Relationships in "social" RPGs

Yeah not sure what the issue is. Relationship anarchy and polyamory ftw. I can't imagine this stuff hard to implement.

You can try to woo both Yennefer and Triss in The Witcher 3.... which might confirm your suspicions. :D :D :D

In Pathfinder Kingmaker you can romance both Octavia and Regongar if that is what you want and you pick options for that.

A very interesting topic. I am sure there are many games where you can romance multiple characters at once, but I don't think it's supposed to represent polyamory.

Fallout games come to mind (but it's more just multiple hookups). And Crusader Kings (but then it's more like cheating on your wife with multiple different lovers).

I don't think it's so much of a technical limitation as it is a writing complication, it's much easier to write characters as a sort of "on/off" switch when it comes to romantic relations with the protagonist that doesn't need to plan for extra moving pieces than trying to take into consideration multiple possible combinations of polyamorous polycules. So if you're going to tackle the challenge you'll probably only want to bother with it in a game where the romance options are like two or three characters at most, the one with three already gives you like 7 possible routes to write, it's a mathematical issue.
Also I imagine most people have no clue of how to accurately portray a believable poly relationship so they just nope out of that task. There's a reason why in movies is common to only see the trope of an already established couple looking for a so called unicorn (third member), it allows you to write those two characters as essentially just one entity during the flirting phase of the story and only develop them individually later down the line, makes some of the mechanics simpler.

Hades has two romanceable characters, and if I remember correctly, if you enter both relationships, there's some dialogue where they all acknowledge this (although the romanceable characters are, as far as I recall, only in a relationship with you, not with each other).

For stuff like Stardew Valley (which originally can punish you if you enter too many relationships), there's mods of course, but I suppose that's not what you have in mind. And I'm sure in the Harem-happy world of Visual Novels, there's a few that allow you to enter in multiple romances without it being treated as cheating... but that's most likely not actual polyamory and more appealing to a fantasy.

My guess would be that polyamory is, for many developers, not really on the radar or taken seriously as an option. Then there's the "technical difficulties" you mention; while it's probably possible to implement multiple romances in most games (that have romances in the first place), doing so (especially in a way that doesn't seem out of place) would mean additional labor that the developer might not have the time and money for (especially, if romance isn't the main focus of the game).

Interesting point. Programming it likely plays a part into it, especially if you were open to the option of multiple combinations. With just 2 NPCs, you only would need to write that option... but with 3, now you need 3 (for combinations of A+B or A+C or B+C), with 4 you need 6 (A+B, C, D, B+C, D, C+D) and that just grows really quickly. The formula is n(n-1)/2 I think, if you want to punch in your own numbers and see how many different paths the poor writer would have to write for 20 NPCs, lol.

And don't even think about poly relationships with more than 2 NPCs (combined with the PC character) - the numbers grow ENORMOUSLY with that factored in.

Buuuuuuut with all that said, the triangles poly relationships seem more than doable, especially if there are not a huge number of NPCs, the relationship paths are not overly complex (games like VNs where the relationships story and paths are a huge focus will definitely be a much bigger undertaking), and lastly you could limit the poly relationships possibility with only a few NPCs.

So to summarize this embarrassingly long response (my inner nerd took over, sorry!)... from a technical standpoint, "it depends" - but if done correctly and without going too overboard, it should be pretty doable. Which leaves us with what other reasons would game developers typically not implement it? That's beyond my field of expertise. Mic back to you, Steve in the newsroom.

I think they might kill each other, but let me date Miranda and Jack at the same time, pls!

BG3 has... a three ppl romance tho. Right? thinking

But yeah, most RPGs don't D:

I'm not sure its exactly a matter of whether or not technological aspects can handle it or even necessarily the work to implement it. Maybe its not something in the memory of a lot of individuals, but I vividly recall just how unheard of it was to even incorporate lgbt romances or characters. Mass Effect itself blew up quite a lot and made headlines because of your ability to romance the female asari Liara as a female character and the spicy scene possible at the citadel right at the beginning with another asari NPC. It was honestly a culturally significant event that opened the floodgates in the gaming world and shot the franchise and lgbt into the mainstream for at least video game culture.

Now, socially, that sort of public shock/outcry seems mostly a thing of the past and ridiculous in hindset, and lgbt romances, characters and stories are becoming normalized and more commonplace in representation and social awareness and understanding is at an all time high.... however, the same is not necessarily true for polyamory. Even in lgbt spaces, polyamory is still relatively stigamtized and misunderstood. There is also issues of bad faith actors who claim to want to practice polyamory or open relationships out of bad faith and do not follow the tenants of open communication, mutual trust, clear boundaries, ethics, and respect that are the pillar stones of healthy polycules... or really any relationship, to be fair. It ends up giving a bad name to the whole community instead of just being seen as just a jerk being scummy.

That all said, I do feel social awareness of polyamory and ethical nonmonogamy practices are increasing. We very well may see a movement towards acceptance in my lifetime, or at least I hope so!

"I would be interested to know your opinion, is this specificity of ignoring polygamous relationships some kind of taboo in the gaming industry or is it related to technical difficulties in implementing such "romances"?"

Most romance games are likely targeted at females, where it seems it's more valuable to them that their partner is committed solely to them. On the other side, porn games, aimed at males, are about screwing everything that has a hole, and likely don't view their partner as more than a tool to release. Extremely rarely do men care about the whole romance part, they see something hot, they want to f. They commit after. This reflects irl(sure you can find a few people on either spectrum, but it's insignificant numbers, like polygamy itself). It also has to do with polygamy being looked down in the real world, so not as a taboo just in the game world, but everywhere, anywhere, whenever, always, forever.

I'm going off without even searching this since I think it's pretty obvious, but I'm almost certain the % of women who dev romance games is higher than % of women who make strategy/shooter/racing games. Generally their thinking is to make some love triangle and the character eventually sticks to one person they dedicate to. Looking at the overwhelming majority of porn games on steam, I don't think there's any doubt they're made by men. Different expectations, different wants.

There's some cuck games out there since they're much more versatile and appeal to 3 different groups/roles of people, not just cucks. For polygamy, if someone made a game where you're one of the side wives, you're basically the character being cheated on. Maybe that appeals to someone? If you are the guy that has 20 wives and they all like it, it looks trashy and without feelings. So it's looked down onto, aka less users, less versatility, less players, less need for it to exist. As simple as that.

I don't think it's not been considered and as mentioned above some thread the line with it, it's just the audience is too irrelevant. As a dev or a creator in general, you have to consider if you have an audience for your content. If like 2 people are gonna get it and everyone else stays away, maybe it's not the right genre? Like consider you make a racing game, but it's turtles and they're slowly racing to the end. You might get that one guy that's really into turtles, but 99.9999% will look at a racing game and expect a vehicle of some sort, so when they see your game, it's pass.

TLDR: It's a trashy genre even for porn standards, really irrelevant with even lower interest and looked down onto in real life aka a super small audience. There ain't no reason to make one as a dev when you got thousands of better alternatives if what you're trying is have people play your game.

Actually, you can romance as many companions as you like in Rogue Trader, but at a certain point you'll be confronted by your love interests, they'll demand to choose one. Still, Toy Box can satisfy pretty much every player need, you can allow polyamory literally with a couple of clicks (same goes for other Owlcat games). Also, there are awesome polyamory mods for Dragon Age and Mass Effect games. Iirc, there's also one for Skyrim - at least I seem to recall having several spouses at once :)

BTW, I used to have a polyamorous family of friends (2 cis women and a non-binary person), they were pretty stable and happy for a while. Frankly, I don't get it why it should be a taboo (as long is everyone is actually content, of course).

You might enjoy Jade Empire, where guy-PC can get both girls to fall for him (but to tell truth, I don't remember if it's more "poly" or more of a "harem" ending).

Beside technical "difficulties" (which are more of "not only we need to write romance with A and romance with B, we also need to write romance between A and B" - so, more work, more testing, more status flags to setup - it's not really "difficult", just more work), I think biggest "no point to do it" is that most players want to "win" the relationship, not watch their "target of affection" go around with other people (I hope you get what I mean?).
So if devs implement something, instead of "three people loving each other" it's more of "two people love third person and (barely?) tolerate each other".

Also, while first Overlord had "pick the girl" (but then, they were sisters...), second game allows you to build a 3-women harem.

As someone who is ENM/Poly, I think it would be interesting, if implemented correctly. Less banging everyone (which is fun of course, but not really the same thing), and more social dynamics. It wouldn't necessarily work for every game or work the same way in every.setting.Liberal vs conservative setting/time/genre. How it would work in fantasy would likely be different than sci-fi, historic, horror (do we have horror games with romance options? Nothing like running for your life to get the blood and libido pumping and bring people together and lets face is horror and teen sex go together in the movies!). Lilly might only want monogamy, Sarah might want monogamy but once you've proven yourself, she's open to threesomes. Jane might be open to Poly once you've committed yourself, but she's not going to to be ok if that other person is Tammy or Brittany (their personality's clash), but Courtney would work. Courtney doesn't care who you bang, as long as she's included. I guess it depends how much you want to invest in the system too. A tacted on romance system probably wouldn't be worth while investing in all that, but if character interplay/dynamics are more important, it could work. And lets not forget, dynamics change over time too ^_^

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Dragon Age Inquisition allows polyamory I believe

Polyamory is already pretty complicated in the real world, I guess it's too complicated for most games to handle lol
But hey there will always be Stardew Valley and its many many many polyamory mods.

I mean one point had already been established by people above. It is less about the programming and more the work in writing which makes this a developer nightmare. With each person, the possibilities increase exponential. Of course, you could railroad it into just one specific setup. But at the moment you would remove the point of polyamorous relations.

Work matters aside, it is simply a matter of statistics. Stories/Games are an extention of the author,/developers: their values, desires, experiences. Secondly, it is a reflection of the society they live in: their norms, their taboos and their red lines. Both of these lead to the amount of representation. Why do so much work if so few people have an actual interest in it. Value vs effort is way off. As someone mentioned above they is a rise in this type of relationship. But it is yet unclear if this is a fad of people avoiding commitment or actual lifetime decision. Honestly, considering ask the potential downfalls, I would expect this relationship model being an option for 99 % of the people in the longtime. This makes it uninteresting to develop outside of specific niches.

Which brings us to the last point: the market. As a side piece most people will probably ignore it (then again some snowflakes are easily triggered by some minor content). But then we have again the value vs effort question. As major piece, you risk alienating whole markets. I would be surprised if such games would be published in certain countries. Which is again a value vs effort question similar to translating in languages not much spoken. As fanmods or fangames it might have a chance. But I don't see a chance nor a reason for this to be implemented in more games in the future unless this becomes a more widespread model which I simply doubt.

It's a niche of a niche and the complication isn't worth it. Most game writers seem challenged enough writing even a relationship between two people believably, doing one with multiple people and asking for it to go beyond "please pick which of us you want now so we can end the other storyline" is expecting too much. I've never seen it go beyond one partner being basically OK with anything and so allowing you to woo others, but with no interaction whatsoever between your partners. Implementing D&D mechanics has nothing on writing a combinatorial explosion of polycules, let alone doing it well. Although "combinatorial explosion of polycules" should definitely be the title of someone's PhD dissertation.

What really complicates things like this is that a lot of players demand/expect full freedom, even if this goes against the story: I should be able to romance X and Y and Z regardless of the actual orientation/attitude of those characters, and if that's not possible we'll just install a mod that unlocks it. Writers are pre-empting this now by throwing up their hands and going "fine, I guess everyone is bi/pan/into the player" but of course that means you now have to account for every possible combination. Polyamorous relationships would not be overly burdensome to write if, as in real life, most characters actually weren't into it (or into you, for that matter) and you could only have specific combinations of romances, or even failed romances, but most players wouldn't appreciate this as it intrudes on their escapist fantasy.