'Virtual cheating': The debate over 'Love Plus'

Wait, there's no aggressive career woman to choose as your virtual girlfriend? This must be some oversight. (Video from YouTube user superspitz)

Why is there any mystery about the cause of the low Japanese birth rate? Evidence A: Dating simulators -- video games that let you imagine the wholly fantastical situation of courting beautiful young women. The newest title in this increasingly popular genre for Japanese men is Konami's "Love Plus" on the Nintendo DS, where in Tamagotchi style, you have to constantly pay attention to your animated belle or she dumps you. (At least, she does not just die like a neglected Tamagotchi.)

According to Japanese site IT Media [Japanese], the game has seen great sales and immediately hit #1 on Mixi's keyword ranking upon the game's September 3 release.

Yet, there is a bigger social problem lurking behind the success: 'virtual cheating.' In other words, guys are playing the game so much that their real girlfriends are getting jealous of the digital girl inside the DS. A round of applause is first due to the developers' ability to make a game about doting on women so addictive that you forget to dote on the actual women in your life.

Our initial response to this story was: guys who obsessively play dating simulator games have girlfriends? These games were once the sole domain of men who would never get a chance to date real women, but now they are dragging those with girlfriends and wives into the dark world of two-dimensional love. Worries about technology going 'too far' have never seemed more appropriate.

Or maybe, bored husbands are using this as a way to bring some new women into their lives without actually... bringing new women into their lives. Could 'virtual cheating' help curb real-deal adultery? As long as peeved wives do not use the game as grounds for divorce, the net social gain of dating simulators could be positive.

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