▲Investigating How Long-Distance Couples Use Digital Games to Facilitate Intimacy(arxiv.org)
25 points by radeeyate 4 hours ago | 2 comments
▲nozzlegear 2 hours ago
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.

▲winterbloom 2 hours ago
i mean that would apply to meeting your SO in real life too, that's just how life works
▲wavemode 6 minutes ago
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".

▲bombcar 1 hour ago
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.
▲sxp 1 hour ago
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.”