These are daddies that you can’t help but want to please – and they have become a key element of mainstream games design. Some modern characters are more overtly paternal, such as Joel from post-apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us, Booker DeWitt from Bioshock Infinite and Nathan Drake’s surrogate father figure Sully in Uncharted. Think Geralt, the gruff-voiced monster slayer from from The Witcher, or Mitsurugi, the elder statesman from the Soul Caliber series of fighting games. An exact definition is harder to pin down it is usually refers to a character, who is larger and typically older than the average player, someone serious but with a sense of humour – someone you look up to even when you’re playing the game as them. The term has been around for a while, and has started to filter into video game design in recent years. First, there’s the “daddy” trend in current pop culture, where “daddy” means an older man who is sexually interested in younger men or women. Well, Dream Daddy’s success is indicative of a confluence of multiple themes becoming popular right now. So how did a game about dads dating each other - a relatively niche subgenre of an already niche kind of game - become number one on Steam, a PC store with over 125m users?
Through conversation, dialogue choices and mini-games, you will try to impress those dads until they like you enough to take it to the next level (although there is nothing more explicit than the implication of sex and the occasional glimpse of boxer briefs). They’re all looking for love, and love just happens to look like whatever you’ve designed your character to look like. You’re ready to move on and meet a bunch of eligible men within your first hour or two of arriving. In Dream Daddy, your character (who you get to intricately customise) moves into a new town with your 18-year-old daughter in tow, after recently being widowed.
The game works like most other dating simulations, a genre that’s been around for over 30 years, but doesn’t often get mainstream coverage – usually, you follow a story, meet potential partners, chat to them, date them and see if you can end up with the nicest. In Dream Daddy, you are also one of those dads, and they want to date you. These are dads that wear loud, cat-print shirts, that have pierced eyebrows and purple hair, dads that listen to cool bands because they want to and not because they’re trying to impress younger co-workers. If your idea of “dad” is, well, your dad, the stereotypical papa with that telltale horseshoe of hair and an interest in old cars, new golf clubs and calling you up to ask if you’ve done your taxes yet, then think again – these are dads for our modern age.
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