The stealthy PUA approaches his prey from behind
By David Futrelle
Now, I don’t really understand dating sims, and I’ve never played one, but I nonetheless think it’s safe to say that no other title in the genre is worse or more cringeworthy than Super Seducer, a choose-your-own adventure video game guide to pickup artistry put together by Richard La Ruina, an honest-to-goodness, sort-of-well-known, professional pickup guru who actually makes a living running expensive “bootcamps” for hapless wannabe lady killers. It’s scheduled to come out in a few days on Steam.
How bad is it? Well, here’s La Ruina’s own trailer for the game. See if you can make it all the way through it without facepalming or slowly banging your head against your desk or a nearby wall.
As you can see, the basic premise is simple: La Ruina shows himself in assorted contrived pickup scenarios in the form of ten “missions” ranging from “day game” street pickup to pestering women in restaurants.
You choose what he does at various stages along the way. When you make the “correct” choice, the Hot Babe reacts positively and the scene cuts to La Ruina sitting on a bed with two scantily clad hotties to tell you just why your choice was such a genius one. Undercutting his argument somewhat is the fact that the two women he’s hired to sit on the bed with him look as grim as it is possible for human beings to look; kidnap victims look more cheerful than these two.
When you make any of the “incorrect” choices, the Hot Babes who are La Ruina’s targets in the videos tell him to fuck off. They generally give much more convincing performances in these scenes than in those in which they have to pretend to like him. It’s as if they’re not even acting!
Here’s a very brief clip from the game showing one of these little dating mishaps:
After each of these painful virtual rejections, La Ruina appears again on his bed to tell you how you fucked up. If you did sort of badly, the Hot Babes sitting with him have all their clothes back on. If you did really badly, they’re not even there.
If you’re a space alien, or a human male who has never in his life had any kind of meaningful interaction with a human female outside of your own family, I suppose you could learn a few things from La Ruina.
Here are some of the pickup techniques that Super Seducer suggests are bad:
- Trying to grab a woman’s butt moments after meeting her on the street
- Pretending you are blind and walking into her with your arms in front like some kind of cartoon zombie
- Breaking the ice with a woman by telling her how much you’d like to perform cunnilingus on her
- Asking a woman if she has sex with her dog
- Sneaking up behind women at a club and smelling their hair
- Trying to convince a woman you’ve just met to come to your apartment so you can wash her hair
- Rubbing your crotch suggestively in broad daylight
- Literally taking your dick out
So if you weren’t clear on any of these things, I guess you know now not to try them!
Trouble is, La Ruina’s “correct” choices are nearly as bad as the incorrect ones. He recommends that men stop directly in front of women they want to talk to as they walk down the street, blocking their path and essentially forcing the women to interact with them. He urges men to pester women reading books or giving other indications that they want to be left alone. He teaches men it’s fine to lie and manipulate to get women into bed. He just wants you to not be too blatant about it.
Needless to say, Super Seducer is not exactly getting rave reviews, particularly on YouTube. Here are a couple of the shorter reviews I found, all of which feature extensive and utterly cringeworthy “gameplay” footage. (La Ruina tried to get some critical videos containing game footage taken down for copyright infringement, but has apparently backed off.)
Enjoy!
If you really want to immerse yourself in this awfulness, there are a variety of hours-long playthrough videos.
This one is five hours long, if you have an entire evening that needs ruining.
And if you really want to put yourself through hell, the legendary Matt Forney — yes, that Matt Forney, one of the grossest and most despicable humans on planet earth — has made his own playthrough, in three parts (so far), with a total time upwards of five hours. Who the hell is actually watching this shit?
Demonstrating his keen grasp of journalism ethics, Forney has written a cheerfully positive review of Super Seducer on his web site. The post is literally sponsored by the game maker. The game maker paid him to review it.
As you may recall, Forney was an avid supporter of GamerGate, the reactionary harassment campaign against women and “SJWs” that liked to pretend it was a crusade for ethics in game journalism.
Super Seducer, a game only paid shills could love!
I really think most people could learn a lot more from that Japanese game in which you date pigeons.
H/T — Thanks to Joel Williams for tipping me off to this masterpiece