A thing I remember very strongly from when I posted Don’t Wake Me Up for the first time is that someone who was testing the game told me they’d broken up with their real partner, because they liked the RO, Len, better.
All without knowing that the plot of the game is vastly about the fact this romance was faked, staged, and that the character is a villain manipulating you.
I never told this player this was the plan for how the game ended, but I think about this player a lot…
If I am affected by this, it’s bad.
My favorite ro in multiple-choice games is Jun😁
Hmmm… Thinking about it, when I was younger it has definitely affected the way I interacted with my romantic relationships. I saw it the same way as you did, establishing patterns of speaking and how to act in these situations because I had no idea how to handle a relationship properly before and it’s definitely made establishing connections with previous partners a hurdle to get through because I tried to see it as routes. I grew older, started to realize that people had their own emotions and they weren’t just characters you try to woo until you “reach” maximum hearts with them and everything’s suddenly okay. An obvious thing, I know, but I was young and stupid that was isolated so it’s definitely a revelation to me. After that, I met someone I truly loved, and I wanted to change and recognize everything I could do better for the both of us. Now I’m in a healthy relationship where we’re both making it work and seeing each other as individual people, not like a character from a video game. I still fall for fictional characters like Asterius and Len though, even when it’s fake 
but safe to say it doesn’t affect my real life anymore
Jokes aside, I am a league of legends addict and maybe this is why I have no social life. Not that I mind, I like being alone
I’m on the aromantic spectrum, so my relationship with romance is already a little wonky (and made wonkier by my bad experiences with it) in the first place, but I’d say reading fictional romance/playing otome has actually made me have an easier time coming to terms with it!
I realized that a lot of depictions of romance in fiction actually made me super uncomfortable, and by being able to play those romances out in ways I preferred via IF & Otomes, I sort of… Found my limits in a safe way, if that makes sense? It made it very obvious to me that in some ways, I’m just not fit for the ideals of romantic relationships I’ve seen depicted in other media, and that being able to have a lot of agency in my relationships is very important to me!
I am probably the person some people in this thread are worried about replacing real life relationships with fictional ones, but to be honest, those real life relationships would probably be more unhealthy for me to force myself into. I just can’t stand the idea of a real person being attracted to me, and I barely ever experience that attraction myself.
TLDR: If a video game makes my arospec ass uncomfortable, I can turn it off- but I can only ghost real people so many times before they start asking questions. /j 
This is a really complicated topic, but one i full heartedly appreciate and enjoy. Growing up, i was asexual. I wanted romance, but understood that sex was an important part of that for a lot of people. As I’ve begun transitioning, I’ve began to develop sexuality and a desire to participate in relationships. I began relying on the romance aspect of fiction, IF included, as a means to fill the void until I’ve found someone, but I had already been reading them before that. They have definitely helped establish my “ideal” but im yet to be sure if they’ve affected my basic standards and general feelings on relationships. Don’t Wake Me Up, while being great in my opinion, used extremes that fundamentally changed the question completely. The AI are, for all intents and purposes, fully sentient people. The develop actual feelings for them is massively different than that of todays fiction. Feelings are EXTREMELY complicated, and as I believe F from the WHC says, you dont get to choose how you feel about a person. Which kinda takes us back to reality in which case, has it affected how we see relationships, probably, but we can’t ever be certain because feelings aren’t logical and aren’t something we actively decide to have.
JESUS FUUUUUUUCKING CHRIST ON AN OATMEAL CRACKER!
(emphasis mine)
At a meta level as well, apparently.
Rell/Sivir waifu in the MMO or we riot, Riot.
We want Urgo- Uhhhhh I mean we want Irelia waifu. Btw Sivir is underrated she has one of the best voices in game.
(Btw I think Rell is 16 years old if I remember correctly)
Xena, uh, I mean, Sivir it is, then.
I tend to see things from a more “logical” viewpoint, and not use things from entertainment As references for stuff like dating, or developing any sort of relationship ((casual friends or romantic)). I can see why some may though, as the video game industry has really boomed in the last decade, and really started putting in possible romances in games.
Now, im not OLD. But, i think i was born a while before this; which may be why i dont think its really influenced me. If i had to hazard a guess, those more influenced were probably born within a certain time period so that between certain ages is when they started to play the games involving scenes or options that could alter how they see things.
I dont know where i did, but i rememeber reading that its between certain ages that the stuff we take in tends to have more effect on what the outcome of our viewpoints will be.
TL;DR: It had pretty much zero effect on me, if i had as much game as i do in games id have been much more of a social butterfly with multiple partners. Which, couldnt be further from the truth. 
Short answer: no more than any other type of media i think. Reality is a cure for any fantasy, but also a craddle for daydreaming.
In truth, there is no short answer for this, it is a complex question.
I believe everything we experience, real or not, shape us. About how much that affect us, that depends on an infinite numbers of variables. I lose myself often in fantasy, so it may have affected me more than i am aware… i edited this 3 times and i will be thinking about this question for days
I guess so? Some games which I’ve played taught me that if I stayed too much “passive” in a relationship, I might unlock “bad endings”, I tried to take things slow with some characters, but I think it was a bad decision according to the games lol, at some point they either finish the game, or the MC takes control. Maybe because I was a teenager and never thought much abt being at a relationship, but after playing some, that thought stuck in my head.
I do remember when we made our first romanceable modded NPC as teenagers together for BG2, we injected a lot of the feelings and issues that arose in real life into those stories (via heavy fictionalising and high melodrama).
… was it Solaufein?
No, Nathaniel was our first one, though I’m pretty sure Solaufein was the first modded NPC I played, followed by Kelsey 
The ones we made later were the Luxley Family and then Faren - we released the Luxleys when we were at university and Faren when we were about 21 (after having learned a ton about narrative, writing, and relationships!). I was asked about this recently on Tumblr and found out that although you can’t download the most up-to-date version of Nathaniel at the moment - it should be uploaded to an archive at some point - there are downloads of the Luxleys and Faren available.
Ah, so cool! Modded romances were my first introduction to mods, right after I discovered the BG forums and went “wait, there’s ROMANCE in this game??”. I always make female characters and the only option being Anomen, you see how I never realized it.
It definitely changed my perception of relationships, though not alone. Music played also a big part in developing a perfected image of being in a relationship for me.
I got into my first relationship with 26 years but have been yearning for on for a while at that point, always with this image in my head. Some dysthemia didnt help, as I hyped a girlfriend up “being the change i need to get better”.
So ofc it turned out not to be as perfect as imagined and i still have to adjust expectations on my part fos they are completely unrealistic. And i do blame media and also specifically videogames for that…
This is actually something I’ve thought about quite a lot, so here goes…
First, some background. I’ve never actually had a relationship; in fact, I’m still not entirely sure what that word means. Perhaps that could be explained by the fact that I’m also autistic, so things other people understand instinctively are often a mystery to me. Point being, fiction (interactive and otherwise) is my sole lens into this strange world - for now at least.
Perhaps the biggest impact this has had on the way I think about romance is an unrealistic idea of how relationships are supposed to start. In fiction, it always seems to happen “naturally” - circumstances conspire to bring two characters together, and it’s through those shared experiences that they come to discover their feelings for each other. For the longest time I believed that this was how it was “supposed” to work - that the “correct” way to go about it is simply to wait for destiny to bring you and some special person together. Going out and looking for love was at best pathetic and at worst creepy and disgusting. And I’ll admit, I still have trouble shaking that idea - even today in my occasional forays into internet dating, I constantly find myself thinking, am I a creep?
I’m mostly past that now though. These days, I tend more to be frustrated by the fact that I have no way of knowing which aspects of any given fictional romance are and are not realistic. Obviously fictional romances are written for escapist purposes rather than educational ones, but all the same I’m always on the lookout for things I can take away from them - hints of how people might behave in a relationship, what sort of things they might do together, how they might view the whole situation. But it’s hard to do that when any of those things could be utter fantasy.
Likewise, even if something appeals to me in a fictional context I have no way of knowing if I’d enjoy it in real life, and that frustrates me. I’ve enjoyed my share of virtual romances, but I’ve also enjoyed fighting dragons and captaining spaceships - things I’d never want to do in real life. It’s possible romance is the same - but it’s equally possible that I’d enjoy it even more in real life. It’s a difficult situation.
I’ve yet to try my hand at writing interactive fiction; writing regular fiction is enough of a challenge for me right now. But one thing I’ve decided is that if I ever manage to experience this strange world of relationships first-hand, I want to use that experience to create an interactive story to help make sense of it for people in the situation I’m in now. A very honest, open, true-to-life portrayal of how these things work, with the express purpose of demystifying it for the inexperienced. I think interactive fiction is the perfect tool for doing that, if done right.
Huh, that really turned into an essay didn’t it? Hope someone can find something useful in my thoughts, or at least find them interesting.
Nope, its more complex than any virtual can turn out to be. Virtual romance has set parameters and limitations more so than none virtual. Human complexity at its finest.
My experience says, chat, talk, listen, read, pay attention to everything.
I been double abused, physical and mental then just mental. They do let flags out if listen carefully and ask tons of questions. Sad truth here, men dont listen enough to women that this listening has almost backfired on me.
I purposefully retain romances virtual only, now. Only way to have the romance i wish i could but never will.
no. and I say this as someone whose never had a real life relationship, so youd think theyd have more effect.
in the end, it’s all a fantasy. some words, a character description, maybe some pixels will arrange itself on the screen and show a hot woman. I go awooga and humina and all that, I indulge in it a bit and then I move on to the rest of the game. romance never felt as anything more than a side thing. time goes on, you grow up, the words and pixels on the screen don’t seem as stimulating as just going outside and talking to a person.
Not my romance life but my social life in general. It has made me realize that I have actual influence over how people act and think, and now and then when I’m speaking with someone and I’m deciding if I should state my opinion or not, I feel like I’m inside an IF and there’s a text saying “This action will have consequences” lol