But there is a unique buzz about this game it has carried through the queer and trans gaming community to non-gamers and cishet gamers alike, and elevating the traditionally feminised and devalued dating sim genre. GameGrumps, the Canadian YouTube game culture channel and developers of Dream Daddy, came to be an accidental case study in the now of independent games – a queer, wholesome, progressive, gimmicky and shareable zenith that stands at odds with resurgences in dogma and conservatism in gaming culture.ĭream Daddy is not unique among independent games in placing queerness at its centre and doing more in queering the design of a game than offering queer choices, most notably Nicky Case’s Coming Out Simulator and the Fullbright Company’s Gone Home.
Previously, a game like this, a queer (and trans) dating simulator would have previously remained in its (albeit substantially large) niche. Initial reaction to Dream Daddy has been predominantly positive.
The game has soared among more conventional bestsellers in online marketplace Steam since its release in mid-July. Wholesomeness, or the performance of it, has also achieved its own online currency. So there’s plenty of incentive for multiple playthroughs. There are three dates possible with each dad, and all designed to get to know particular dads better, the dad you decide to go on all three dates with is the dad you choose overall. The dating simulator has a concise, somewhat baffling, yet compelling, pitch – you play a dad who has just moved to a cul de sac of other dads, who you proceed to date. It is in this moment that Dream Daddy has arrived.
Simultaneously, masculinities in the gaming community have come under close scrutiny through controversies like GamerGate and the birth nouveau of the alt-right. That queerness is rarely permitted to intrude upon core game design is part of a broader indictment on the hyper-normalising of gender and race hegemonies mainstream gaming culture. Queerness remains a possibility in many mainstream games – usually through curtailing gender restrictions on relationship building, opening up all genders to mutual romance – but is never a prescription. While sandbox, choice-consequence and open play form shifts in games have grown to eschew the earlier tendency for linear and prescriptive narrative, so too has the design of games moved with community pressure to make their own queer infrastructure. Image: © GameGrumpsįor several years now, queer and trans gamers have been demanding more from mainstream and independent games.
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