Love it or hate it, Super Seducer creator Richard La Ruina doesn’t really care. At least, that’s what he’s been telling fans when explaining the direction they can expect from Super Seducer 3, the third game in his dating simulator series.
Richard La Ruina is a self-proclaimed pick-up artist, dating guru, and author. He’s written several books trying to help men learn how to flirt with women and one day decided to take the next natural step in his professional career: he made a dating game. La Ruina has said in interviews that he isn’t the most tech savvy person, but felt that creating a dating simulator could be a good way to help people learn to flirt. The live-action format of his games allow players to study body language and tone. But beyond those stated intentions, the games are hard to read. Both Super Seducer 1 and 2 play out like a parody or joke game with some adult situations and dialogue thrown in, but La Ruina suggests that these games are supposed to be taken as serious advice.
Whether these games are truly supposed to be serious, or just seriously uncomfortable, La Ruina has made a definitive statement on where he stands with critics. In the “about the game” section on the Super Seducer 3 Steam page, La Ruina states that he hasn’t taken any feedback from critics into account when making the newest installment to his series. Instead, he listened only to fans of the games and what they wanted. What they want, according to La Ruina, are realistic scenarios and “super sexy” ladies.
Many have criticized La Ruina’s games for promoting predatory behavior or being exploitative, but La Ruina continues to stick by his work. Even with the questionable content and even more questionable advice, they apparently sell enough to warrant a third game. A Kickstarter campaign was created for the first title, but the finished product rife with continuity problems, bad writing, and bad acting. La Ruina even stated that he and his crew didn’t do any pre-production work and would often simply show up the day of filming and “wing it.” It seems that, despite the many problems with the first game, La Ruina was still able to garner a cult following. After finding massive success with the first game, the second game didn’t need any crowdfunding.
Despite this success and "cult following", however, the games continue to earn some well-deserved slack from critics and gamers alike. The game often portrays women as set dressing and little more than a means to an end. For a game that's supposed to teach men to communicate with women, it gives women very little say in the matter. Most likely, the thing that will be learned from this game, is that if you talk at women using a very specific sequence of cringey dialogue options, you'll be able to sleep with them. Maybe La Ruina should have taken at least some critical advice when creating the third game to avoid any more questionable portrayals of women.
Source: Steam