Is anyone else surprised by how loosely the otome tag is used on itch.io?

[pyontai]

I don't really browse itch.io much unless something gets recommended to me, so I had no idea there were so many games tagged as otome that allow you to choose your protagonist's gender, including playing as a man.

I only recently found out because people were arguing about it on Twitter, which made me curious enough to check the tag myself. Honestly, I find it pretty weird that nobody seems to check or supervise how the tag is being used.

I originally considered commenting on individual game pages, but I got worried about people jumping on me for it. Besides, there are so many games that arguably don't belong in the category that addressing them individually wouldn't really solve anything.

Instead, I decided to suggest a new tag description that explicitly states that the protagonist has to be female.

I always thought that was one of the basic defining characteristics of otome. Am I missing something, or has the definition become so broad that it barely means anything anymore?

Sorry if this has already been discussed or if this makes anyone angry. I don't mean to offend anyone, and I'll delete this if it's an issue.

 

[laranjinha]

i feel like a lot of people nowadays don't really know what otome means, or even care to understand what it actually entails.
ive seen so many people asking for "otome" recommendations, on tiktok, where the MC is a man with male LIs (?) or asking for "otome" games where you can choose the MC's gender XD
at this point, it feels like the otome tag is being thrown onto pretty much every datsim that isn't a galge.
i even remember having a little argument with a friend once because they genuinely thought DRAMAtical Murder was an otome game...

looking at the top "otome" games on itch.io basically confirms people don't know what otome means anymore.

 

[ninnikuryona]

im not surprised anymore, but sure am disappointed!

people slap the otome tag on anything and everything, because in their eyes, otome is "hetslop", and "hetslop" needs to be fixed (by adding bl to it, obviously). also, they know that otome attracts more attention to their works, which is why theyre unwilling to educate themselves on different genres and labels. thats how we are getting "otome" games with sexless mcs, "otome" games with yaoi fanservice, "otome" games with 1:1 m:f route ratio, "otome" games with TWO yuri routes and ONE male route, etc etc etc. these people dont care about otome as a genre. they only use it as a stepping stone to attract audiences and destroy the gaming safe spaces for women

after all, you never see them try to rewrite the definition of "galge":3c

also, never forget how these same people, when backed into a corner, use the "yuri routes in otome games" card. in actuality they dont care about yuri. they only use it as a shield against criticism. and it pisses me off to no end. and you know damn well that they dont play otome games at all, including those that already have yuri routes!

 

[O cha]

Otome games are, by definition, romance games centered around a female MC and male LIs. I honestly don't understand why elements that don't fall under the otome genre, such as BL or GL, keep getting included in games that are still labeled as otome.

Would the same thing happen in reverse? For example, would a BL game with a single female character suddenly be labeled as otome, or would a GL game with a single male character be considered otome? I wonder if there's just some confusion about what the otome genre actually means.

 

[ninnikuryona]

or would a GL game with a single male character be considered otome?

cough

imo theres no confusion. its deliberate malice

 

[satory]

Not sure if it counts, but, for example, this site doesn't have an "amare" tag, so it's possible to find games with "otome" and "bl" tags at the same time.

As long as you can choose female protagonist, I think it's ok to have an "otome" tag. It fits criteria of "girl romancing male characters".

 

[ninnikuryona]

As long as you can choose female protagonist, I think it's ok to have an "otome" tag. It fits criteria of "girl romancing male characters".

imo theres no good reason to muddy the waters. amare is a perfectly acceptable term for someone whos looking for more "inclusive" titles, so why not just use it instead of a genre with a long history, born out of women not having any choice available in gaming? just like people dont rewrite the definition of bl games to be more "inclusive", theres no need to rewrite the definition of otome games. its okay for genres to be specific

 

[satory]

imo theres no good reason to muddy the waters. amare is a perfectly acceptable term for someone whos looking for more "inclusive" titles, so why not just use it instead of a genre with a long history, born out of women not having any choice available in gaming? just like people dont rewrite the definition of bl games to be more "inclusive", theres no need to rewrite the definition of otome games. its okay for genres to be specific

There also have been discussion about adding tag "amare" here to be more specific with posts, but in the end everyone agreed that "eh, we can do without it".

I also understand people who don't want to look at certain genres. But this discussion is mostly pointless, as we are not itch creators and agreeing on something here is not going to change things

 

[selinee]

I think the poll question is missing an important piece. There are many games on itchio that do have a female protag - and sometimes it's the only option. However a female MC alone does not define the otome genre. What matters is the number of male love interests as well.

I've come across games that have a female MC, but the cast is split evenly between male and female love interests, which means it has a lot of GL elements. I wouldn't call those "otome" either.

Honestly, I find it pretty weird that nobody seems to check or supervise how the tag is being used.

It's actually par for the course. It's annoying yes but that's how those stores operate. We know otome well because we're part of the fandom, but you really can't expect the companies to assign an employee to only check tags and supervise them for thousands of games per day. Nobody has that kind of knowledge across every single game genre, and it's a waste of human resources.

To compromise, Steam allows user to flag wrong tags or assign their own tags (if it's popular enough, it'll get officially attached to the game's tag list). This means the power to curate tags is in the users' hands, but it also leads to abuse like trolls putting the wrong tags on purpose. I honestly like the idea behind the system, but terrible humans always prove that we can't have nice things.

On the other hand itch.io is very "pro-developer." What this means is the developers have the final say in defining their games. If they attach "otome" to their work, well you gotta shut up and accept it, even if it's wrong. The community is "woke" in all the wrong ways too. If you try to speak up (even if politely) about their game misusing the "otome" tag, you'll get downvoted to hell by the fans and called gatekeeping, homophobic and whatever other insults they could come up with at that time. The developers also can just turn off all comments and discussions, so good luck finding any way to voice your opinion A proper review system? Non-existent on that store too.

Instead, I decided to suggest a new tag description that explicitly states that the protagonist has to be female.

I'm not sure I understand you correctly, but there's already a "female protagonist" tag on itch.io.
The issue isn't the tags' existence, the point is DIFFERENT TAGS ALREADY EXIST BUT DEVELOPERS REFUSE TO USE THEM CORRECTLY (I'm not yelling btw, this is for emphasis)
Exhibit A: the Amare tag. This term was coined by the English visual novel community themselves, for the exact use cases that involve every-gender x every-other-gender type of romance games. But so what? Developers would rather tag every dating sim on Earth as "otome" and get the extra marketing, rather than use "amare". It's useless.

The English community will continue to be "woke" and want everything to be made for everyone. Otherwise they will cry about it and feel left out. Misusing tags is treated as some sort of "evolution of the language" and applauded by the community. However, the funny thing is, only "otome" has to evolve to include every gender identity.
Nobody dares ask the same of "eroge" or "yuri" where the male audience reigns supreme. But if you tell them women need our own space for our hobbies, they'll cry about how oppressed they are as LGBT people. Yeah baby because women have been soooo unoppressed throughout history, and even now, amirite?

Am I missing something, or has the definition become so broad that it barely means anything anymore?

You are not missing anything. Anyone who actually cares about "otome" and have functioning brain cells will respect and understand the genre for what it is. It has not evolved to become broad. It's always been focused on the story and hetero romance between female protagonist x male love interests.

But the English community already opened the floodgates, frankly we don't gatekeep hard enough so now that it's come to this point, I don't think we can expect any improvements.

Even on the so-called "IndieOtome" reddit you have people asking funny things. Like WLW dating sims or dating sims that have male mc (???)

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieOtome/comments/1xa2w4l/are_there_any_wlw_dating_sims

https://www.reddit.com/r/IndieOtome/comments/1xnai7m/date_sim_n_game_recommendations

And of course mods do nothing, the members do nothing. Somehow "otome" is being treated as the de facto term for just...dating sims and members of the otome community are expected to give recommendations for anything

Meanwhile devs will continue to tag their 123456789 early access alpha wip demo whatever they want and the fans will coddle them while waiting 365 days for an update (unironically that's the general status of most games I've seen on itch these days)

 

[ninnikuryona]

There also have been discussion about adding tag "amare" here to be more specific with posts, but in the end everyone agreed that "eh, we can do without it".

perhaps its time to revisit the discussion then! because i sometimes see games being uploaded that have "otome" prefix, then i look inside and see that its actually amare (choosable sex mc or sexless mc). so even using both otome + bl prefixes (on animesharing i mean) is not foolproof, since people can just. not use them

 

[pyontai]

I think the poll question is missing an important piece. There are many games on itchio that do have a female protag - and sometimes it's the only option. However a female MC alone does not define the otome genre. What matters is the number of male love interests as well.

Yes, of course! Sorry, I try to keep my texts short because I'm afraid nobody would read them otherwise That's on me.

The English community will continue to be "woke" and want everything to be made for everyone. Otherwise they will cry about it and feel left out. Misusing tags is treated as some sort of "evolution of the language" and applauded by the community. However, the funny thing is, only "otome" has to evolve to include every gender identity.
Nobody dares ask the same of "eroge" or "yuri" where the male audience reigns supreme. But if you tell them women need our own space for our hobbies, they'll cry about how oppressed they are as LGBT people. Yeah baby because women have been soooo unoppressed throughout history, and even now, amirite?

Yes, the discussion on Twitter spiraled down into exactly what you mentioned. Suddenly, every woman is a homophobe who is every phobe and ism you know. I think I even saw somebody jokingly suggest, to mock the fujoshis/fudanshis, that this one BL game should have a female protagonist option. But she got ratioed so badly, and suddenly wishing for something different is a bad thing. Apparently, women weren't oppressed enough, and now they want to invade every otome game by introducing lixli content etc. 🫩

But the English community already opened the floodgates, frankly we don't gatekeep hard enough so now that it's come to this point, I don't think we can expect any improvements.

Even on the so-called "IndieOtome" reddit you have people asking funny things. Like WLW dating sims or dating sims that have male mc (???)

Yeah, I also noticed that this is mainly coming from the English-speaking side (not meant as a generalization), as well as from fujoshis/fudanshis. I even saw a post online arguing that we should move with the times and change the narrative because they can't expect the Western world to conform to something so narrow I genuinely had to wonder what I was even reading at some point.

Isn't the Otome Game subreddit also a bit weird in that regard? They don't seem to specify that the protagonist has to be a playable woman, but rather allow both men and women to be playable protagonists.

Sorry for the long reply. I still didn't figure this site out

 

[ninnikuryona]

Isn't the Otome Game subreddit also a bit weird in that regard? They don't seem to specify that the protagonist has to be a playable woman, but rather allow both men and women to be playable protagonists.

yeah. indie otome sub is pure trash in terms of otome discussions, but otome games sub is no better. if im not wrong, a couple of years ago someone posted a lixli fanart, which led to people obviously expressing their displeasure. of course the accusations of homophobia began spreading, and it ended up in the sub allowing anything with a female protagonist in it. nowadays, it feels like people are way more eager to discuss amare games there than otome. i still see discussions on "which lis do you ship together??", which is just. unheard of lol. so if you really want to discuss otome games with people who actually love the genre, its better to just chat with japanese/chinese girlies

 

[pyontai]

yeah. indie otome sub is pure trash in terms of otome discussions, but otome games sub is no better. if im not wrong, a couple of years ago someone posted a lixli fanart, which led to people obviously expressing their displeasure. of course the accusations of homophobia began spreading, and it ended up in the sub allowing anything with a female protagonist in it. nowadays, it feels like people are way more eager to discuss amare games there than otome. i still see discussions on "which lis do you ship together??", which is just. unheard of lol. so if you really want to discuss otome games with people who actually love the genre, its better to just chat with japanese/chinese girlies

Yeah, I don't really get the appeal of stuff like lixli, but fujoshis/fudanshis are everywhere in fandom spaces, so it's hard to avoid them. No matter how many words and hashtags I mute, they still show up in the comments or simply don't tag their drawings properly, so they end up on my feed anyway :(

I would love to discuss otome games with them, but I can't speak Chinese, and my Japanese reading/writing skills aren't good enough yet Thank you for the suggestion, though! I hope that one day the English-speaking community will catch up with them.

 

[ninnikuryona]

Yeah, I don't really get the appeal of stuff like lixli, but fujoshis/fudanshis are everywhere in fandom spaces, so it's hard to avoid them. No matter how many words and hashtags I mute, they still show up in the comments or simply don't tag their drawings properly, so they end up on my feed anyway :(

yea, thats real bad. i think if you cant control your tastes so much you are seriously shipping lis with each other, you should at least have enough tact to not speak about it. especially in the open. i mean, there are tons of otome fans among bl players too, right? but you dont usually see discussions on which li would be better suited with a woman. in fact, youd probably get eaten alive for that, and for a good reason! i wish people respected the genres enough to be normal:( (and im saying this as someone who loves otome but also reads bl!)

I would love to discuss otome games with them, but I can't speak Chinese, and my Japanese reading/writing skills aren't good enough yet Thank you for the suggestion, though! I hope that one day the English-speaking community will catch up with them.

i get it!! my japanese reading skills are very amateur, and i cant read a single word in chinese..... but i have some japanese and chinese mutuals on twitter, and we sometimes talk to each other, and they seem fine with me using english! they are even kind enough to explain terms that were incorrectly translated by translation softwares.. of course if would be ideal to know the language, but i think its fine for the most part even if you dont speak it!:D

 

[pyontai]

yea, thats real bad. i think if you cant control your tastes so much you are seriously shipping lis with each other, you should at least have enough tact to not speak about it. especially in the open. i mean, there are tons of otome fans among bl players too, right? but you dont usually see discussions on which li would be better suited with a woman. in fact, youd probably get eaten alive for that, and for a good reason! i wish people respected the genres enough to be normal:( (and im saying this as someone who loves otome but also reads bl!)

Yeah, I used to be into BL as well, but after seeing almost every series and female character I was a fan of get torn apart by fujoshis/fudanshis and men, I started developing nothing but negative feelings towards them. Eventually, I stopped consuming BL media altogether and stopped engaging with those fandoms. I even block the names of series I'm currently watching, just in case those kinds of people show up on my feed.

i get it!! my japanese reading skills are very amateur, and i cant read a single word in chinese..... but i have some japanese and chinese mutuals on twitter, and we sometimes talk to each other, and they seem fine with me using english! they are even kind enough to explain terms that were incorrectly translated by translation softwares.. of course if would be ideal to know the language, but i think its fine for the most part even if you dont speak it!:D

I might give it a try, then, if I can manage to come out of my shell a little

 

[ninnikuryona]

Yeah, I used to be into BL as well, but after seeing almost every series and female character I was a fan of get torn apart by fujoshis/fudanshis and men, I started developing nothing but negative feelings towards them. Eventually, I stopped consuming BL media altogether and stopped engaging with those fandoms. I even block the names of series I'm currently watching, just in case those kinds of people show up on my feed.

I UNDERSTAND SO WELL!!!!!!!!! i still have my favourite bl titles, but its a bit hard to engage with them after multiple unpleasant interactions with fujoshi;w; weirdly enough, only visual novels seem okay to me.. i guess thats because manga always attracts a bigger audience, and the bigger the fandom, the easier it is to see harsh opinions.. i wonder how it works....

I might give it a try, then, if I can manage to come out of my shell a little

good luck good luck!!!!:D:D ive seen both jp and cn girlies being surprised at how en girlies share the same views as them, so i believe there are tons of good and insightful interactions to have:D!!!

 

[selinee]

yeah. indie otome sub is pure trash in terms of otome discussions, but otome games sub is no better. if im not wrong, a couple of years ago someone posted a lixli fanart, which led to people obviously expressing their displeasure. of course the accusations of homophobia began spreading, and it ended up in the sub allowing anything with a female protagonist in it. nowadays, it feels like people are way more eager to discuss amare games there than otome. i still see discussions on "which lis do you ship together??", which is just. unheard of lol. so if you really want to discuss otome games with people who actually love the genre, its better to just chat with japanese/chinese girlies

Oh yeah I saw one of those posts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/otomegames/comments/1uawnfc/in_honor_of_pride_month_what_are_your_favorite

Otome games, in which the whole point is to focus on hetero relationships, celebrating pride month.
....
Wild.
There's a month to celebrate your identity, good for you, but why do it in a space where - need to emphasize again - the focus is on a hetero romance game genre?
Judging from the deleted comments, it was clearly controversial but I don't understand why the mods let it go through anyway??
And what they said there weren't exactly nice either. Bi-coded? What does that even mean? With all due respect to "the community", I don't think stereotyping anything as gay or bi-coded is helping their case.

"char x char is better than canon pairings". Bruh. "Nobody can tell me char x char aren't banging." Double bruh.
It's almost as if the whole thread was made for people who dislike the hetero part of otome games to say whatever the fuck they want.
I didn't expect deep analysis in comments (mostly because queer shipping material should be non-existent in otome to begin with) but still got disappointed.

Such a shame that twitter is a drama hellhole and Reddit subs don't even respect the otome genre itself. We've definitely got some hardcore otome fans there, but the mods don't bother cleaning up the posts, thus we have to share a place with people who are clearly there for the "amare" dating sims. It's a weird shared house situation despite the name of the sub.
There are BL and GL subs, go there, or create your amare sub and patiently build it up. They're too lazy and ignorant to do even that

 

[ninnikuryona]

Oh yeah I saw one of those posts.

https://www.reddit.com/r/otomegames/comments/1uawnfc/in_honor_of_pride_month_what_are_your_favorite

Otome games, in which the whole point is to focus on hetero relationships, celebrating pride month.
....
Wild.

in honour of pride month, as part of the community (filthy bisexual that i am), why dont they highlight actual otome games with yuri routes? i know there are not that many, but like.. if there WAS a demand, surely there would be more games? but since you can count them on one hand pretty much, what conclusion can you draw?...:^)
its almost like.. they are just bl fetishists.. and they dont care about "queerness" what-so-ever..... hmmmmm you tell me........:D

its frustrating how you cant even criticize this behaviour, because you immediately get labelled as "homophobic", even if youre the furthest thing away from being straight. and unfortunately, otome players are just so nice they are deathly afraid of being labelled as something terrible. not me though WWW sorry, but not shipping yaoi in games that are opposite to yaoi is not homophobic in the slightest. similarly, shipping yaoi in these games does not make you an ally. i wish they would understand that