The Gaming Industry has made a mint off peddling games where the player must rescue his/her love from the clutches of an evil fiend – it is an industry that has not escaped the clutches of one of the greatest fiends ever devised… LOVE! Today the @rcade looks at how the idea of romance and relationships have evolved and made their way into the hearts of every gamer boy and every gamer girl.
Some of the greatest gaming heroes are besotted and infatuated with curvaceous pixelated babes, Mario and Princess Peach, Sonic and Amy, Cloud and Aerith/Tifa/Yuffie, love has infected the very core and heart of gaming and we’ve fallen for it hook, line and sinker.
Travel across worlds, collecting rings, coins or material, take on countless enemies and armies of evil minions, reach the castle and then realise that you were duped by some Koopa in a dress and only to start it all over again… all for the sake of that hapless damsel.
Modern games are not immune to the love disease, with the release of the first Sims game, how we viewed and played with relationships took on a whole new level. Managing a virtual relationship with your Sim was just as hard as taking care of your real life girlfriend or boyfriend. Then along came Fable and suddenly what was once a fun filled fling of a romance became an utter ball and chain. First we had to woo the object of our desires then we had to buy them gifts and jewellery to assure them we truly loved them. Then came marriage, followed by the benefits of marriage which then led to the dire consequences of those benefits and it took a lot less than nine months for those to kick in.
With Fable pushing the boundaries, other game developers soon caught the loving fever and games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect took character development to the next level (and to make it worse they made it a trophy/achievement). Complex interactions, realising what to say and when to say it, all mattered if you were going to make another fall in love with you.
With the expansion of game design and play so too game the expanding of minds and even LGBT video game players are able to express their love in video games. Characters are described as being ‘Gay’ ‘Bi’ or ‘Straight’ in the Fable series, making it a lot easier for people to pick up the person they fancy! In Dragon Age two characters, Leliana and Zevran were open to the idea of a gay relationship and were pursuable by players if they so wished. Seducing either of these characters depicted similar scenes afforded to seduction of straight characters, sex with all the good bits blacked out and faded.
So if the games have become all loved up, how then have the gamers who play them fared? Cian O Driscoll looks at some of the more bizarre stories in relationship land…
When one must complete an eternal virtual quest at the expense of human interaction, is it possible that just another hour addicted to the square eyed machine in front of you might be taking things a step too far? Have you ever had an argument with the other half about spending too much time on your Xbox defeating the evil cyborg? We all love our video games, but when your real life Pikachu is crying from affection, or lack thereof, could our addiction be sabotaging our real life relationships and KO’ing them out of the ring?
A recent example of this techno invasion on our private lives hails from none other than techno king China and a game known as ‘’happy farms’’. Launched in 2009, it’s the answer to Facebook Farmville phenomenon, only with a twist. Players must mange and cultivate their own farms and crops to earn points, however, in order to gain higher scores, they can also manage (or destroy) their neighbours ones to get ahead of the game, or the tractor, whichever way you want to look at it!
This new craze is so popular that Developers (company name?) have limited the game registration to 2 million users each day. Alas, it’s caused many addictions at the workplace in lieu of the job at hand, however, its also had a sinister impact on love life’s at home. In the Nanping, Guangzhou province, a couple suffered the fallout of fertilising the land just that bit too often. Husband Xiao Ke had to work late, so he asked his girlfriend to set the alarm and help him manage the farm while he was gone. But Ke’s girlfriend was pregnant, so some of the nights, the alarm didn’t rouse her. When the next day came, Ke found that not only did his girlfriend not harvest the crops; a lot of his crops were also stolen by other players. Ke got really angry and had a huge fight with the girl. In the end, they broke up and got rid of their baby. Sadly, his crops also failed.
Mr & Mr’s Pacman, if they were alive in virtual breathing and living form, might have something to say about GamePro Australia’s recent article, naming Call of Duty as the game most likely to cause a row, and repeated findings of another poll revealing that 80 per cent of women claim their other half spends too much time playing computer games With a further 70 per cent said the gaming addiction was the cause of arguments between the couple.
However, there are also many instances of the besotted housewives who decide to throw in the sceptre and pick up the controller instead. One such Woman, Erica, who nearly lost her hubby to Ever Quest, believes that taking part with your companion can bring you closer together if you are both working on achieving the same goal on screen. “I resisted and nagged for a little while, but I gave in and tried it to shut him up. Who knew that 8 years later, we’d still be gaming together?”
So the next time your contemplating spending another hour getting acquainted with Mario, why not ask the other half if she’d help you out with a few missions herself? Who knows, it could even earn you some bonus points outside the realm of the console!
Take note of what Peach has to say though…
