulation Games: Romance, Love, and Sex in Virtual Japan - Paperback

by Emily Taylor (Author)

This book serves as an introduction to Japanese dating-simulation games (dating-sim games) and as an examination of their function and place in Japanese popular culture and their reception in the United States. Based on theories of subjectivity and game playing, it examines how video games are attractive and addictive and focuses on one popular simulator, the tamagotchi, as associated with "techno-intimacy" fantasy. Several connecting realms of Japanese popular culture are examined (video games, anime, manga, and pornography or hentai) in order to classify dating-sim games. Dating-sim games are also placed in a social context in contemporary Japan by analyzing common attitudes toward relationships and dating, otaku (geek) culture, and obscenity and pornography. The author argues that dating-sim games, as a form of control, offer an escape from the demands young Japanese men face from the ongoing marriage drought. This escape perpetuates the separation of reality and fantasy, a trend seen in other forms of Japanese pornography. Attitudes toward adolescents viewing pornography and playing video games in the United States are analyzed to understand the lack of popularity of dating-sim games outside of Japan. As a comparison to Japanese dating-sim games, erotic games in the United States are explored, revealing a rich history of games with pornographic content. Additionally, there is a market for imported Japanese dating-sim games, but only among those who already consume Japanese culture in the form of anime and manga. This study of dating-sim games is placed into a larger social context by relating these gamers to Japanese and American worries over the anti-social, or even violent, tendencies that are perceived as being caused or exacerbated by person-to-character play.