Dream Club imitates life, especially the soul-sucking part

4:40 PM on 02.20.2009   |   Brad Rice

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Host clubs and hostess bars are big in Japan. Really big. Osaka, where I studied, is host central. Watching those guys work their magic was something special. But that's for another time over on Japanator.

So, D3, the publisher of the Naruto: Clash of Ninja series and Work Time Fun, is coming out with a new game called Dream Club. This game lets you live out the exciting life of a hostess...patron. That's right. Instead of playing the game where you get to entertain needy customers, you get to play the guy who pays her money to talk to you.

But that's not all! Nope, you get to work your ass off doing odd jobs just so you can meet the girls again. If you've paid them en-- er, earned their affection, you can start exchanging e-mails with them during the week, and possibly even date them (for more money, I'm sure). And then? Use your money to buy them gifts.

Look, Japan. We need to talk.

This shit has got to stop. There are so many things wrong with this game that I really have a hard time fathoming why people would buy it. But then I remember: it's Japan.

Let's start from the beginning. This is a game where the reward is you pay a girl to talk to you. Yes, you can build up to a possible relationship, but I'll get to that later. To me, this seems like a step down on the ego ladder from playing a dating sim, where at least you're just trying to win over the heart of your childhood friend or something like that.

Host and hostess clubs are meant to be a way for people to escape reality for a price -- they pay someone who will be friendly with them, make them feel happy, and probably even flirt with them quite a bit. Then they go home, work at their job, earn money, and repeat the cycle again. So to me, it seems totally asinine to work at a real job, earn money, and buy this game to use as an escape from your everyday drudgery. Yet in the game, all you're doing is working at a job, earning money, and then turning it over to a virtual girl to entertain you for a bit.

I'm not crazy here, right? This does seem ridiculous, right?

So, say you work up to the point where you can start dating them. Congratulations! You've just gone through all this drudgery so that you could play a dating sim. Why not go and pop in Tokimemi Memorial again and just save yourself some anguish? I mean, the girl's a hostess -- she's bound to have some baggage with her that's going to be fun to find out.

I'm serious about the "fun to find out" part. Let me quote Canned Dogs:

They’ve got an interactive drinking system called IIS where you use the analog stick to control your drinking and try to get the girl drunk to get to hear stuff she’d normally not talk about. Also if they really like you, you can order for karaoke where the girl will go on stage to sing for you.

So, you get a girl drunk enough to tell you her personal secrets. That's not creepy, not in the least! God forbid you, I don't know, sit down and get to know her -- have her actually trust you as a human being. But instead, they recommend turning to alcohol to weasel out those secrets from the girl. Way to promote healthy behaviors, Japan!

This may just be my Western perspective on the whole thing, but I can't really see this game as fun. It's hopping on the Idolmaster bandwagon, but that in-and-of itself isn't too bad. Idolmaster put you in a role -- one that you as a player wouldn't normally be in -- and have some fun with it. But Dream Club essentially has you running around doing real-life things for something you could easily do in real life. Sure, you're not spending any actual money on the girls, just an exorbitant amount of time.

Time that could be spent going out and socializing with people.