This subject line is not at all informative

[healingmirth]

Wall Street Journal:
Only in Japan, Real Men Go to a Hotel With Virtual Girlfriends
Dating-Simulation Game a Last Resort For Honeymoon Town and Its Lonely Guests

"In the first month of the city's promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen."

I am wearing my not-judging hat, I swear, but this makes me viscerally sad.

In news that is related to this? I can't read fic where one of the (humanoid) characters is reimagined as a robot. I seem to be okay with Tony/Movie!JARVIS so far? But Lovebot prompts and the like make me so, so, SO sad, I can't even.

I still sort of want to write that story where Matt makes a John McClane AI to keep him company, but that will either end in literal tears or in actual McClane showing up to fuck some sense into him.

Comments

[kitewithfish]

hmm. I mean, I suppose it's a recognition that when guys with enough money to afford video games will often play them when depressed and lonely, and someone was able to market to that group...

But to a certain extent this seems like it might be a step up from Real Dolls. There's a simulacra of interaction, and I'm getting the feeling that the game is less about sex than relationships. But I'm not actually sure if that's a step up or a step down, really.

Go-go Gadget Analytical Hat!- It kind of seems to fit into a larger trend of people feeling disconnected from each other and finding other avenues to meet their emotional needs. I'd be less freaked out if it were constant IM'ing with strangers, but it might stem from similar things.

But still a nice boost for the local economy.

[healingmirth]

It just occurred to me to wonder/worry about something else. If someone's going to be that invested in a video game (and if I'm going to have an opinion about it, which I don't have to...) would I rather that they're playing a FPS or Final Fantasy XI or Grand Theft Auto or whatever destructive, anti-social and/or obsessive type of games may be on the market in Japan, or something that at least models some sort of positive behavior? Not that I think that Japanese men are, as a rule, having any sort of crisis of how to treat people with respect. And not that I have any personal experience with being male or Japanese. Anyway, moving on.

There's a site in the US - I've forgotten the name of it and I'm not sure if it ever made it out of beta, as this was several months ago - that paid women to play video games with guys. One article kept trying to make the argument that it wasn't any different from buying women drinks in bars, but I'm not sure I agree.

[kitewithfish]

Well, I understand that there are some aspects of Japanese life and etiquette that are still firmly rooted in the ideology of woman=commodity, but I can't make a claim that there's a culture out there of which the same cannot be said. It's beside the point, and I'm certainly open to admitting my knowledge to be anecdotal.

That thought did enter my mind, about which kind of fantasy we'd prefer people to be constructing: one of apparently positive social values or one of (possibly) destructive fantasy. The problem is, that both the girlfriend video game and Final Fantasy (or what have you) are both fictions. One looks a little closer to exterior reality, but several of the men in that article seemed to enjoy the aspect of a video-game woman they could shut up at will- a clear fantasy about a relationship that would probably drive many women away if the gamers were acting it out in real life.
It's more common for video games to build worlds where violence and law breaking are allowed, but this is a game that allows the breaking of the rule of personal interaction and respect. Is it easier to delineate your behavior between the game and RL if the game is clearly a fiction, or harder?
(Vaguely thinking of http://henryjenkins.org/2010/04/choose_your_ficitons_well.html but not in any particular way.)

Not going to lie, I think the idea of getting women to play video games with men for money is really kind of offensive to female gamers, but as long as the employees are treated with respect and paid fairly, I don't really think I care. The comparison from the article you mentioned, tho, I think would be more apt if the women in question were "hostesses" of the Japanese style who are paid to sit around and talk to men in bars.