Romantic genre in video games beyond eastern productions

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Hipertext.net. n.26, 2023
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Mireya Vicent-Ibáñez
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8331-5387

Romance genre is present in all forms of entertainment due to its ability to appeal to common feelings and emotions, regardless of social and cultural differences. In the research presented here, the focus has been put on the romance genre in video games. There seems to be a significant interest in this type of creations from the academic perspective, but this interest is lacking. Most of the research that has been carried out on this genre of video games, has focused on video games developed in Asia, known as Otome. However, outside of games developed in the East, the romance genre has been largely overlooked to the point of denying its existence. This research seeks to revindicate these forgotten creations through the analysis of a specific case study Choices: Stories you play. Through the application of content analysis, and drawing from the characteristic elements of romantic literature, this research demonstrates that the selected video game belongs to the romantic genre, proving that this type of video game is not exclusively Oriental.

Keywords
Game Studies, Romantic Genre, Video games, Visual novels

Article Details

How to Cite
Vicent-Ibáñez, Mireya. “Romantic genre in video games beyond eastern productions”. Hipertext.net, no. 26, pp. 149-57, doi:10.31009/hipertext.net.2023.i26.18.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

(c) Mireya Vicent-Ibáñez, 2023


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Author Biography

Mireya Vicent-Ibáñez, Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Mireya Vicent-Ibáñez. She holds a PhD in Audiovisual Communication from the Complutense University of Madrid (with an international mention), a BA in Audiovisual Communication, and two MA, one in Film Studies and the other in Game Studies and Narrative Design. She is currently a Margarita Salas postdoctoral researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid, and is also a visiting researcher at the University of Zaragoza. Her current lines of research focus on Game Studies and Digital Media; in relation to the latter, her work focuses on the study of hate speech. She has several publications in high impact journals such as Communication & Society or Revista de Comunicación Piura.

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