It raises the question of authenticity: how do we view works where the creators share the same marginalized identity as their characters, versus when they’re writing outside their own experiences? While researching dating sims featuring gay male romances, I found that many of the mainstream titles–as found on Steam and the Apple app store - were created by women and/or straight men, and were categorized as “yaoi” or “boys love,” a niche market that is often viewed as catering towards women. Although both of them call themselves “dads” on Twitter often, neither are fathers, much less queer fathers who have personally experienced the gay dating scene.
The game was published by Game Grumps’ Vernon Shaw and Leighton Gray Vernon Shaw is a straight man, and Leighton Gray is a queer woman. It’s perhaps important to note that neither of the Dream Daddy creators share the same orientation and identity as their characters. Using social media to try and confirm a crush’s sexuality before pursuing is yet another side of dating in a gay scene that Dream Daddy skips over. You don’t hang out with these men under the pretense of romance, but through your shared experiences as fathers, several of which come from previous relationships with women, which begs the follow-up question of why anyone in this game assumes the other is at all interested in men without at least bothering to confirm. Kenneth Shepard at Paste had similar comments, noting that the game’s date-initiating mechanism–where you message the dads platonically through Dadbook, a Facebook analogue–is out of step with the gay dating experience: It doesn’t capture the experience of what it feels like to be a gay man and fails to engage with or invoke gay culture in a meaningful way. Tim Mulkerin at Mic points out:Īs a gay man, I found Dream Daddy ’s lack of explicitly queer language incredibly frustrating… Dream Daddy ’s biggest failing is that it doesn’t feel like a game made for or by gay people. While “daddy” certainly plays off a gay archetype, and while it’s that very archetype that marketing jokingly riffed off of, that’s not really what the game engages with. For all its emphasis on queer daddies, the game does not actually ever specify any dad’s sexual orientation, and all self-identifying words like bi, gay, and trans are noticeably absent. On the flip side, should it be hailed as the most revolutionary visual novel of the year? The game has not been without its criticisms. Laura Hudson at Wired writes, “It’s a subversion of dating sims that is not just the best dating sim I’ve ever played, but also one of the best games of the year.”ĭream Daddy has certainly received effusive praise for being a soft and sweet depiction of male romance.
The game, by and large, has less to do with romance, and more with you learning how to handle your grief and social anxiety and, well, be a good dad.
When the game opens you find out that your dad has recently lost a spouse, and you can specify whether that spouse was male or female, and whether your daughter is biological or adopted. One dad is overweight, and another dad is confirmed by the creators as trans. Of the seven romanceable dads, at least three are noticeably men of color. It’s not often a dating sim comes along where one, you play as a man, two, you play as a parent, and three, you play as a queer parent who romances other queer parents. A month after Dream Daddy’s release, and it already has a massive outpouring of fan art, cosplay, and community support.Īnd the game itself is indeed notable in numerous ways. Fandometrics, a database that tracks Tumblr trends, reported that Dream Daddy dethroned Overwatch as the most talked about game on Tumblr, after Overwatch had held that spot for nine months. With “dadbod” entering our social lexicon, calling hot celebrities “daddy” a common online occurrence, and “daddy” being very much a type within the gay community, it’s clearly an idea that struck the right chord for many the official Dream Daddy Twitter has over 75,000 followers, and it made Steam’s top ten best sellers list in the first week of its release.
The pitch for the Dream Daddy dating simulator was simple: play as a queer daddy who gets to romance other, much hotter, queer daddies.