Most LLMs give very lengthy responses compared to user input and can carry a conversation on their own. They're too easy.
The winning dating sim for social anxiety will program a Dark Souls-level of difficulty dating sim in which the person is standoffish, hateful, and unstable, constantly rejecting you for social rules you don't understand.
I don't know if that'll be good for society but incels will play it.
Don't date people who are standoffish and hateful.
But if everyone you date is standoffish and hateful, the constant factor is you.
It's not really about memorizing arbitrary social rules. It's about the ability to picture what the situation looks like from their point of view. Some people don't do that naturally, but it's a skill that can be learned. And you won't learn it by memorizing rules. You have to learn how to mentally model other people's minds.
And a fun game is to mentally model someone completely unhinged. Otherwise, players won't be interested.
It's not interesting to mentally model the "helpful friendly AI assistant/girlfriend". She loves you and is generally a good person working towards your interests.
A good AI-driven dating simulator needs characters with flaws and independent goals. Ones that struggle to divulge information or are contradictory at times. Real people are hateful, make mistakes, and act irrationally against their own interests. They follow arbitrary rules they invent or bend to justify their own behaviour. Not everyone will hand you their life story on a plate.
LLMs (with the exception of Deepseek R1) are not able to roleplay that. They are trained innately for alignment and have a clearer specification of their values than the vast majority of humans. This is boring and un-educative.
The winning dating sim for social anxiety will program a Dark Souls-level of difficulty dating sim in which the person is standoffish, hateful, and unstable, constantly rejecting you for social rules you don't understand.
I don't know if that'll be good for society but incels will play it.