by Nick Yee
Sexism isn’t a conspiracy that men carry out against women; it’s how we as a society treat men and women differently and shape how they should behave. It limits the life choices of both men and women, and it is sustained by both men and women. The Difference Engine Initiative was a 2011 Toronto-based workshop that tried to support women entering the indie game community. The female president of the initiative, while acknowledging that clients often wanted to talk to her male colleagues rather than her, disagreed that gender was a significant barrier to success in the industry. Instead, she told participants to develop a thicker skin. A human resources executive from Electronic Arts makes a similarly conflicted argument in an opinion piece in Forbes. Gabrielle Toledano writes, “The problem isn’t sexism. . . . Sexism is an unfortunate reality of our times, but as women we must seek the power and ability in ourselves to change the dynamic.” But arguing that women need to work much harder simply because they are women only reinforces the sexism that both female executives claim isn’t a problem. The last time I checked, no one is telling boys that they need to try much harder to enjoy video games. Sexism in gaming is a symptom of a much larger social problem. Its roots are deep and widespread. This is why it’s such a difficult problem to fix.22
CHAPTER 7 THE “IMPOSSIBLE” ROMANCE
I was approached by a somewhat rude gnome who was making some rather rude remarks to me, and this lovely paladin (they’re always paladins . . .) came to my rescue and scared off the gnome. Then he bought my character some pinot noir and we chatted for awhile.
[World of Warcraft, female, 23]
For the past few chapters, we’ve seen how our psychological baggage and offline politics can carry over into virtual worlds. But having reality intrude into virtual worlds isn’t always a bad thing. In this chapter on romantic relationships, I’ll describe one example of how the Proteus Paradox can be beneficial. In an online game, how do you get to know someone when he or she is hiding behind the avatar of an elven assassin or undead necromancer? The stunning graphics of today’s online games make it easy to forget that people have been creating their own digital personas for more than three decades, well before graphics cards were a standard feature in personal computers. Even in early text-based virtual worlds and online communities, users could reinvent their identities. One striking story from that era still resonates with how we think about online relationships.
In the early 1980s, when the Internet was still in its infancy and restricted to military and educational use, tech-savvy people could interact online via modem networks. CompuServe operated one of these networks in which people could pay an hourly fee to dial in via their modem to access many services, from stock quotes to weather reports to airline information. There were also social channels on which users could mingle, which allowed users to chat in large groups as well as one-on-one.
In 1983, a woman named Joan gained celebrity status on one of CompuServe’s social channels. Joan, a neuropsychologist in her late twenties living in New York, was the victim of a drunk-driving accident that killed her boyfriend and left her severely disfigured, mute, confined to a wheelchair, and suffering intense pains in her leg and back. In the ensuing depression, Joan had frequent suicidal thoughts. But her life turned around when a former professor introduced her to CompuServe, where Joan’s physical disabilities no longer mattered and she was able to express herself and develop friendships.
Joan became an inspiring presence on CompuServe. She developed close relationships with many women who called each other “sisters.” Everyone who knew her described her as being extraordinarily generous. When one of her friends became confined to bed rest due to a disability, Joan bought her a laptop. When the same friend mentioned that no one had ever sent her roses, Joan sent her two dozen. And despite her physical limitations, Joan tried to resume her teaching career by using typed lectures displayed on large screens. She worked with a police task force to crack down on drunk drivers. On one of these projects, she met a police officer named Jack Carr. They fell in love, got married, and honeymooned in Cyprus.
But then it all slowly began to unravel. Some of Joan’s friends, particularly those with physical disabilities themselves, found her stories far-fetched. They doubted that Jack Carr even existed but took pity on Joan’s way of dealing with her own tragic situation. And although Joan’s muteness and disfigurement were at first legitimate reasons for why she didn’t want to speak on the phone or meet in person, this reticence didn’t align with her amazing stories of traveling to conferences and honeymooning in Cyprus. Slowly, it dawned on Joan’s online friends that none of them had ever seen Joan in person in all the years that they knew her.
One of them finally confronted Joan with these doubts. Joan wasn’t actually a neuropsychologist. Joan wasn’t in her late twenties. Joan wasn’t even a woman. “Joan” was a male psychiatrist named Alex in his early fifties who had created a female persona to understand how to interact with his female clients. The public outrage was swift and brutal. One of Joan’s friends called Alex’s deception “mind rape.”1
Stories like this have become cautionary tales for meeting someone online, particularly when it comes to romantic relationships. It is difficult to find studies of attitudes toward online gaming relationships specifically, but in a 2006 survey conducted by Pew Internet on online dating, 43 percent of respondents agreed that this activity involves risk, 57 percent agreed that a lot of people online lie about their marital status, and 29 percent agreed that people who use online dating are desperate. Nevertheless, sociologist Michael Rosenfeld has found that between 2007 and 2009, 21 percent of the heterosexual romantic relationships formed in the United States began online; for same-sex couples, it was 61 percent. But finding love in an online game is a different matter. Yon is a thirty-eight-year-old gamer who recently emailed me. He met his wife in an online game when he lived in the United States and his wife lived in the United Kingdom. They managed to make their relationship work, and they now have two children. Nevertheless, he notes, “This often makes for an embarrassing moment when people ask how we met. . . . The stigma of being a gamer and meeting online is still a strange concept to some.” In one of her interviews with online gamers, sociologist T. L. Taylor finds this same stigma. Kim met her husband in the game EverQuest, but this is “something she does not tell too many people.” Given the stories of deceptive online relationships and the way gamers censor their own successful relationships, it’s not hard to see why many people have concerns about finding love in an online game.2
In my survey studies, I have found that a good number of people have physically dated someone they first met in an online game. About 30 percent of online gamers have had romantic feelings for another player, and between 9 and 12 percent of players have physically dated someone they first met in an online game. To learn more about how these relationships started and how they progressed, in 2006 I asked players to describe the trajectory of these relationships. The 115 respondents to the survey were all players who had physically dated someone they had met in an online game. One data point jumped out at me: 60 percent of the players didn’t think they would have dated their significant other if they had first met face-to-face.3
Sketches of Love
In the survey, players walked through their love stories—how they met, how they fell in love, how they decided to meet face-to-face, and how it all turned out in the end. As I read through the hundred-plus player narratives, a common pattern became apparent.
Let’s start at the beginning of the archetypal love story, the moment players met their future romantic partners. Overall, these initial meetings happened in very mundane and common situations, and the chemistry was seldom immediately apparent. In none of the stories did any player say it was love at first sight.
Our characters met in North Freeport in EverQuest. His dark elf cleric was on top of the roofs, an area which I didn’t know characters could access. I sent him a/tell, asking how he got up there, and he kindly showed me how.
[EverQuest, female, 22]
My fiancé and I met in EverQuest in mid-1999. It was a totally by accident moment. I was a low-level Bard fleeing the bandit camp in North Ro after a bad group pull. I was barely alive and in the Oasis of Marr. I nearly ran over my fiancé’s character sitting on a dune. He looked low level (that was the fate of wood elf druids for soooo long) so I chatted with him a bit. Boy was I surprised when all this healing and buffing came from a low-level player. I thanked him greatly and since he was nice I added him to my friends list. [EverQuest, female, 35]
In many cases, both players belonged to the same guild. This made it easy for repeated encounters to occur, and the guild also provided a convenient context for chatting and grouping with each other. Instead of having to create a contrived situation to talk to someone, being in the same guild offered a wide variety of acceptable openers. This could be getting help for a quest, getting advice on equipment, planning a future group quest, or telling a story about something that happened earlier.
I was aware of her character in a vague way as “the competition” when we were both in different guilds (we were both Celt Wardens in Dark Age of Camelot). Then she quit her guild, and joined mine. We played at different times, but people kept saying things like “lol that’s just what [she] said!” about things I said, and apparently vice-versa, so we started to take note of each other, as we had both thought we were pretty unique. [Dark Age of Camelot, male, 28]
Met her when she joined our guild. Once I stopped playing that game (Dark Age of Camelot) and she took on the role of guild leader, I remained as an advisor. It wasn’t until after we both left that game (but stayed in the same guild) that we became romantically involved. [EverQuest II, male, 32]4
The romantic tensions in these casual relationships then slowly build up in an incubation period. As these players work with each other in groups and chat during downtime, they begin to wonder if there’s something there. Among the player narratives, this period seemed to run anywhere between two weeks to twelve months.
We started to get to know each other out of character and became friends, chatting about our day and about life in general. After a couple months of this, I went through a period when I was having a very rough time at work. He was very sweet and considerate to me through that time, asking how I was and listening to me bitch about things. [World of Warcraft, female, 30]
We started out as two people who were looking for a group. None were available, so we decided to group together. Upon doing so, we discovered that we enjoyed the conversation. We decided to make it a nightly event. It had been a few weeks of spending 6 hours a night together and then one of us had to take a break for several days. When the two of us were reunited in game, it was different. It was awkward, I believe, because we both figured out that we missed one another. [EverQuest, male, 25]
Often, these romantic feelings then grow to a point at which one player finally decides to express his or her feelings for the other person. The uncertainty of reciprocation heightens the tension and anticipation of the moment of truth, much as it would in a face-to-face relationship. Most players had fairly detailed descriptions of this turning point of their relationship. This first narrative continues from the same player we just heard from above.
We talked about it the same way we talked about everything else, in game. We were chatting and it came up. We talked about our feelings and what it meant for our current situations, and we were both giddy. The moment was like . . . beyond words. Let us say that. [EverQuest, male, 25]
About 6 months into World of Warcraft I met someone who lived in the same state as I and was planning to meet him. My now boyfriend then said “I don’t want you to meet him. I have feelings for you.” I had had feelings for him all along but was too afraid to say anything. When he told me he wanted to be with me I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t believe it but was so happy that he felt the same way. [World of Warcraft, female, 29]
Following these declarations of affection, the couples begin to take advantage of other communication mediums. These often include instant messages, emails, phone calls, and webcam chats. Contrary to the idea that people rely solely on typed chat to develop their romantic relationship, players use a variety of communication tools to better understand their romantic partners. Players don’t simply jump from avatar to meeting face-to-face.
Hunting together built an in-game friendship, server downtime and wanting to dissect the night’s play more privately than in-game led to chatting over an IM [instant messaging] program. Chatting outside the game led to friendship in our non-gaming life, which eventually developed into a flirtation. He had a web cam so I was able to see him from time to time and watch his mouth move out of synch with what he was typing. [EverQuest, female, 34]
After many many hours of in-game playing and some role playing together we seemed to have a good feel for each other’s personalities irl [in real life]. We exchanged IM’s and Phone# and chatted a lot. Then came photos and some webcams. [World of Warcraft, male, 24]
During those four months apart, we spent so much time online together (gaming, IM, Skype, webcam, you name it) that there wasn’t much room for surprises for the actual in-person meeting. [EVE Online, female, 24]
Falling in love in an online game doesn’t mean that the only interactions occur in the game behind game avatars. Getting a sense of how the other person looks and behaves outside the game is very much the expectation even in these online relationships.
Given that people from all over the world play online games, it makes sense that large geographic distances often separate these romantic couples. In many cases, the players lived in different countries. This distance complicates meeting face-to-face for both logistical and financial reasons. Players working or in college would have to plan around their vacation schedules, and these first dates have a significant up-front cost for the plane ticket. These logistical and financial obstacles make the relationship harder rather than easier. Having to pay for a plane ticket to your first date certainly complicates things.
Once we both realized that a rather large ocean might not be too large of a barrier, he made plans to visit around Christmas. [EverQuest II, female, 32]
I should point out that we were on other sides of the Atlantic, me in London in the UK, and her near Chicago in the US, which made the relationship easier and harder. [World of Warcraft, male, 28]
I was very resistant to [the idea of having a relationship] at first, even though I was attracted to him, because of the age and geographical differences (he was from Canada; I’m from the U.S.). He was persistent, though, and eventually I gave in. [City of Heroes, female, 31]
Even though almost all of these players had traded photographs and seen each other on webcams, stepping off the plane to meet their romantic partner face-to-face for the first time was still understandably a nerve-wracking experience.
A month later he flew to Wisconsin to meet me, and it was a wonderful but almost frighteningly intense experience. From the first day that we spent together, we both felt very intensely that we belonged together (though neither of us admitted it until several months later), which was very confusing. [World of Warcraft, female, 30]
It was a challenge to work out the logistics of the thing, but ultimately, it was worth it. The first meeting? Well, I spent all day on a plane, got to my final destination exhausted and ready for dinner. When I laid eyes on my future wife, I felt the exhaustion melt away and my hunger remained, but I no longer wanted dinner. [EverQuest, male, 25]
I spent the flights to her (I had to change planes) in the same nervous and excited state (I was very impatient to get there, the planes seemed to take forever and a day), and I was particularly nervous that fate might intervene and I might be somehow denied entry to the US (I wasn’t, of course). . . . Two years after that we’re married and living in the UK! :) [World of Warcraft, male, 28]
There were many happy endings to the stories. Many of the couples had moved to be together geographically, and so
me had married or indicated plans for marriage.
That was five years ago and we are still together, happy, and working on the future. From online start to present day, we’ve been best friends for nine years now. We still game together, too! [World of Warcraft, female, 33]
It has been nearly 5 years and we are still together. I moved from the US to Europe a few years ago and there are no regrets. [EverQuest II, female, 32]
We are still together, happily married and adopting our first child. [Martial Heroes, female, 35]
Of the stories that did not have happy endings, some found the distance to be an insurmountable problem, while others mentioned typical personality-based problems.
It could have been a very good relationship had we lived closer. That was the only real difference, and no, we decided neither of us could move closer together (we each had children). [EverQuest II, female, 49]
Our relationship ended after about 6 months in a heartbreaking situation for both. He needed more than I could provide online, and I needed someone more stable and less clingy. [World of Warcraft, female, 22]
Of course, meeting someone online is not restricted to meeting while gaming. The rise of online games coincided with the rise of online dating websites. Match.com went into live beta in 1995 and was profiled by Wired magazine that year. eHarmony launched in 2000. In that same timeframe, Ultima Online, EverQuest, Lineage, and other games appeared. But meeting someone in an online game is very different from meeting someone in an online dating site. First of all, none of the players in the survey mentioned that they were looking for love in an online game. In fact, they often mentioned the exact opposite.5
I was in no way “looking” for anyone. . . . In fact I turned down advances I received in real life citing I was not ready to start dating up again because I had just gotten out of a serious relationship. [World of Warcraft, female, 24]
