PLAYING FOR LOVE

Japan

In Japan, lonely men are falling for virtual girlfriends who are far from perfect. The digital beauties of today come without any artificial intelligence, they can react to their partner only within very strict paths of a pre written storyline. Yet they seem very real to many Japanese men, some of whom have long term relationships with Rinko, Manaka or Nene, one of the characters to choose from in the game 'LovePlus', played on a portable Nintendo console.

The success of the LovePlus game series which has sold around 500'000 copies, shows that machines won't need perfect artificial intelligence to convince us of their human potential .
Many of these users have a very sane idea of the game they are playing and the imaginary quality of the girls they are dating. Others cannot tell fact from fiction anymore and are desperately waiting for the next update of the game which would equal the next step in the relationship. As it is there are no more updates, so these hardcore users keep playing the same storylines again and again. They're stuck in a love loophole.

LOULOU D’AKI