Hey Nerds!

So I have a confession to make I have a guilty pleasure of otome games. I absolutely love them! Quick lesson: otome literally means “maiden game”. So this just means a game geared towards females and it usually deals with romance.

But I’ve been realizing the more I play them(and I could say this for some of the web comics I read) the more the main characters are rarely proactive or assertive. Now I understand for a lot of the stories there needs to be some kind of drama. But can there be a story made without obvious miscommunication or assumptions? I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be playing through a story and your choices come up and there’s literally no option that I would actually choose. I want to put a disclaimer here and acknowledge that a lot of these games and stories are Korean based. But when I watch different K-dramas a lot of the female characters are more assertive and speak their minds. So what’s the difference?

I know when making a game you have to have a preset of options that will lead to various endings. Most of the games I’ve played, there’s a really good ending, an average ending, and a bad ending. Other games have much more endings available. So I understand you can only have so many options available What I’m saying is can’t we have something that’s a little more strong and not as passive?

One example I can think of is when you’re pursuing the “bad boy” or more difficult one in the group. More than often the MC is going to “stand up” to him, but it’s never in a way that would actually happen For example, I’m currently paying through Ikemen Prince. To sum up your “Belle” and you have a month to figure out who’s going to be the next king. You have to pick from 7 “beastly” princes. I started with the 2nd prince named Chevalier. He’s pretty ruthless in his actions and is deemed inhuman. One of the conversations you have with him is him telling you that you’re stupid (in so many words) and that you have to prove yourself worthy for him to recognize you as Belle.

Literally my fist instance was to say” I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. I was chosen for a reason and that’s enough.” And I get that everyone playing probably won’t have a combative personality haha but when things like that are said I just immediately want to refute it, respectfully. I was reading the options and was like this is absolutely not what I would do. You could make the argument that when you’re infatuation with someone you don’t know what you would do. However, a lot of the time the main character’s personality is just too passive for me. Another game that I quite enjoyed was called Kissed by Baddest Bidder by Voltage. It ‘s probably one of their most popular series on the app. So the one of main characters is Eisuke Ichinomiya. He owns a famous hotel and is the reason why there are auctions. I’m not going to go into the storyline because you can get the app and play his route for free, so go check it out. In this route the main character basically extremely worked by him as he sets time limits on her whenever he pages her for something. Once during her day off he pages her only to relay to her she would be helping him show a guest around Tokyo. She then states that he could have told her this over the phone or when she returned. His reply is was it wrong for him to page her? The options for her response were more realistic being “yes!” “no….” and ” I was eating with Takhiro, too…” (Takahiro is another character our MC enjoys spending time with). I of course picked yes! But this is how she responds “It’s not exactly a problem, but.. I wish you’d consider my situation a bit more..”

She did technically stand up for herself, but it still just felt like she wasn’t confident in what she was saying. I still like playing the games, I just wish some of the situations were a bit more realistic. Or at least the game shouldn’t penalize you for being more assertive than other players. Maybe some guys like assertive women and some like passive ones. I think there should be a healthy mix of both. And honestly the guy should adapt to our playing style. If I seem to be picking more of the assertive answers then I should get a happy ending based on my assertiveness. Same for someone who is naturally more docile and passive.

I’m not giving up on my otome games yet! I just hope the developers and writers start to put in more effort when thinking about the people who play the their games. So tell me what’s your favorite otome game? Let me know in the comments and keep nerding out!