A tale of love.

Why video games don't get love right?Granted, some video games not only get love, they are molded and shaped by it in their entirety. But make-believe romance is sometimes a mix of second-hand embarrassment and belief suspension. Every art form thrives on love, the most human of human feelings. Then why not games?Love, the romantic kind, can be compared to a drug in how our brains and bodies react to it. There's even data to prove that feeling love activates the same addiction zones in your brain that using cocaine would. We feel cravings for the person we love, withdrawals when the relationship ends or you spend a long time apart. Your body has more energy when you're around them; it's like an obsession. It doesn't last forever in its intensity, but love is an intense feeling. It envelopes us as this incomparable, symbiotic human experience. And that's why art always chases after its thrill.Music, literature, visual arts, poetry, any and all form of storytelling. They speak of romantic love, every day, all of the time. Above everything, the way we form romantic bonds is complicated. It relies on a delicate mix of chemistry, sexual orientation, sexual 0attraction, personal values, social conventions, time and effort. I don't have data to back me up, but I would bet human beings have the most complex mating rituals on Earth. Hence why they are so hard to reproduce. Video games are, by definition, simulations (even if the simulation layer lives only in controls, simulating actions through an input). By putting the player front and center, able to make decisions and experience the outcome, games make it harder for themselves to simulate love.Love is present in many games. It is part of the human condition, it leaks into everything we do, romantic or not. The actual hard part is to replicate falling in love. It took other forms of media decades or centuries to refine the expression of the process that love entails, most often not taking into consideration that a random person was going to play a part there, like in a video game, to artificially feel these feelings. There's also the point that, if you successfully simulate falling in love in any art form, this is a finite feeling. The character for whom they fall in love lives on an illusion, and any other experience with them is fan fiction.I realized, while writing this paragraph, I might be heading into a conclusion that fan fiction is a high form of unrequited love. Or a complement to the experience of love in games and other media. That's enough for today, ain't it?-Maíra

July 21, 2022

Why video games don't get love right?

Granted, some video games not only get love, they are molded and shaped by it in their entirety. But make-believe romance is sometimes a mix of second-hand embarrassment and belief suspension. Every art form thrives on love, the most human of human feelings. Then why not games?

Love, the romantic kind, can be compared to a drug in how our brains and bodies react to it. There's even data to prove that feeling love activates the same addiction zones in your brain that using cocaine would. We feel cravings for the person we love, withdrawals when the relationship ends or you spend a long time apart. Your body has more energy when you're around them; it's like an obsession. It doesn't last forever in its intensity, but love is an intense feeling. It envelopes us as this incomparable, symbiotic human experience. And that's why art always chases after its thrill.

Music, literature, visual arts, poetry, any and all form of storytelling. They speak of romantic love, every day, all of the time. Above everything, the way we form romantic bonds is complicated. It relies on a delicate mix of chemistry, sexual orientation, sexual 0attraction, personal values, social conventions, time and effort. I don't have data to back me up, but I would bet human beings have the most complex mating rituals on Earth. Hence why they are so hard to reproduce. Video games are, by definition, simulations (even if the simulation layer lives only in controls, simulating actions through an input). By putting the player front and center, able to make decisions and experience the outcome, games make it harder for themselves to simulate love.

Love is present in many games. It is part of the human condition, it leaks into everything we do, romantic or not. The actual hard part is to replicate falling in love. It took other forms of media decades or centuries to refine the expression of the process that love entails, most often not taking into consideration that a random person was going to play a part there, like in a video game, to artificially feel these feelings. There's also the point that, if you successfully simulate falling in love in any art form, this is a finite feeling. The character for whom they fall in love lives on an illusion, and any other experience with them is fan fiction.

I realized, while writing this paragraph, I might be heading into a conclusion that fan fiction is a high form of unrequited love. Or a complement to the experience of love in games and other media. That's enough for today, ain't it?

-Maíra

This issue's recommendations:

  • (Read) Love is Like Cocaine, an essay/investigation on romantic attraction.

  • (Explore) The sky, as far as our telescopes can see it. Zoom out for the mind-blowing experience.

  • (Play) LOK, a charming puzzle book with word games. You can download the .pdf version for free.