Issue 21: Casual Friday - Supplanting Reality

[The Escapist Staff]

Are virtual friends as good as real ones? Don't be so quick to decide. Tim Stevens relates his experiences with Nintendogs, takes a look at more personal experiences from Japan, and discusses how the immersiveness of modern games may make the virtual a compelling substitute for some real experiences.Tim Stevens

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Andrea Appel
http://aerenhart.blogspot.com
Virtual friends are just different. You just cannot compare. I have great friends online, a couple of ones with whom I've shared a friendship for more than 5 years, and even a fiancee, that I met online as just a gaming friend. But I cannot compare my friends with the "real" ones (thinking of "real" as the ones in flesh-and-bone near me) I wouldn't change them, nor virtual nor "real". Of course you have bigger chances to meet ppl you don't like online, because online you can actually meet more people than on the street, for example, and to have casual friends that you join only for raid parties and similar. But there are chances to meet a really good friend.

It's not supplanting reality, is just having another one, where you have the choice to be the same person you're irl, or a completely different one. The interesting part comes when you actually want to meet your online friends. Would you put up a roleplay trying to be the one you're online (if you're a different person online) to keep those not-online-anymore friends? Think about that.


OT: Thanks for a great magazine. I was looking for something like that online, and I found it just out of luck. I've been a gamer since I could reach the buttons and levers from the arcade machines, and this magazine touches subjects I've always wanted to read about. Greetings from Chile, South America, where we gamers are forgotten by the big mmorpgs companies I hope that changes, or I'll change it!!

Andrea Appel, a.k.a Alexandra Erenhart

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Julianne Greer
http://www.escapistmagazine.com
Something you mentioned in your post is why I think we might be moving toward supplanting reality:

"because online you can actually meet more people than on the street."

There are any number of factors causing us to meet more people online, such as longer working hours, to specific communities on the internet being searchable in 0.2 seconds on google. But the reality is, you often can meet more people on the internet, and therefore, the rise of the virtual community. Now, I don't think is something that will fully happen, people having only virtual friends, but we're certainly going to see more acceptance and more widespread adoption of these virtual communities.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Mark

I think the most important difference between virtual friends (whether game avatars or real people whom you only know through the Internet) and real ones is that you can ignore virtual friends if they get on your nerves. It's easier to be alone, if that's more your thing. With real friends, when they're with you they're with you more fully, but they're with you whether you want them there or not.

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Tortanick

There is no awnser, its down to the individual in question. Some rare people exclusively use MMOs for socal contact, if rumours be true some people have married someone they've never seen in RL. If they feel the same or better about people online as the average person feels about people offline who is anyone to say their wrong?

 

[The Escapist Staff]

Original Comment by: Weefz
http://www.theaveragegamer.com
Don't forget that virtual friends come without the poor personal hygiene and lechy habits that make you avoid certain people in the street...