This discourse was going around twitter today apparently and im curious takes from here.
Which is it for you?
For me i prefer playersexuality. I want to be able to romance any romance option regardless of my charachters gender. I dont want to be stuck with only Arcade Gannon if i want to do m/m
I agree that sexuality can be important to a charachter. But if you wanna do that, seems like the charachter can just not be a romance option.
That said. In RPGs devs can do what they want. You want a charachter to be monosexual and a romance option, have at it. (Unless theyre all straight, then fuck you).
I do kinda hate what The Sims did by adding monosexuality. Felt like such a virtue signal that made the game less fun. All Sims being pansexual was always more fun for me. Especially since i usually play that game as a pansexual slut. Unless i decide my player Sim is mono, but thats on the player's end.
Monosexual townies in the Sims should at least be optional (is it? Idk havent played Sims 4 since this update).
I do not want to make a new thread about that. Its my thread and i dont mind being off topic. If you want to explain why The Sims is not a game, do it here.
The core point here is that if "manipulating NPCs" teaches the player a harmful lesson then it doesnt matter whether the game is porn or just a romance sidequest. The context would not change the lesson in this case. Its functionally the same, it jusf changes whether there's a hardcore sex scene at the end or not.
Porn consumers might actually be less likely to apply such a thing judicioisly. You have way too much faith that if you put it in the category of porn people will change how they process it. I think people who cant seperate fantasy from reality are going to do so regardless. Consumers of pornographic VNs tend to have even worse views of women than regular capital G gamers. Certainly worse views of women than SDV fans, many of whom are women. And SDV has dating mechanics, but a very wholesome fandom.
All in all theres no reason to limit what devs are and arent allowed to creativly explore. Because even with your weird idiosyncratic view of what art is, it still doesnt disqualify video games from being a medium through which people creativly express themselves.
Anyway, this "Hayes code/comics code is good actually" type thinking is extremally weird.
Like I said, this already happens much more with pornographic VN fans than with fans of farm sims where you can get married, The Sims fanbase (overwhelmingly female fanbase btw), or even people who play Bioware games. Your theory here has no basis in reality.