So, yeah. We'll just go with "MMO stuff".
At any rate, I've been fascinated with The Daedalus Project lately. People have always interested me anyway - I love to know what motivates them, what they're thinking, feeling, doing, etc. So my little gamer self was thrilled to find this thing. I've been reading through it for a little over a week now, as well as reacquainting myself with some other gaming forums, just reading and thinking about why some of these people are the way they are.
Two things are especially interesting to me: romantic relationships formed ingame, and ingame persona vs. RL persona. The stereotypical view of romantic relationships seems to be "That's so pathetic, can't you get a girl IRL?", and I really disagree with that view for several reasons. Granted, there is that stereotypical guy in his 20's, unable to keep a job and living with his parents, and crawling around the internet looking for [cough] partners because it's easier than actually leaving the house. But I find he's a rarity. Right off the top of my head, I can think of three longstanding, successful, perfectly healthy relationships that were formed ingame. Two of them have become real-life, living in the same city, in it for the long haul relationships, and the third will be that way pretty soon. They met through a mutual hobby, just like many couples do, and it took off from there. Granted, it's an unconventional way to begin a relationship - not having met face to face, but it works. The creepy internet stalker and the person who found someone they have a lot in common with are two different types. It's the creepy internet stalker you hear the most about, though, so he becomes the face of internet relationships, so to speak. The normal people don't make much of a splash, they just kinda live their lives.
Not much to say on who you are IRL v. who you are ingame at this point, it's just starting to interest me. As a rule, though, I've found that the more you trumpet your awesomeness ingame (Constantly ranting about how you're the best healer, tank, have the most money, whatever), the more you have to compensate for IRL. It's not a hard and fast rule, there are exceptions, but it seems to hold true for a large part of the gamer population.
I'm very interested in opinions here, that aren't mine.
I thought of a cool title for this at 2AM, but forgot what it was.
