Looking for Love in MMOs

The Wall Street Journal has an article up on real life relationships triggered by online games. Writer David Kesmodel talks to couples who met in Cryptic Studios' City of Heroes, Sony Online Entertainment's EverQuest 2, and Funcom's Anarchy Online. According to research from Stanford, an unexpectedly high proportion of online gamers have ended up in real world dating situations with players they met in game.

Nick Yee, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at Stanford University who studies online games, found in a survey earlier this year that 29% of women players and 8% of men said they had gone on to date someone they met in a game. He says the games are filled with scenarios that shed light on players' personalities. A risky raid on a dungeon, for example, can reveal whether someone is a team player. "These are trust-building exercises," he says. Players "are constantly having to make decisions like, 'Do I run out and save myself or help the others survive?' " Situations that reveal so much about someone's character are less common in the real world, he thinks.