Dating Sims RPG Games

From LoveToKnow Dating

Everybody loves a bit of make-believe, and dating sims RPG games bring that into the realm of flirtation, romance, and sometimes even real-life love.

Looking for Love in Virtual Places

"RPG" stands for "Role Playing Game" and tends to apply to fantasy games, in which people take on the roles of wizards or warriors that go on amazing adventures, amassing treasures and fighting off monsters. While these started out with simple paper notes and the imagination of the participants, they've become a big business with the advent of the Internet. People spend millions of dollars every year on online role-playing games such as EverQuest or World of Warcraft.

It's no surprise that another online success story, dating websites, would find ways to capitalize on the popularity of dating sims RPG games. Most of these games also allow you to take on the personality of a fantasy character – male or female – and in some, you are able to go on adventures. But the objective is not to amass treasure or defeat the monster. No, in dating sim games, your objective is to capture the heart of another.

Types of Dating Sims RPG Games

There are new games created every day and they tend to fall into a few basic varieties:

Dating Practice

Most of these kinds of games barely qualify as "role playing" because you don't get to choose much beyond the gender of your "character" as you play the game. Usually these games test your interpersonal skills by presenting you with a series of encounters with characters you might be attracted to, and you try to select the appropriate responses to hopefully get them to go out with you. Speed dating is a game that puts a time limit on your response, encouraging you to think fast and say the things you hope your date will like. RED Virtual Date also challenges you to express yourself with your date well enough to get him or her to go to new locations with you. Both of these have very little strategy involved.

Multiple Factor Games

Another very popular variation of the online dating game is to have several characteristics that vary with your persona – which is much closer to the original paper-based RPGs. For example, you have to choose if your character will have more strength (and therefore be able to work harder and earn more money) or more charisma (and be more likely to attract and seduce dates). Online games such as Festival Days gives you 30 days to earn money, go to school, and hang out with potential dates in the hope that after the month you'll have a companion for the "festival."

Game-Themed Dating Sims

Several games such as Final Fantasy have their own themed games as well. In these, your character is not so much created by you as assumed by you – usually you play a role that is from the game, and you can use your knowledge of the various relationships and skills of the people in the game to try and score a date. The basis of many games is anime, such as Naruto.

Actual Sims and Role-Playing Dates

Of course, the term Sims comes from the very popular game of the same name, which includes an expansion pack for sending your tiny people on virtual "hot dates." These avatars have many different factors you can try and influence – for example, encouraging them to take up new hobbies by buying them magazines – and virtual parties and the thrill of the goodnight kiss all become part of the game.

Coming full circle, many people have found that a way to maintain long-distance relationships is to play together in virtual worlds such as Everquest and World of Warcraft. While their physical bodies may be thousands of miles apart, the characters can just as easily take a romantic walk through the virtual environment as they go on quests.

Virtual or real, the secret to good dating still seems to come down to the joy of focusing attention on the other person.

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