485. BONUS! Romance in Games at Talking Simulator

I am the person that will watch the clip show on YouTube of every cutscene for every character. Like, I find that stuff incredibly fascinating. I think it’s great.

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Welcome to Talking Simulator, a series of short conversations about video games with interesting people who play them. I’m Jordan Erica Webber, and in this episode I discuss romance in video games with my guest Sarah Wendell.

Hello, I am Sarah Wendell. I’m the co-founder and current mastermind of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, a website devoted entirely to the romance genre and the people who read it. I am also the host, producer, and general mastermind of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books, which I believe is in its 12th year, but I’m bad at math. And I absolutely love talking about all things romance, courtship, and everything that spins out from there.

One thing I know Sarah also loves talking about, because I’ve heard her, is video games. So I asked her if we could have a conversation about how romances are written in the kinds of games she plays. Amazingly, just two days after I sent that email, Sarah and her colleague Amanda published an episode of Smart Podcast, Trashy Books about the very same topic. And then Laura Nash, from the podcast The Short Game, also got in touch with Sarah to ask her to talk about romance in games. I will link both of those episodes in the show notes so that you can listen to them for even more video game romance content after this. But suffice to say, as a romance expert, Sarah has a lot of thoughts.

This episode is light on spoilers, but we do discuss some of the consequences for particular romantic decisions in The Witcher 3 and Stardew Valley.

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So, I have been wanting to talk about this with you for quite a while actually, and kind of get your perspective as an expert in the romance genre. So it was very funny to me that when I did finally email you, not two days later an episode appeared in your podcast feed about the very same topic. How did that come about?

Well, I have this very common experience where at certain times, the work I do develops an unconscious theme. So, my assistant and copilot Amanda and I both play video games, but we have very specific requirements for our games and sometimes computerised video games, big games, little games, they don’t necessarily match our expectations and what we want in a game. So when we find something that really works for us, we like to talk about it. So we started talking about all of the games that we’ve been playing, because like you in the quaran-times we’re at home a lot. So we have time for games.

And as I said in that episode, one thing I noticed with myself is that most of the time, my hobby, my way of relaxing is to read books. And sometimes I just don’t have the brain energy to do all the mental construction of reading. There’s a lot that goes on when you’re reading, cognitively. With a video game, the visuals are provided, the voices are provided and I’m selecting different choices. So I’m getting that story, but I don’t have to construct all of it. I’m just constructing a portion of it.

So I started playing a lot more video games in the last two years, and I know I’m not alone in that. We ended up talking about video games for quite a while. And then, I got an email from you about doing this episode, and then I got an email from Laura Nash of The Short Game, which is a podcast all about short games. And I thought, ‘Is everyone just reading my email?’ Like, you know how, you know, you look at something and then you see an ad for it on Facebook, and then you see an ad for it on Amazon. So apparently everyone knows that this is what I’m thinking about right now. So I am very excited to talk to as many people as possible about romance and video games. This is going to be great.

It’s interesting what you say about-, ’cause I’ve heard you make this argument before on the podcast about video games in some ways taking less brain power than reading. And I feel like those of us in gaming tend to make the opposite argument, kind of as a defensive measure. So, there’s a lot of criticism of games, especially kids playing games.

Not from me. It’s all screens now, baby.

Sure. I mean, I think people feel differently since the pandemic but, you know, those of us who work in games have gotten used to being very defensive about it. And we’ll say, like, ‘With a game you have to play an active part, you’re an active participant.’ But it sounds like you’re saying, ‘No, games are way more relaxing than that other stuff.’

For me, yes. First of all, I totally relate to the feeling of defensiveness. I work in the romance fiction genre. We have our own boxing gloves ready to go, anyone who comes at us. I know this feeling very well. And I certainly don’t mean to say that when you play a video game it’s passive. For me, as a reader. I am imagining everything when I read a book. I read a lot of fiction, so that’s a lot of backdrop, voices, characters. What do they look like? Where are they? What do they sound like? And I do all of this usually very happily. That’s usually how my brain is.

With video games, it’s all of the best parts without my having to conjure all of it. And I’m actively making these choices. And kind of, you know, I’ll be honest, I Google and stress about the choices because sometimes I really want the good ending for some things. Like, I get a little stressed if I think I’m going to completely mess up, which I’ve done, which is the worst feeling.

But with video games, other people’s creativity, which is even greater than mine, has created this world for me to go run around in. And I happen to love open-world games, I just don’t like fighting. And all the open world games are a lot of fighting.

Yes. Yeah, let’s talk about that because, you know, what you said earlier about games not always matching the expectations of what you want and also, you know, what you said there about being in the romance genre and having to have the boxing gloves on for that, for that defensiveness? One thing I wanted to talk about was why there aren’t more video games about romance. And is it because, you know, the romance genre skews female, video games, at least the creators, skew male? Is that the reason for the discrepancy, do you think?

I think that’s a major part of it, absolutely. There is an absolutely fabulous Twitter thread that I have been thinking about for, like, a day and a half now, and I will send it to you for your show notes. So, the larger sort of scale version, to answer your question, I’m going to just take from this Twitter thread, this brilliant analysis.

This is from August 11th, and this is Kyle AB, and Kyle was talking about actors, you know, and how if you want to have a serious career as an actor, most actors want dramatic roles. And in Kyle’s opinion, romantic comedy is where you make your career. And this is the part that blew my mind. This is what Kyle says: ‘I read something recently that said the male gaze is interested in women as objects, and the female gaze is interested in men as people. An object’s utility is very specific and short-lived. A person’s utility is endless and varied.’

And I think that if you think about the development of games from a male gaze versus female gaze point of view-, and granted, this is extremely gender-essential language, and I do not mean it to be. Let’s widen it. Let’s say if you are looking at something from a gaze of seeing other people versus seeing objects, you’re going to create a different experience.

So part of the problem, I think, with romance in games, as it is right now, is that you have an object gaze. You are going to do this quest and do this thing and kill this guy and get this sword and go over here, fulfill that quest, and then if you have leveled up enough hearts or you’ve maximized your woo, then you’re going to get a cutscene and maybe you will get some animated boobies, which is not the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, but that’s okay. You know, we’re trying. Computer rendering is difficult. And if you want an absolute boiled-down version of gaze, think about how many times you’ve seen computer-generated nipples in a video game for adults versus the first episodes of Bridgerton. There were no boobs, it was all male butt. That is the gaze.

And I noticed.

I did too. I was like, ‘Wow, look at all this male tushy, and not a single nipple in sight.’ So when you’re developing a game, and your mechanic is conquest and acquisition and stuff, that’s going to affect how you approach interpersonal relationships.

The other problem with, I think, romance in video games is that emotional intimacy is complicated. And it’s a lot easier to say, ‘Do you have the thing? Yes/no,’ than, ‘How do you navigate this emotional nuance and how do you create a conversation tree, for example, with all of these characters that ends in a satisfying way?’

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So, given all of those challenges it’s maybe surprising that there have been some games that you have enjoyed that have romances in them. Let’s talk about some of those examples, then. Let’s talk about some that you think have done it well. What are your favourites?

Oh boy. Alright. Well, for me, the game that I have played that has most made my little romance heart, my little romance reader heart, go pitter patter has been Dragon Age: Inquisition because there are so many choices and there are so many characters you can romance, and those romances are so deeply integrated into the story that the way you romance different characters influences the larger plot of the world.

That is super cool to me. I don’t even know how you draw that on a whiteboard, like that is just incredible narrative structure. And when you have a game with a great narrative structure that allows character development, even if it’s not romance, it’s super satisfying because it’s not just, you know, ‘Go here, kill this, knock that down, acquire sword, next level.’ You have to grow as a person in your character, whoever your character is.

So I love Dragon Age: Inquisition, but as I have said before, I struggle with a slight problem. I’m a very decisive person in my real life. I’m very decisive. I love making decisions. But I don’t like choosing one person. I like everyone else to get together around me, because the companion dialogue is delightful and I want you to be with you, and I want you to be with you, and let’s get everyone together. I don’t need to romance anybody. It’s fine. I just want to read everyone else’s romances. This is where I think myself as a romance reader is most evident.

I was going to say, how much of that do you think is because as soon as you put yourself as a player in the calculation, it makes things a bit more complicated and your expectations aren’t going to get matched, because you and your character are different people and that kind of thing, and it’s much easier and simpler and like reading a romance book to just look at someone else’s relationship?

I think that’s partially true. I also think that with the strongest games where-, for example with Dragon Age or other games where you have such an incredibly nuanced character builder, you are also creating an avatar for yourself that could be very close to yourself, or very far from yourself.

And I don’t necessarily struggle with myself. It’s more like I want to see as many possible happy stories as I can, especially because all of these games that are, you know, massive and open-world are usually-, they’re set in a war, or something is happening and things are bad. And so the lightness of the emotional connection adds levity and some lift to what is otherwise a very scary story.

’Cause that’s why you’re playing the game, right? There’s a rift in the sky. Somebody is attacking you. You know, somebody stole your horse, super not cool. You have to fix a big, big problem in these games, which is the whole point of them being there. The added emotional resonance of other characters behaving like people and myself being another person in this world, is very, very satisfying.

Another game that I really love is The Witcher 3, which I’m still slowly making my way through. There aren’t as many romance options in that one. And in fact, spoiler alert, there are two main romances, and if you try to go with both, in a later scene, spoiler, they will tie you to a bed and then leave you there and you don’t get anybody. You end up alone because you tried to do it wrong. So as much as I love to romance everybody, I’m not doing that in that game.

With that one it’s interesting because the story pivots on certain parts of the romance but it isn’t necessarily the whole story, because what The Witcher 3 is actually about is fatherhood and parenting and caring for people who are in your protection, whether that’s your temporary client or, you know, the person who you raised. So it’s a slightly different emotional journey.

I want to talk about what you mentioned about your interest in a romantic storyline that is integrated into a kind of grander narrative of the world, because, you know, one of the funny things about romance books is we all know how the story is going to play out, and the fun of it is what story are they going to write around this thing that we all know is going to happen. Whereas in video games, there are some games, dating sims for instance, where the whole point of the game is the relationship and then the story is kind of built around that, but you, it sounds like, are more interested in games where there’s a different story and then relationships are kind of put into that. Do you see that difference? And do you know why you prefer one over the other?

I think it’s mostly a question of experience. I haven’t played as many dating sims for the hours that I’ve played Inquisition or Witcher. I also find that playing a massive title, like the Dragons Age as I call them, or the Witchers, is you’re looking at an investment and hanging out in a world for hours. And in terms of reading, if I’m comparing that to a book world, that could be, like, ten books’ worth of reading. You’re in that world for a long time. And that’s part of the allure for me, to go hang out in that universe and be there for a while. I think that’s true for a lot of gamers, regardless of what you’re looking at. You’re just going into a different world for a little while. It’s very reassuring.

I think part of it is also that when I am reading a romance, like you said, I know how it’s going to end. I know the ending will be happy. What happens inside that narrative is unknown. I don’t know how it’s going to be, I don’t know how it’s going to get from point A to point B. But I know that even at the worst, most grueling difficult moment, I know it’s going to end up okay. For me as a reader, that gives me a safe place to put my emotions and know that I won’t have my heart ripped out at the end like, ‘Haha, no happiness for you.’ That is not necessarily true of a video game. You can get the bad ending where you try to romance two chicks and then they leave you tied to a bed and then you’re alone for the rest of your life. I mean, that’s not optimal.

Yeah, let’s talk about the differences, then, between the way romantic storylines play out in video games and books. And that is a good place to start, I think, the assumption of the, as you call it, the HEA, right, happily ever after?

Yes.

And you talked before about Googling for how to get the good ending. I mean, yeah, romance readers, they can safely assume that there’s going to be a happily ever after, and that’s kind of tied into the genre. In video games, not so much with romantic storylines. Do you think that makes them more interesting?

Depends. How bad is my anxiety that day? Like, that’s really it. Like, how much do I want to take a risk that it’s going to end terribly? Because one of the amazing things about the storytelling and the narrative structure of video games is how many different directions you can go in, and how that makes it harder to apply a genre convention.

Like, for example-, and romance isn’t the only one that has a genre convention. In a mystery, there better be a solution to the mystery. Whatever person died in an extremely small picturesque English town, you need to know which person killed that other person. And maybe someday you’ll find out why that town has such a high death count, I don’t know. But like half of all of the British import TV we have over here in the States is British murder mysteries. Like, y’all just run around the island killing people. It’s amazing. But in a mystery you want to know who did it. In a fantasy, whatever has disrupted the world will be either improved or restored, usually improved.

In romance, the journey to courtship is going to end in a happily ever after. With a video game, your narrative options are so massive. You can play as the world’s biggest jerk, and just stick with that narrative decision and make enemies. And it’s okay. A really well-written video game allows you to do that. Even with dating simulators, you could be a really terrible date and see what happens, and then play the next round or play again with a different character. The openness of the genre is really quite incredible and it’s very alluring.

So I guess in some way it’s necessary that you aren’t guaranteed a happily ever after, because that’s what gives it the kind of interactivity and the feeling that it’s your story rather than just one you’re reading.

Yeah. And if I’m always going to err towards being kind to my companions, then that’s going to end up repeating some of the experience that I have, whereas if I decide that I’m just going to be a big jerk, well, I might not enjoy it as much personally, but it’s going to be a completely different story with characters that I already know. The familiarity of the world, I think, is another big draw, both in fiction that is in books and fiction that is in video games.

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Let’s talk about the kinds of expectations that video game players have. ’Cause obviously, like we’ve been talking about, readers have them, readers of romance fiction, have them, but so do game players. You know, we’ve talked a lot about Dragon Age: Inquisition. One thing I find really interesting about that series is that in Dragon Age 2 all of the romance options are pansexual, so all of the romanceable characters, you can romance them whether you play as a female or male character. And that’s not the case in the other games. And this is a really interesting question for me. I mean, you know, in the other games, the characters have preference for gender and things like race. There are some, you know, elves that will only date other elves. Or something like that, I’m not sure. Can you tell I haven’t played these games? But I wonder what you think is the better approach. For example, The Outer Worlds, which came out one or two years ago, there was an asexual character in that, and it was applauded for it. Do you think that that makes for better storytelling, having characters that have preferences, or should the player just be able to romance whoever they want?

I think it’s a combination of factors, really. Because part of what happens with the narrative of video games is that someone is creating that narrative. Usually it’s several someones. The more people who are represented in all of our wondrous differences the better. There are far too many people of colour having to play as white characters. There are so many disabled gamers who have to play as able-bodied characters. And I understand the limitations of design that might come into successfully rendering a physical or mental or emotional disability, like I totally get how that would be hard, but I know that it can be done.

So the more people who are represented in the collection, in the character creation and the character interaction, the better. I don’t necessarily think that everyone should be able to get with everyone else, because that eliminates or erases some people, and everyone should be able to see themselves in the things that they love to do. If we as humans are creating entertainment, then we are responsible for creating as many different kinds of humanity as are in the actual world.

Let’s touch on the, kind of, fantasy element of some of these games, while we’re on this subject. We talked about elves romancing humans and things. You know, in the Dragon Age series you’ve got dwarves and elves and all sorts. And that happens in romance fiction as well. How do you feel about those kinds of fantastical romances? Do you feel like you can deal with them seriously alongside the more realistic stuff? Have they got different audiences? Is it all just the same?

Well, every piece of romance, every subgenre of romance, all the different kinds, whether it’s fantasy or paranormal or historical or contemporary or erotic, those readers might overlap a little bit, but there are people who have a very specific favourite. And I imagine that that’s probably true for video games. I don’t have a problem with any kind of creature romancing whatever kind of creature. Like, it’s fine. I love that in Mass Effect, everyone wanted to romance Garrus and they were like, ‘Fine, fine.’ As Amanda said, ‘Fine, you weird horny people. You can romance the space cat.’

Like, yes, absolutely, that’s awesome. I think that the more options for people the better, generally. And I don’t think it’s a question of fantasy, because a good narrative about people working out their problems, whether it’s romantically or some other kind of relationship, whether it’s romantic or platonic, working out your problems means emotional nuance and internal conflict. And I think what you talk about when you talk about the difference between active video games, no matter what kind, whether it’s a dating sim or a massive open world or a little game you play in a half an hour, you’re talking about external versus internal content.

External conflict is the stuff that happens to your character that they have to manage. Internal is their own conflict that they have to manage, or the conflict between them and another character. How that character acts towards them can be both internal and external conflict. But for me, a really good story has both. You want to have things that are acting against your protagonist to cause them problems. And then you want to have their problems that happen either because they brought them with their matched set of emotional baggage, or they have created a problem because they’re reacting to what’s happening to them. Really great writing, in whatever media you’re talking about, incorporates a little of both.

On the subject of, kind of, exploring the complexities of interpersonal relationships and the kind of conflicts that can arise there, one topic that I don’t see explored a lot in either games or in romance novels is non-monogamous relationships, so open relationships, having multiple partners, that kind of thing. I don’t know if I’m just not looking in the right place when it comes to romance fiction. In games I feel like we get it sometimes but it often seems to just be because they haven’t programmed enough to make that conflict arise. You know, you get games where you can just date multiple people because the dating is very shallow. I know you had an experience with Stardew Valley? Am I right?

Oh yeah. I love Stardew Valley, it is one of my happy-place games. And it has a mechanic where you can romance people up to a certain number of hearts. And it’s very transactional. You give somebody the thing that they like, they like you more. Well, you can romance people who are marriageable characters and you can choose a male or female gender character. I don’t know if there is gender fluidity yet in the character creation. I haven’t seen it, but that might be in the works.

Any of the eligible characters, you can romance them. But you basically romance them by giving them stuff. And that’s a very different interaction than interacting with somebody and not having to give them stuff to get the interaction. The thing is, with Stardew Valley, the more stuff you give, the higher hearts you have. It’s very obvious. And that mechanic allows you to get to the maximum number of hearts with all of the characters.

The problem is, the game has built in a sort of a catch. If you don’t have a certain object on your person when you’re walking around, and you go to a certain scene after you’ve hit the maximum number of hearts with all of these different characters, if you don’t have this item with you they will get mad at you and stop speaking to you and your hearts will go down and you’ll have to build them back up. Now, there’s no lasting damage, but if you carry this magic object, no one is mad at you for romancing the whole town.

And like I said, I have a problem with making decisions between characters. I just want to see everybody’s cutscenes. I want the whole story. I want to know all the options. I could never read choose-your-own-adventure books as a kid. I was like, ‘What happens if I do this? What happens if I do that?’ And then I don’t remember what I was doing. So with Stardew Valley I literally romanced everyone that I could, and I got everybody up to the maximum level of hearts.

The trick is now, once you marry somebody then you get extra heart scenes and, you know, you can marry and divorce people. You have to go to a witch in the woods. And there’s, like, a whole thing where if you have children, you can turn your children in and turn them into doves, which I find super weird. Not a thing I’ve ever done, I would feel way too guilty. But I have not yet divorced anybody or married anybody. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with all these cutscenes.

I think for me, now that I think about it, part of it is the narrative of the cut scenes. Like, this is the part where the writers and the developers have spent a lot of time. So I want to see all of them. I want to see all of the permutations of the narrative. I don’t necessarily need to choose one. I want to see all of them. Like, I am the person that will watch the clip show on YouTube of every cutscene for every character. Like, I find that stuff incredibly fascinating. I think it’s great.

I suppose it would be too much to ask, to make the characters not only have their own individual relationship with you, but also, you know, add a third person. How do they feel about each other and how do they feel about the other person feeling about you and all of that kind of complication? Mathematically it seems like that would be a much more complicated matter.

In terms of writing that in a video game, I don’t know the first thing about creating a narrative tree for a video game. This is not a skillset that I have. I can imagine that it would be very tricky. But I also think it could definitely be done, because of the complexity of other narratives that I’ve seen in other video games. It would be super cool to have that.

Well, hopefully someone out there is trying it as we speak. While we’re on the subject then, what more would you like to see from games, as far as romantic storylines? What is missing?

Hmm, that’s a good question. I think that part of what’s challenging-, we’re going back to what we were talking about, about gaze. Part of what’s challenging, I think, is creating a narrative about a person. When the thing that you’re creating is also an object in a larger narrative. Is the point of your game to go through the story and win the war thing, to do the battle and do the winning? That’s awesome. How do you build a romantic narrative inside that? And how do you give them each equal weight?

It’s a really big challenge because it causes the development to have to rethink what the focus and the purpose is. So for me, I don’t know what would be the most perfect, wonderful romance game. I do know that in the romance genre, in the world that I work in, there are now interactive novels, interactive audio books, interactive games based on romance novels. So that integration is starting to happen in terms of taking established romance courtship narratives, and putting them into these new forms of, basically, storytelling. It’s so cool.

For me, I would love-, like, if I’m designing my own game and I have an unlimited budget, I would actually love a video game of not necessarily killing things, but solving mysteries with a person who is already my partner. So we have our story-, or partners. We have our story, our internal story of what’s our relationship, what’s it been like, and where is it going. And then also heists, solving mysteries, solving-, maybe murders. I mean, there’s a lot of dead bodies in video games. Like, I have seen so much rendered blood and rendered boobies. But a whole series of you have to plan the heist to make it happen, that could be so much fun. I would love that.

’Cause that’s a really popular thing in romance fiction, isn’t it? Like, mysteries with a romantic relationship being built up on the side? I mean, I guess in television as well, like Miss Fisher, that kind of thing.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

I haven’t seen it in games.

It would be so great, wouldn’t it?

Yeah. I’m interested in what you said about games that are based on romance fiction. It made me think of-, have you read Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals?

Of course.

So, the One True Prince game that is referenced in the book. Do you know if anyone’s made that into a real game or if they’re planning to? That would be incredible.

I believe that the possibility has been explored. But it is a bit of a challenge to start from a fictional place and come to another product. I know that in another part of the Reluctant Royals, the anime or the manga, I don’t remember if it was an anime or manga first, is actually being developed into a thing.

So the story that the characters are reading is becoming, I believe, a manga in the future, which I think is so amazing. I mean, why not? I think it’s possible. Why not? This is my favorite game, by the way, ‘Where is my venture capitalist? I have this idea and I need some money.’

If there are any game developers listening who are like, ‘I would love to make a game based on a romance novel,’ which one comes to the top of your mind that would be great material?

Alright. So for absolute incredible graphics, over-the-top story and completely off-the-wall incredible characters, there is a writer named Shelly Laurenston, and Shelly Laurenston for years now has written some of the most ferocious, violent, sex-positive, inclusive shifters you have ever read. They are completely over the top. They are so violent. I love them. For example, her latest series is honey badger shifters, because they don’t give a shit. They’ll just kill you. They don’t care. A basket full of scorpions for lunch? That’s fine. ‘Put them in a lunch box, I’ll take them to school.’ They are absolutely ferocious.

And if you had that kind of characterization in a video game-, and there’s always some sort of problem going on. Like, half of the stories have an external mystery that they’re trying to work their way through, but also working out their interpersonal stuff. And often, like, the honey badgers might end up with shifter bears or shifter tigers. Lots of rendering options here.

The series, though, that I would want most is called the Call of Crows series. Right now it’s a trilogy. I don’t know if there’ll be a fourth one. It is a retelling of Norse mythology. And each of the Norse gods-, so we’re already hooking into the Thor fandom here, venture capitalists. I’ve already got your hooks. So, you know, you have Norse mythology. All of the Norse gods have earthly teams that handle their business. And if you’ve ever read some of the Norse myths, the gods are constantly losing their stuff. Like they miss-, like, you know, your socks go missing in the laundry. For the Norse gods, it’s like half of their possessions go missing somewhere on earth.

One of the things that these earthly people-, who are teams, basically, teams for the god, they have to go do the god’s business. ‘I lost my shoe, go fix it.’ And of course it’s, like, at the bottom of a volcano and there’s a witch guarding it. And there’s a big battle. So you have all the battle mechanics and you have all the violence and you have all the story, but you also have different human representatives of the different gods.

The Crows are the most violent. They’re all women. They’re the ones who are called in when everything has gone all the way sideways and you just need somebody to come in, kill everybody in the room, clean up, and leave. They’re not going to clean. They don’t do the cleaning.

The Crows represent the goddess Skuld, who’s one of the Norns who writes your fate. All of the other Norse gods, they have the whitest warriors who’ve ever whited. Skuld chose warriors from all of the different places where the original Vikings had taken their slaves. And so her group is incredibly diverse, incredibly inclusive, and they are incredibly fierce. Like, they will kill you in nine different ways and you won’t even know you’ve died nine times.

The thing I love about the series is that the fundamental question of the book is learning who you can really depend on. And in the end of the series, one of the characters is pretty direct about it and says, ‘Who are my sister Crows? Who is always going to have my back? Even if we actually hate each other, who is going to be on my side when things are really, really bad?’

So if you have a video game that’s devoted to creating this community of warriors who are all super annoying and, like, they all live in a big house and they just talk all the time and it’s just so annoying, but then you have to go into battle with them and make sure that none of you ends up dead, that’s a great storyline. And then you have these episodic problems with the gods losing their random stuff. I would love this as a video game. Where is my venture capitalist? I’m ready. I can do a PowerPoint. I can do a storyboard. Just call me.

That sounds like perfect video game material. I’m almost surprised it hasn’t been made.

The first one is The Unleashing, and it is over the top, super sexy, super violent. And it’s a woman of colour rewriting Norse mythology, so it’s bad ass women.

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Well, now that all of the venture capitalists and game developers who were listening to this podcast have stopped, maybe we should wrap up. It’s time for their self-promotional end of the pod. You mentioned Stardew Valley. I know that you stream on Twitch. Do you want to mention your Twitch stream so people can come and watch?

I do! How lovely of you to mention it. I would have completely forgotten, because you get to your self promo part and I’m real bad at that. I do have a Twitch channel. Amanda and I stream. We’re going to start picking it up again in the fall. It is ‘smarttwitches’. I was very proud of that name. So ‘smarttwitches’ is our Twitch handle, and we play Stardew Valley, sometimes I play Witcher. We have tried lots of different games. Like Mount Your Friends, that was fun. So you can find me there, you can find me at smartbitchestrashybooks.com, and you can find Smart Podcast, Trashy Books wherever you get your fine podcasts.

Thank you so much, this was really great.

Thank you so much for having me. It has been a delight.

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If you want to watch Sarah make her way through The Witcher 3 or juggle multiple partners in Stardew Valley, you can do so at twitch.tv/smarttwitches. I also stream a wide variety of games, many of which feature romance, at twitch.com/jericawebber, and I’m on Twitter @jericawebber. This podcast is also on Twitter @talkingsimpod.

And you can email us about your favorite romances in games at [email protected]. Naturally, if you like romance you should check out Sarah’s podcast, Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. Since I first learned about it, via a friend’s mum, it has introduced me to many talented new authors and enjoyable new books.

Our music is by Jazz Mickle. You can find her @jazzmickle. Talking simulator is mixed by Leamington’s loveliest audio person, Dan Parkes. If you need to make something sound good, you can find him @dancparkes.

I’m Jordan Erica Webber. Talk again soon.

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Oh gracious. I love when this happens. My brain’s like, ‘I’m sorry, you wanted to say a name? I’m sorry, you don’t get to say a name.’ Let me try that again.