The Importance of Relatedness in Video Games

One example of this from from video games that I love is like let's go way back but we can probably think of more recent examples of this. There were three romanceable NPCs in the first Dragon Age game Morgan, Lalliana and Zevron. When I played those games I did multiple playthroughs I would always try to string each of those characters along as long as I could before eventually committing to one of them and locking the others out. While we like choices per self-determination theory forcing them on us isn't always a bad thing it can lead to some pretty memorable decisions and gameplay and role play moments.