How long-distance couples use digital games to facilitate intimacy (2025)

When I broke my leg in 2006, I had a Windows machine and a modem. I searched around to discover a game that could occupy my free time. I wanted a puzzle game: I knew that much. I was looking for multiplayer games, so I happened to find “Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates” whose introductory game, Bilging, was essentially “Bejeweled” in a co-op MMOG context.

I loved the game and the concept so much that I stuck around for years. Eventually, I met a woman who was from Catalonia. And we began a long-distance romance. And for months, our romance built on the foundation of our crew and our pirate flag, and our community-building within the game’s context. We won many victories and pillaged much booty, and eventually she offered to come and visit me where I lived in Arizona.

She visited for a few weeks, during which we visited my parents, and we found ourselves engaged to be married. Thereafter, we continued our game-based LDR, but she also insisted that I not only upgrade to ADSL, but also that I travel to visit her in Spain.

It turns out that real life was far more difficult for me to manage a romantic relationship. It fell apart, and so did the airline that was supposed to take me home. My parents intervened, rescuing me and bringing me home, but I was profoundly damaged by that experience, and honestly, if some kind of romance develops online, you’d better test it ASAP in real life, lest either of you be deceived by the masks worn in online communities, especially any type of game.

Awww I am sorry your piratey romance didn’t work out, people can definitely turn out to be different from their pirates, but I hope Puzzle Pirates (my game) was overall a positive experience for you. It’s nice to see it mentioned on HN. It’s still online today with a crew of quite salty pirates ;)

Overall, this relationship and all the others on YPP were a net-positive for me, and I had immensely wonderful times playing "the social puzzle" as well as blockading, and pretending to be a wealthy mogul, and "governing" an island on behalf of the flag.

I did indeed fall in love with the sound of her voice, and if it had been a malicious ruse or "catfishing" I would've been crushed. But, having been an Internet user since 1989, I like to think I'm fairly savvy. I mean, some of the "hot girls" I had interacted with turned out to be fat, smelly dudes, but they never really surprised me!

Eventually, I bowed out when I realized that the game had become quite solitary for me, grinding out solo puzzles every day without really socializing anymore.

But at that time, 20 years ago, I was holed-up in my little apartment and not socializing much, due to the broken leg injury, the extreme heat, and poverty. So, in many ways, this MMOG helped to socialize me and kept me sane, at that critical juncture in life.

Since then, I've managed to adapt better, socially, to real life, and I can get out and interact with real people on most days of the week, so that's a big win.

And my ex-fiancée did find the man of her dreams, after all, and it seems that she got what she wanted out of the experience as well. No regrets!

My sister used to game a fair bit and she got sent loads of free stuff by thirsty guys. She even got a mechanical keyboard sent to her. At least half the "girls" online are guys pretending to be girls to get those sweet benefits (can't say I blame them).

> A minority of couples (16%) displayed a preference for 1v1 gameplay, exemplified by casually competitive trivia games such as Skribbl.io (a Scrabble clone) or drawing games similar to Pictionary.

Uh, skribbl.io is definitely not a Scrabble clone lol (And also not really a 1v1 game)