It’s that time of year again, the time when I begin to get the urge to go looking for my one true love. It doesn’t hit me during February, no it usually comes around just about now. Up to this year it’s happened while I was in school and too busy to really do anything about it. But this year I’m working and surprisingly able to find free time.
What struck me though was the lack of gamer and geek options on many online dating sites. Society has reached a level of acceptance of online dating, eHarmony, Match.com, Yahoo Personals and yesterday Google’s joke of Google Romance. So it isn’t that geeky or “sad” to do this as it once was.
And yet with the stereotype for geeks and the Internet, there really aren’t any sites dedicated to connecting geeks and gamers. This leads my entrepreneurial spirit to begin pondering and considering what there is that I could do. I found one site that was a very poor version of a gamer dating site, but it was actually just a dating site with a party mask on. No specialized geek or gamer questions.
Like, what about allowing people to search by shared gaming interests? With the large number of people on MMORPGs, what about considering them on par with physical residences? What if I wanted to find girls who played the same game I did on the same servers? It’s easy enough technically, it’s just not something that has been done yet.
I realize that many people look for relationships with people in a close physical distance, but I know of at least 3 couples who met on an MMO and one of them relocated into a now very happy relationship.
Social Networks seem to be taking over for dating services, or at least MySpace the hypocrisy is stomping all over the playground in its unexplainable dominance. And yet, if there is one group that can appreciate the specialization of this sort, it seems like gamers and geeks would be it…
What do you guys think? I’ve come in here with several other ideas for feedback and I’ve yet to regret it. Tell me what you think. Be my focus group ;). I promise beer and pizza if anyone wants to come over and pick it up.
I think the biggest problem would be the low female:male ratio. I tell all the girls I meet to go after a (FTF) gamer boy, but to tell all boys to go after gamer girls would be just cruel, because the gals would be so drastically oversubscribed.
Unless the girls are willing to have man-harems, which is an idea I’m open to, but, sadly, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.
Yeah that was something that occurred to me after I hit submit as well, there is a gap in terms of the number of people of each gender when it comes to gamers. But I think there are more and more geek girls and girl gamers and that the ratio is closing up.
Is there any difference in the ratio of homosexuals/heterosexuals in society in general, and in geek/gamer society? I don’t think I know many gay male geeks personally, but if there’s a lot of them then the problem of gender is lessened (of course, gay female geeks are as screwed as the rest of us straight male geeks).
Most of the single gamers I know are too busy playing to surf dating sites. And the ones-- well, one-- that does surf dating sites doesn’t seem to consider gaming a big enough interest to want to meet girls who also play games.
For MMOs, it strikes me as odd to visit a website where I could meet people who play with me when I could just play and meet people and not have a website in the way. The only advantage I can see in a gamer dating website is it would let you meet people who play on different servers. But if you’re separated by servers, the relationship will be slower to develop, if not outright impossible to develop. I don’t see much benefit there.
FWIW, I met my SO of a year and a half playing a MMO.
If you open things up to be a bit less specialized, I could see a site for geek dating in general being a hit.
I am not a gamer girl, but I do think of myself as something of a geek girl, being in a science-oriented profession. I think you could get a decent female population on the site if you marketed yourself to female scientists and doctors (I am a med student, and I can assure you a lot of female med students/docs would jump at the chance to meet smart, scientifically literate men).
But that is a whole different class than geek gamers.
Granted, there are smart, scientifically literate gamers out there, but there are also a whole lot of 24 year old guys who think owned is spelled with a p and like living in Mom’s basement because the rent is cheap and working a part time job gives them more time to play World of Warcraft.
As a woman who has played around on the edges of having geek cred (20 years in IT, play a few computer games and console games, have role played on the rare occation, have been to SF conventions, have helped run SF conventions, have friends who actually write the stuff, was a member of the SCA and did RenFest), the biggest problem is twofold - the overwhelming number of geek guys - and the near complete level of cluelessness in the geek male population. This is going to mean the biggest problem with your model will be attracting women to it. The second big problem to your model will be location - internet relationships seperated by physical distance aren’t “all that” - and geek girls don’t have any problems getting dates who can actually take them out to see V for Vendetta and dinner - as long as they don’t attempt to be subtle.
That’s a good point, and I defer to your “geek cred”. My sample of gamers and geeks may be a bit skewed, since I’m just going by the men I’ve known who were gamers/geekish types. Most of the ones I know are smart guys, reasonably well-educated in a science/tech field like computers or engineering, functional and independent adults…just a bit socially awkward and inexperienced with girls. I’d definitely like a site that catered to meeting more guys of that sort…but I’m, uh, not so much into the idea of hooking up with the dysfunctional “why bother leaving mom’s basement?” type of dudes.
The problem of attracting women to the site is definitely a big one. Some random ideas I have (not sure how practical they’d actually be, just throwing them out there):
-Some kind of “ladies’ night equivalent” where women could message men for free (but obviously you’d have to think of some way of preventing guys from abusing the system)
-Making it not just a personal ad site, but a “geek dating advice” site that just happens to have a personals section. That could potentially kill two birds with one stone. Women tend to be far more interested in analyzing relationships and giving/getting dating advice than guys are, so that part of the site would probably draw in more women than your site would otherwise get. Plus, maybe the advice section would have the side effect of helping to educate a few geeks about how to deal with women.
Yeah the OP focused a bit heavily on the geek gamer side of things but I should have rephrased it to open it up to be much more for the geeks and the gamers out there. Geek chicks and geek dudes, gamer guys and gamer gals, perhaps even gamer guys and geek chicks, or gamer girls and geek dudes. The problem is how to change it such that it is obviously different than other dating services.
I’m still tossing it around, I don’t know if anything will come from it or not.
You talking about anyone in particular there, roomie?
WRT that, the reason I don’t really screen by gaming is because I assume all girls on MMOs are really guys (cite), even though that’s not true, of course (cite).
That, and because if I did, I’d never get a date ever. You know, an even longer period of “ever” than the one I’m working with now.
And the ones-- well, one-- that does surf dating sites doesn’t seem to consider gaming a big enough interest to want to meet girls who also play games.
