the gf simulator panic around lucia is getting old

Saw a bunch of takes about GTA 6 being a "gf simulator" and it's confusing. I'm a woman who plays games, reads smut, did the whole BG3 romance thing with sex scenes and everything. If I had a boyfriend I wouldn't care that he's playing GTA. Lucia isn't a real person he's going to sleep with. The relationship stuff is a big part of the story, sure, but it's not a dating sim.

Some of the panic over pixelated female characters feels like people treating them as actual competition. I'm not trying to dunk on anyone, I just don't get it. Part of me thinks a lot of these women have never picked up a controller. If they actually played GTA they'd see what the fuss is about. There are also games aimed more at women like Love and Deep Space, and if we stopped acting like romance in games is weird, more women would probably play alongside their partners.

And the "it's cheating" argument doesn't hold up. This isn't porn or OnlyFans where real people are involved. Fictional characters aren't victims of anything, they don't face misogyny, because they don't exist. Yeah, some are overly sexualized, but that happens in movies and TV too. Are you going to ban your boyfriend from watching those?

I'd love it if game studios started sexualizing male characters in a female gaze way more often. But even if they don't, fans already make suggestive art and fanfics of those characters, so the oversexualization goes both ways. If anything, more women playing GTA 6 is probably the best outcome here.

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Source: r/GTA6 · Curated content.