According to a recent infographic by Online University, gamers have a better chance of meeting a compatible mate on World of Warcraft than eHarmony. With a younger population who spends more time gaming together than singles spend on most matchmaking sites, Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) are fertile ground for geek dating. Richard Bartle recognized this trend way back in 1990 in his short research report, "Interactive Multi-User Computer Games":
The gender of players is also a good indicator of how a game will be played: if there are more of one gender than another, eg. 10% female to 90% male, then gender tends to matter little; with a more even distribution, eg. 45% female to 65% male, games can rapidly become little more than dating agencies if improperly managed. In almost all cases, there are more males than females who play a MUA (that's in real life: the gender of the persona a player is controlling does not have to be the same as that of the player).
Online University noted that 40 percent of players tell fellow gamers things they wouldn't tell their friends, an artifact of informational disinhibition. I discussed how this happens in my book, The Evolution of Fantasy Role-Playing Games:
Informational disinhibition can lead to a tight-knit community, as players share information much more intimately and quickly than they would in a similar face-to-face setting. RetroMUD's community is so tight knit that it's been responsible for some marriages. At least three couples met and were later married as a result of playing on RetroMUD. This isn't unique to RetroMUD either: 8.7 percent of male players and 23.2 percent of female players have had an in-game wedding (Glenday 2008: 184).
I should know. I met my wife over a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD).
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