AUTHOR’S NOTE: This series of posts discusses games which often have very explicit content. This series can be considered very, very Not Safe For Work, although no photos or screencaps contained within will be R-rated, only the text itself.
In this piece, Jon and Justin (the Two Bi Men, more info here) discuss Coming Out On Top, a dating simulator from Obscurasoft. Spoilers follow. Here’s the official description of the game, which is available for purchase here: The first gay dating sim/visual novel from Obscurasoft, Coming Out on Top follows college student Mark Matthews as he busts out of the closet and engages in all manner of adventure, all the while meeting a multitude of hot guys. Whether he does the right thing, wrong thing, stupid thing, or funny thing is up to you.
Jon: Coming Out On Top was an odd experience for me. As my first proper dating sim, I guess I wasn’t quite expecting how straight-up porny it would be, let alone how linear. I don’t think that going into this I actually knew much about to expect, but the sheer reality of “keep going and you’ll see a dick” was unexpected. It was definitely wish-fulfilment, but I suppose I wasn’t really into it on that basis. I chose a few random buttons and a man ejaculated on my face. So, similar gameplay to Grindr, really.
Justin: I went into COOT pretty excited to be honest. I’m fascinated by coming out narratives having had difficulty the process myself. I looked forward to a game that allowed my to see the experiences of others and help me frame the difficulties I’d had. I wouldn’t say that I wanted to relive the experience/s but I did want to see other stories that were about fitting in and feeling more comfortable in one’s own skin. COOT doesn’t really provide that, instead we see one young mans journey to represent as broad a range of stereotypical sexual scenarios involving two men as possible.
Jon: I’m sort of at the opposite end of the scale. I’m very much over coming out narratives, which seems awful and jaded but in a way is down to the fact that so much of queer media is revolving around coming out stories. It’s an inescapable phenomenon, so I did appreciate that the coming out itself was abbreviated. Simple, straight to the point, the coming out happens and… then the realities of what that bookends didn’t quite play out. Outside of nervousness during the player character’s first time at a (really, really up-market) gay bar, he’s characterised much more like an established queer. That probably makes for a ‘better’ game, but it felt disingenuous, and left the power structures of the whole thing very, very shaky.
Do most people drive to a gay club within minutes of coming out? That seems fast.
Justin: I think we wanted something similar, the jump from “I’m gay” to “Bukkake my face” was very abrupt. I didn’t just want porn is what I’m getting at. My experience with dating sims leans towards more romantic ones and I hoped for something similar here. I actually really enjoyed the mundane non-sexual aspects (choosing to study or work, etc) more than the sex itself.
Jon: I know I certainly thought so. That definitely feeds into the wish-fulfilment aspect that I mentioned earlier. The game makes no attempt at hiding that, inescapably, sex is the goal. That it opens with a coming out, which frames the experience of the player, does end up making the rest of the story somewhat unstable. While sleeping with the upstairs neighbour, for example, is a choice like any other, it also encourages you very much to lean into that moment. While I’ll never be caught encouraging not doing so, it does have the side-effect of making the edge between story and gameplay very visible. COOT is three things – a Coming Out Story, an (actual-in-bars-and-restaurants-with-small-talk-and-flirting) Dating Sim, and a Sex Game. Where those edges butt up isn’t the smoothest of transitions by any means.
Justin: Absolutely, coming out is a real, complex and sometimes painful experience. You aren’t always doing it just to get laid which in many ways is how COOT seems to look at it.
Jon: Coming out is also a continual process, mediated and filtered through every person you meet. Contrary to popular belief, there isn’t a big flashing light above you that says “GAY GAY GAY” or “HELLA BI” or whatever, you do have to actively decide how that happens. Yes, you do it when you see someone you’re into more often than a typical stranger, but you’d have to be surrounded by constant beautiful people to never do it again.
Justin: The beauty standards the game adheres to are problematic to say the least as well. Penises are huge, abs are cut and bodies are hairless, ageless and smooth. That’s all well and good if we see the game as a fantasy narrative but as we both said this is an odd mixture of fantasy and reality and yes, bumps and scrapes occur.
Jon: It is a fantasy, in a way. I call Dragon Age the most popular dating sim and it’s almost unsettling to think that a Tolkeinesque fantasy has more body diversity in queer romance than an actual queer dating simulator. It certainly signals some things that could undergo a lot of critique, but I appreciate the artificial diversity within it too – after all, most characters can have a beard if you want! I hate how cynical that feature makes me feel about the whole thing.
Justin: That is completely spot on. I’m generally more attracted to bear-ish, bearded men and the addition of “beards” seemed weird and more than a little pointless.Also there is no definite “type” that the player gravitates towards, all the NPCs are masculine presenting and really vanilla in style, with minor exceptions. I think I was worried by the way COOT seems to make a fetish of the main character. I think we talked about this the other day. There’s a point where after you come out to your mother (who as a super liberal is typically understanding) she asks you if you are a power-bottom. That’s the kind of joke that needs to have a context before it can just be thrown around.
NSFW, avert your and your coworkers eyes immediately if you’re in a workplace environment.
Jon: The power bottom joke is such a strange beast. COOT is a comedy, it makes no bones about it – but it’s the coming out story that’s a comedy. The dating situations are heightened but, for the most part, fairly serious. It’s hard to find anything particularly funny about much of the ’emotional turmoil’ stuff with Ian, jokes about how he’s totally hilarious because he’s a ‘straight’ guy that likes stuff in his ass aside. Actually, let’s be honest – it’s a red flag that the straight guy who likes ass play is secretly into dudes and will totally bang you if you ‘win’ the game. I don’t remember seeing the word ‘bi’ thrown around at all, which was really sad because there’s a potential bi foursome in the middle of the game that could have been great! More troubling that it buys very much into the non-traditional-masculinity-is-queer trope, though. While sure, I’m all for queerness being non-traditional anything, Ian was a much more interesting character to me when he was a non-traditional hetero than a secret queer.
Justin: I loved Ian and really wanted to find out his story. He was BY FAR the character with the most interesting sexuality, but he turns out to be what? A Prize? You get him for being the most non-threatening gay? I would have loved to have been dragged into group sex with Ian and his ex (which totally could have happened) and maybe entering into a poly-relationship with them, which seems very much in-character; but of course COOT isn’t about that, it isn’t structurally about finding love – it’s about sexing your way to some kind of personal gay sex nirvana. I wonder how much input there was from actual gay men while creating this game. It feels cruel to point out, and I’m not saying that hetero writers can’t create believable characters from outside their experiences, but this totally felt like it was written from the perspective of someone with very specific fantasies.
Jon: Authenticity is such a minefield, and I always do my best to live up to the Death of the Author (especially now that the author has been Lazarus Pit-ed thanks to social media telling us exactly what they meant). I can totally see a queer person writing this story, to be honest, but that’s not necessarily a sign of authenticity of experience. Queer life is not a monolith, authenticity is largely bunk, but coming to it with my experience it plays very much like erotica reads. Yes, that’s arguably the function of a game in which you fuck dudes, but I’d argue it’s not disingenuous so much as split over those various forms of the game. Is it porn? Is it about love? Is it about coming out? I’d say that confusion of modality is the best representation of coming out the game has – once you’re out, what the hell do you actually do? I feel like this is an issue we’re going to hit a lot – how can the folk in dating sims NOT possibly seem like prizes for the right actions?
Justin: But dating isn’t just about prizes, it isn’t just about wining. You can fuck people without the slightest bit of effort or you build complex relationships that last a long time and are non-sexual over many years. COOT shows neither of those, instead trapping you in an odd space between the two, you talk, share interests (of a sorts) and sex other dudes but it falls between two (sexy) stools. You aren’t brash enough to just say “lets fuck” and you aren’t commited enough to say “I love you”. It might sound odd, but it reminds me most of that much maligned genre “Couples Porn”, where explicit sex is treasured as a lingua franca capable of injecting passion into the lives of its protagonists.
Grindr: The Game, somewhat unashamedly
Jon: Funny you should bring up couples porn – I’m immediately reminded of a very specific feature of ‘bi’ MMF pornography where the last 5 to 10 minutes are almost exclusively about the two men. No matter what the space, marketed male/male sexuality is ultimately about that male/male-ness first and foremost. The latter section of COOT is no exception – Penny, your faithful stalwart, disappears somewhat. At the very least, she did in my playthrough. I suppose the argument here is that COOT isn’t a queer experience, but a very stark example of a lot of queer media. The queerness is an event, rather than part of a natural ebb and flow. In a dating sim this is unavoidable – the whole point is that queerness is ingrained in it and achievable in all things – but the “let’s fuck” forcedness brings me back to that idea of Grindr: The Game, an explicit but politically sterile representation of fetished male/male sexuality. Perhaps the other options aren’t so much this (although I find that hard to believe when the routes I didn’t take were Hot Professor, Hot Jock and Hot Military Man), but I just can’t argue with the notion that COOT is a very queer mainstream product in that the expression of man-on-man action it runs with is ultimately all about that dong.
Justin: I really wanted to just look at COOT as a game that I would play & have fun. But it’s not that easy. Sex exists on a binary in this game in a way that surprised me. Call me naive if you must, but I felt that sexuality would be represented as a more rich and fluid picture given the game is about nascent queerness as much as it is just banging dudes.
Jon: It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the other games we play. I doubt Hatoful Boyfriend will conjure these issues being functionally ‘hetero’ (although oddly so). There’s always an impulse to overcriticise flaws in representation, but I think we’re on the same page here. With the politics of queerness, the erotica / dating sim scaffolding doesn’t quite support the rest of the experience.
Justin: You want a lightly humored problematic game which features a lot of cock then I suppose its fine? I guess? I just felt confused and frustrated.
Jon: Sometimes I want humorous dong, but I guess I’ve got Grindr for that.
Justin: So, what do you rate this game overall?
Jon: I give this three awkward dates before we break up.
Justin: Honestly, I give it two dates at the most.
Obscurasoft’s Coming Out on Top is available now from their website – Obscurasoft.com.
Jon tweets at , Justin tweets at .
