So despite the educated voice in my head suggesting otherwise, I bothered to check out Comedy Central’s new piece of trash Secret Girlfriend. I think about five minutes into the show said voice was shooting back shots of Tequila because he was yelling rather unsavory things about my mother and how I can’t do anything worthwhile with my life.

The less educated half of me that still loves DragonBall Z wasn’t happy either. He would have preferred shooting things with enough blood to paint the walls. Didn’t matter what game, just as long as something would die.

Still, the show managed to get me thinking. It reminded me of the lone* dating-sim I played way back in high school titled True Love, a piece of garbage that went back and forth trying to be romantic and attempting low-resolution eroticism. Aside from mostly boring gameplay, one of the primary faults of True Love is the prominent voice of the lead character. It’s not mine. On occasion I get a couple of choices I can make, but most of the time it’s this pre-written character that doesn’t really sound like myself at all.

Secret Girlfriend is a tad different. They attempt to pull you into the show as the third character, the camera acting as your eyes into this world of low-life friends, a psycho girlfriend and oh, hey, here’s this perfect girl that clearly wants to tackle your loins but won’t because you’re technically not single. For multiple reasons the entire show falls apart miserably. The first issue is the atrocious writing, where the psycho girlfriend is just way too nuts to even be funny, let alone believable, and the not-girlfriend-that-wants-to-hop-on-crotch is way too perfect and clearly too interested in a mute.

The greatest crack in the armor is that the writers are attempting to turn a passive medium into an interactive one. In the end, very few people are going to find this show entertaining because there’s no way they can relate to it.

Now, once upon a time I read an article on either Gamasutra or The Escapist that stated a romantic-comedy sort of game could never work. I, on the other hand, beg to differ. See, while I spent half of the hours spent playing True Love laughing, there was a sort of addictive value to it. Particularly in the fact that some of the girls had interesting personalities. In the Harvest Moon franchise, the relationship aspect has actually developed to become a much larger feature of design and gameplay. Townsfolk and potential girlfriends have several events, lines of dialog and cut-scenes that provide depth to their personalities throughout the game, attaching each of them to the player.

The very nature of video games being interactive allows for the opportunity to develop a game that can establish a greater emotional connection than film and television often can. The only roadblock is the imagination of a designer and the willingness of the player to experience something more than item collection or alien shooting.

Of course, thus far any game that has implemented a romantic angle has had a greater attraction. Harvest Moon has the farming angle, Fable has the epic fantasy adventure and Mass Effect contains space exploration and adventure. In addition, both Harvest Moon and Fable reward the player for marriage by providing some sort of bonus, be it in items or performance. To make a game where the primary focus is the romance, some of the elements may need to change.

To keep a player interested, there should be a variety of additional activities to enjoy. If the game is set in modern day, allow them to take part in street-racing where they can play a racing segment. Or allow them to take up amateur boxing or street fighting and have a fine-tuned fighting game in addition. Provide hobbies similar to modern video games that will allow players to do other activities, and then have the relationships with the other characters somehow provide benefit to those different activities.

In addition, the expansive dialog trees should certainly be implemented. While the character will not always be speaking what the player might, options can be kept simple yet frequent enough to get it close. Simultaneously, for players that don’t want to take the love story seriously there should always be an option to answer like an idiot. Turn it into a comedy instead of trying to play it seriously. Another great aspect of video games is the customization of the experience, and if a player can choose between who they want to love then they ought to be able to change it from a love story to a comedy of a failure.

Of course, the more options that are made the more chances there are to leave someone important out. Most games with romantic stories or experiences are targeted towards men as players. As progressive as our society becomes in terms of gender-neutral roles, there are some things we continue to be raised and even instinctively desire and become attracted to as men and women. Simply giving the player the option to choose between male and female leads and then having an equal set of males isn’t enough. The entire experience needs to change. The question is, enough to be a different game?

In any event, I would very much like to see a well-done and well-written love game made. I don’t think it’s an impossibility at all, though the mainstream appeal is certainly questionable (in which case, just make it a moderately budgeted Wii game or something). I just think there needs to be a designer and publisher gutsy enough to give it a try.

*I’ve also played Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude, but none of the original titles. In addition, I really wouldn’t consider the game a dating-sim. Not even a romantic-comedy.