As great as being in a
relationship is, having a partner can be pretty high maintenance sometimes. You have to plan your social life around them, spend tons of money on dates and gifts, and - worst of all - you're not allowed to watch their favorite Netflix show without them.
Up until recently, the solution to this problem was simple: don't date. If you don't feel motivated enough to put time and effort into someone else's happiness, the chances are that you're caught up in a relationship that won't work anyway.
However, in this glitzy 21st-century life of virtual reality and
AI, some genius techy folks have come up with an alternative option for singletons who can't hack a conventional relationship - and it comes in the form of a video game.
Bizarre though it may seem, 'dating simulators' are a real thing in which lonely hearts can begin a 'relationship' with an anime-style avatar. Although they're primarily marketed as games, there are thousands of users out there who consider themselves to have a genuine connection with their virtual other-half.
In many cases, the individuals who get themselves into these kinds of set-ups give up on looking for a 'real' relationship altogether, because the video game version gives them just as much satisfaction - and requires hardly any as much effort.
In fact, there has already been at least one instance of a person
marrying their virtual lover. In 2009, a 27-year-old man was legally wed to 'Nene', a character from one of the most popular dating simulators, Love Plus.
This alone seems strange enough, but when you consider that thousands of other people consider themselves to be in a relationship with the exact same character, it starts to get even weirder. If you've seen the film 'Her' starring Joaquin Phoenix, you'll have a rough idea of what it's like.
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The trend started in Japan way over a decade ago, but has reached millions of users all over the globe. Some players meet regularly to go on group dates with their pixellated partners, whereas others aren't so keen to share.
One man, Yuuya Iwama, gave details in an interview about how he interacts with his girlfriend, Manaka.
"I’ve been dating Manaka for one year and five months," he said. "She is very cute but the most attractive feature is how difficult it is. I have to reply to emails. She gets upset if I’m late for dates.
"I want to please her when she pesters me for kisses. But I don’t begrudge the effort because it helps make us closer. It makes me feel as if she can’t live without me, which is what charms me most."
And the games aren't just for men, either - a significant number of dating simulators have been released with women in mind, and focus more on the courting part of the relationship rather than the serious, settled-down part of couplehood.
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In an attempt to understand those who choose to have relationships with a bunch of pixels and code, two people named Loulou d’Aki and Roland Fischer spent a month interviewing dating sim users in Tokyo. Many people were reluctant to be photographed for the interviews, implying that a lot of them still feel embarrassment over the subject, but d'Aki and Fischer still managed to learn a lot from the project.
According to them, some players see the simulators as nothing more than a standard video game, with their 'partner' being just a standard character. However, some users took the game extremely seriously and spoke about their digital other halves as if they were made of flesh and blood.
After speaking to enough people, though, d'Aki began to understand why the trend is so popular.
“I guess the appeal about the love game might be the frictionless relations one can have with the virtual girlfriend,” she said. “It is a dreamy and very innocent type of relation.”
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Some people fear that Japanese people's reluctance to date, compounded with their enthusiasm for dating games, could end up leading to a decline in the country's population. So, while it may seem like a fairly harmless (if not a little abnormal) trend, it could spell the end for real romance in the future.
