Are Waifu Sims the next Sandbox Morality Quicktime RPG?
So… while I resemble a ten year old boygirl thing of some kind… I am quite a bit more ancient than that. I’ve watched video games take onto various gameplay features — and then try to make every game hold those features.
Sometimes, those features will go away — like how often we’ve had the FPS craze. How often we’ve had the MMORPG — where every game needs to be an MMORPG. Then we have the time where everybody was trying to do the next RTS game.
Some — however stick around. First it was RPG elements. Where games would start including them, for rather arbitrary results. Essentially, the core game play loop gets inflated by watching numbers go up, with sometimes a cool video that could show up.
Shortly after that we had Quicktime Events show up. Which have not gone away — despite them being kind of dumb. At least with RPG elements I can see what those do to keep somebody playing. Quicktime Events mostly just make unskippable cut scenes even more annoying.
Then we had morality systems show up in games. None of these morality systems aren’t fucking stupid. If somebody was intelligent, they’d opt for a BlueAndOrangeMorality and have the options be Mooph and Blonga — with neither being really good or evil… just… unique. With a particularly set of tastes. Nobody is going to do that take of things, however — because that would require more self awareness than morality systems would be able to account towards.
Then of course, thanks to a mixture of Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto… Sandboxes started to jump into the video game landscape — and they refuse to leave.
Now — most AAA games require these to be considered the quality that one expects in an AAA game. Note: it is not considered socially acceptable to pronounce AAA games like you are just screaming and then saying “games”
I mostly started wondering this as I decided to grab a rhythm game for my 3DS because I kind of enjoy those. Then I started to notice that there was Waifu Sim stuff in my Rhythm Game. Now — the Waifu stuff doesn’t interfere with the Rhythm Game stuff — you just have to put up with these Vocaliod digital pets if you want to get everything in the sticker book. Stamp book? Eh — whatever. Yes… I am talking about Project Mirai DX: Electric Boogoola Hatsune Too Long Name Miku.
I got thinking about Fire Emblem Fates — and how it pretty much cemented Fire Emblem as being the Tactical Waifu Simulator game that fans understand it today. The Tactical Waifu elements only really started to show up in Fire Emblem Awakening. There was that one single game on the Super Famicom that never officially ended up outside of Japan.
The sales of adding Waifu elements to your game drastically increase the sales of the game. Heck, Dating Sims, are able to work as a marketing tool for places like KFC. We have horror games in the genre meant to take the traits that are around enough for people to recognise them.
So… how long until we start seeing the ability to romance multiple characters as being a common element in all AAA Games everywhere? How long until we start seeing Waifu Sims show up in Call of Duty? Or Assassins Creed?
I mean — sure yeah, the whole “touching the face thing” was creepy as frick in Fire Emblem Fates… but imagine if somebody with the Warhammer 40K made a game that was its own Tactical Waifu Sim of sorts. That you could invite your own troops into your tent and touch there faces a bunch! That pretty much has me sold on that Warhammer 40K game already.
Personally, I’m just bracing myself for this featuring being shoe horned into games.
It is coming. Be prepared.