Reality Bytes

In response to “Virtual Thrills” from The Escapist Forum: I knew that article banner looked familiar… I have a bit of a habit for hunting down and translating non-ported Japanese games, and half the time they turn out to be “erotic” games like this. Illusion’s fairly notorious for this kind of stuff (as someone already mentioned, they’re the geniuses behind “Rapelay”), but it’s usually for certain fetishes or kinks in their target audience (Japanese males).

I swear to Buddha, one of their games is about taking care of miniature women in little house diorama boxes (and yes, that includes doing the nasty).

I don’t think AG3 was intended to be degrading towards women, they just put all of their focus on the “customize the girl(s) of your dreams” portion of the game and then threw together a half-baked “game” around that. If you look at the volume of their work they mostly focus on one aspect of appeal and then throw crap together around it; their “Sexy Beach” series was focused on ladies in exciting swimwear and little else. So I wouldn’t say they’re misogynistic pervs, I’d say they’re fishermen… fishermen who spent all their time picking the right hook and bait, and then used a cheap pole.

– DaxStrife

Occasionally I run across a game where it’s pretty clear that players aren’t intended to play it so much as the game plays them.

Your typical MMORPG, example, might have dull-as-dishwater game mechanics but it strings players along by the nose because they’re addicted to grinding for power or afraid to quit because of the people they know in the game. At that point, it is indeed the player who is being played.

From the sounds of Artificial Girl 3, it’s similarly a rather crappy game which strings people along by emotional dependence. This time, the hook is embedded well between the legs. I don’t think it so much teaches people how to have relationships, so much as tries to present itself as a surrogate relationship. Consequently, it’s an even more pathetic example of being played by a game than a grind.

Don’t date robots applies well.

That said, it is rather impressive (and perhaps a little disturbing) the amount of detail they put into Artificial Girl 3. I tracked down a trailer for it. They’ve not only a lot of detailed sexual acts, but apparently a lot of those “surrogate relationship” activities – walks on beach, sitting down to eat dinner, talking to the girls in a school room, ect. Illusion really doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to providing quality self-delusion.

To be fair, it’s not like I’m immune to self-delusion. It was curiosity about the giant cone boobs (taken from the Artificial Girl 3 box cover) which brought me to read the article.

– geldonyetich

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In response to “Home Alone” from The Escapist Forum: I can say without a doubt that this meets me entire expectation of what Home would end up being like. I’d used Second Life for a couple years when they announced Home and as Jon mentioned in the beginning, it’s pretty much just Second Life minus a lot of the user-made content. However, it’s also apparently without some of the rules and freedoms. If someone is pestering you in Second Life, you can mute them, report them, yell at them as easilly as pushing the enter key, I think…

Sounds like Home is pretty… well, limited in allowing you any real freedom. Home, indeed.

– Hiroshi Mishima

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In response to “Society of the Spectator” from The Escapist Forum: I am in complete agreement. Case in point is Resident Evil 4 Wii.

When I was in halls of residence in university, whenever I booted the game up, one of my flatmates who I must have seen a total of only 2 days out of the entire year (a Korean student, his english was impeccable, but he was just shy, he had a monster rig though), would come into the room and watch me play, as well as one of my other flatmates.

He would always give me advice onto how to pack the inventory, what to upgrade, and whenever he spots ammo or collectibles, and I didn’t mind because he gave good advice. My other flatmate who watched just used to scream in terror anything was coming at me in the distance, which made the game even freakier.

And when another one of my flatmates came into the room (I lived with around 9 other people) and asked ‘what’s going on?’ they would say ‘we’re playing Resident Evil!’.

It was cool, we were all gamers which was a pretty lucky draw.

– ChromeAlchemist

It’s cool that you bring up Mass Effect, because that’s exactly the game I was thinking of when you mention spectating aka backseat gaming. While it can be helpful and seemingly interesting to view the game from a second perspective, I avoid it with seething passion. When I’m gaming, I’m in the “zone”. I get immersed and the last thing I want is whoever is sitting next to (or very creepily behind) me commenting or instructing. I don’t even consider saying “here, you play for a bit”. I like to keep my games “single player” if I can help it.

So now I’ll go back to Mass Effect. I used to play that for long periods of time and my girlfriend would always watch. Now some people would say, “there’s your problem.” Wrong. She’s a gamer too and can relate to the immersion one gets when playing a single player game. However, I can still hear “this is boring!” ringing in my ears. Some people just can’t stand watching or being watched while playing games. It bores me to tears to watch Mass Effect, when I’m not the one holding the controller.

Ultimately, it’s up to the individual. As for me, stop watching – backseat gaming is not my idea of fun.

– Midnight0000

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In response to “Sex and the Single Player” from The Escapist Forum: Haha, I see nobody tells the editor to stick to the word limit! 😛

Russ, I hope your friend did meet up with those Russian girls, like he said. The world is a better place if his story is true. (Too bad for you, though.)

As for going out with a gamer: I highly recommend it. Truly, it is good to be one of the Chosen Few. Ok, so when we met my girl had lapsed from a Nintendo childhood to a PopCap adolescence, and our tastes aren’t perfectly aligned (she will never play Advance Wars, and she will never, ever, EVER play Fire Emblem – two of my favourites), but her Xbox Live gamerscore is currently well over double mine. And she’s hot, so… to paraphrase Beyonce, I like it so much I may just put a ring on it.

Mimsofthedawg:
it took you how many years to find out you should date people with similar interests? Have you ever seen eharmony commercials? I mean, you don’t have to find someone based upon 29 proven dimensions of compatibility, but common dude, finding someone who understands one of your (if not the) biggest passions in your life seems like a given!

That’s just the problem: finding someone. Presumably there are also legions of Twilight fans out there, wishing for a man who could just understand their passion…

– Fraser.J.A

Interesting article.

I’ve never really given much thought to how gaming could undoubtedly interfere with my social life in relations to the opposite sex. I’ve had girlfriends before and gaming hasn’t ever really been all that much of an obstacle. I’m not as big into gaming as I was earlier this year (I finally got over an MMO addiction) so I actually find myself doing other things with my time (like posting here, writing random stuff, catching up on movies/tv shows) and at this point I really don’t see myself getting into another relationship.

So okay it’s been well over three years since I’ve known the touch of a woman but what I’ve surmised about myself at this point is that my relationship with women has nothing to do with a gaming lifestyle. I know this for a fact because my general view of them hasn’t changed since I’ve started to fill my time with more constructive things. Which when it comes down to it, my general view of women is the same as anyone else.

I would put into detail what this view is but I find a lot of people I mention it to are often perplexed by it.

– Frankydee