Angela Washko’s The Game: The Game (2018) repurposes the dating simulator genre to explore the tactics of “pick-up artists”: men who position themselves as experts in the science of seduction. Videogames in general and dating sims in particular promise presumptively male players agency, choice and control. But Washko subverts these expectations, casting players as a woman who is hit on by a succession of seduction coaches. Drawing on analyses of videogame sex and romance systems and on critical work on pick-up artistry and the “manosphere”, this chapter argues that we need to recognise the parallels between what videogames promise their players and what pick-up artists and other kinds of right-wing ‘alternative influencers’ promise their publics.