@poison_mara
I understand this. I don’t hate romance in games, in fact, I can actually be quite a sucker for it. What I don’t enjoy is writing it, at least not in choice games. I find the fact that you have to hand agency over to the player makes writing any sort of deep relationship (not restricted to romance) really tricky. Remember, you’re trying to write about why these two characters are so compatible, and how they connect and work together. But you don’t know anything about your player. Sure, we can fudge it by assuming certain archetypes, backgrounds and restricting the choice options. But it all still feels a bit weird to me.
So I’m actually struggling with a similar dilemma: do I include romance or not? Maybe I just write the whole thing and add romance retrospectively, if it makes sense to do so… I have the same thoughts as well: but will any read it without romance? I don’t know. But I know I’m here and wanting to write for a reason, and that reason isn’t to become rich or create the most popular WIP of all time… It’s to tell a story, and whilst stories naturally evolve, I think we have to take great care to not be coerced into creating something that doesn’t satisfy our original vision.
tl;dr: