The online worlds of multiplayer games are spawning a new sideline.  It seems that players who start flirting with each other while participating for hours on end in these virtual reality environments are meeting offline and continuing the relationships, leading to a “marriage” of like minds—that of gamers in love.

Take the case of Mark Brown, who says he searched for Ms. Right in all the usual places, but instead met her online while playing “City of Heroes,” a massively multiplayer online game. MMOG players tend to imbue their online characters with remnants of their offline personalities, so it’s possible to “meet” a character while playing online and hit it off with both the virtual entity and the real person controlling it. Avid gamers who have met their virtual mates sometimes stage in-game weddings, and these virtual nuptials often precede the offline equivalent.

It brings new meaning to the phrase “the family that plays together stays together.”

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