Massively Multiplayer Online Matchmaking
• Amorous Web, Cyber Sex
When I was using the web to meet a potential romantic partners this venue wouldn't have worked for me (anyway it barely existed: I don't enjoy playing games. As a hack journalist might put it: the world online gaming is the new dating game.
Terri Perkins, a spokeswoman for Funcom NV, the Norwegian publisher of Anarchy Online, says the company knows of more than 20 couples who married after meeting in the game, which was launched in June 2001. Because so many players like to stage in-game weddings, she says, the company has assigned about a dozen volunteer players to help arrange the weddings, which can include fireworks displays at the ceremony. She adds that Funcom's director for the game, Morten Byom, met his wife while playing a text-based precursor to today's multiplayer games, called GrimneMUD, in the 1990s.
Many couples continue to play the same games that brought them together long after they have moved in together.