I met my wife playing World of Warcraft some 16 years ago. She played a protection paladin, and I was a restoration shaman who was pretty new to doing group content. She had been looking for a healer for a heroic dungeon she and her friends were about to do, and I messaged her. We all got on really well, and three of us (myself, my wife, and one friend from that original group of five) still play WoW to this day.
It can be mind boggling to think how different my life would've been if I had been on a different server at that time; if I didn't play a healer; if I'd been an Alliance character instead of Horde; or if I hadn't been reading trade chat or just plain hadn't been online at that moment. Lots of variables had to be in place for us to meet.
Well, sometimes. A lot of people just marry someone they went to school with, or worked with, or who was in their friend group or local community. It was simply a matter of deciding to pull the trigger.
Obviously there's still the narrow margin of "living in the same place at the same time", but that margin is much wider than "be in this exact game server at this exact time of day on this exact day".
The margin is wider but the number is smaller. You can be on a hundred different game servers at various times, but you're only born and grow up in an area once.
And some are big “had to happen” (right college choice, wrong WoW faction choice, etc) and others are “the specific had to happen but would have eventually” - if you’re both playing horde on the same campus you’d eventually meet in game or IRL, for example.
I know several people who have met online like this. I'd concur with the authors that working together to achieve an objective is kind of table stakes for an actual relationship. I've always felt that meeting someone in class and working together on homework and what not was something like that. But the key for me is that when you work with someone on a project you get a better understanding of how they approach things and how their values stack up.
Value stacks are something I heard about in a "Marriage and Family" class in college where the professor discussed that if you value say "economy" more than "time", you spend a lot of time to save a few cents, but if you reverse that stack order your spend extra cents to avoid spending the time. If the person you're dating has a very different stack than you do, it will be a source of problems going forward and doesn't suggest you'll have a successful marriage.
Playing video games together should certainly be a way to get a handle on how someone's values stack up relative to yours.
How things have changed. When my spouse and I lived in different cities for several months, we stayed in touch thanks to...
America Online!
It turns out AOL was the only service that allowed dial up access in two different places without paying for two accounts. That was around 1993. And of course we didn't want to rack up long-distance phone bills. It was before AOL even allowed access to the Web.
The interviews in section 4 are particularly informative for people trying to start a long distance relationship and want to determine compatibility with their partner. The items also apply to in-person romantic interactions, but multiplayer video games offer structure.
- Games also provide couples with “constant opportunit[ies] to come up with new silly things” (C9A), primarily inside jokes and topics of conversation that they discuss outside of their time spent playing together
- “I take competitive games pretty lightheartedly, so it’s not as if I get upset or anything. I think it’s funny when I die. I think it’s funny when he dies. I think it’s funny when we trade and we both kill each other. It’s a nice playful feeling to have a one-up over him or jokingly having beef with each other.”
- when asked as to the value C6 derives from menial in-game tasks such as raids versus the value of open-world exploration, C6B used the analogy, “It’s like doing chores [together] versus going on a date.”
When my wife and me went to university in different cities we met online most evenings in World of Warcraft, doing stuff together. Helped a lot during the few years of physical separation to stay in touch, plus now I have a wife who actually „gets it“ when I say cannot quickly go away from the computer for some time when healing a dungeon group and vice versa.
I credit ESO for helping with my LDR over 7 years. Time on the phone wouldn’t have been the same. With games you are doing things together and sharing experiences.
I get the impression dating via games is becoming much more common in general.
Anecdotal example - I'm 39 and used to be an avid counterstrike player, and back in my days (2005-2014) it was 99.9% men. But every so often I play it now and I've been surprised by the number of women I've played with, and doubly surprised by the number of them who have made flirtatious advances. So much so that if I was single I'd almost consider it a reasonable avenue for meeting someone.
There are also a lot of men with voice changers in CS2 now, for whatever reason. I have been playing a few times and then the "girl" cuts their voice changer and starts yelling at some guy hitting on her, etc. Very strange to witness when you're just trying to find out if this round is a buy round.
With LLMs, this has become commonplace. Most folks don't realize how far real time video/audio generation has come. You should never ever trust the sound of a voice or a video call, pictures on a screen, etc. it can all be faked.
Behind every virtual "thirst trap" is some dude in another country hoping to scam some sucker out of money.
EDIT: oh and to be clear, I've no issues with meeting folks online. I met my spouse online a couple decades ago, and we quickly moved it offline.
I also know folks (guys) who run hobbyist setups that stream on platforms and pretend to be attractive young ladies. The voice quality is very believable, and the video is approaching realistic. With a bit of doctoring, it looks completely believable...and we are talking about the widely available stuff, NOT the stuff available behind closed doors.
What I am trying to say here is don't treat a relationship as real until you meet the person in real life and build an actual connection.
It can be mind boggling to think how different my life would've been if I had been on a different server at that time; if I didn't play a healer; if I'd been an Alliance character instead of Horde; or if I hadn't been reading trade chat or just plain hadn't been online at that moment. Lots of variables had to be in place for us to meet.
Obviously there's still the narrow margin of "living in the same place at the same time", but that margin is much wider than "be in this exact game server at this exact time of day on this exact day".
Value stacks are something I heard about in a "Marriage and Family" class in college where the professor discussed that if you value say "economy" more than "time", you spend a lot of time to save a few cents, but if you reverse that stack order your spend extra cents to avoid spending the time. If the person you're dating has a very different stack than you do, it will be a source of problems going forward and doesn't suggest you'll have a successful marriage.
Playing video games together should certainly be a way to get a handle on how someone's values stack up relative to yours.
America Online!
It turns out AOL was the only service that allowed dial up access in two different places without paying for two accounts. That was around 1993. And of course we didn't want to rack up long-distance phone bills. It was before AOL even allowed access to the Web.
It is quality time in a reduced quality world.
Anecdotal example - I'm 39 and used to be an avid counterstrike player, and back in my days (2005-2014) it was 99.9% men. But every so often I play it now and I've been surprised by the number of women I've played with, and doubly surprised by the number of them who have made flirtatious advances. So much so that if I was single I'd almost consider it a reasonable avenue for meeting someone.
Behind every virtual "thirst trap" is some dude in another country hoping to scam some sucker out of money.
EDIT: oh and to be clear, I've no issues with meeting folks online. I met my spouse online a couple decades ago, and we quickly moved it offline.
I also know folks (guys) who run hobbyist setups that stream on platforms and pretend to be attractive young ladies. The voice quality is very believable, and the video is approaching realistic. With a bit of doctoring, it looks completely believable...and we are talking about the widely available stuff, NOT the stuff available behind closed doors.
What I am trying to say here is don't treat a relationship as real until you meet the person in real life and build an actual connection.