Slashdot Mirror
Virtual Girlfriend
Sven-Erik writes " BBC News reports about a Hong Kong based company called Artificial Life that has developed a solution for men without a partner, in the form of a virtual girlfriend that appear as an animated figure on the video screen of a mobile phone. But there is a downside to the virtual girlfriend - she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women. All virtual girls will look the same - but each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her. In return, she will introduce them to different aspects of her life, like letting them meet her female friends - also electronic images. Artificial Life is hoping to launch the new game later this year, on the latest 3-G mobile phones.
Been there, done that, and boy is my hand tired.
I'd rather go to a bar and meet chicks to spend money on.
;)
Just don't tell my wife
Urge to post... fading... fading... RISING!... fading... fading... gone.
or is this the most pathetic thing ever?
Blaze a trail to the New World
Somthing similar to this where guys would buy virtual presents for real women, sometimes spending upwards of $30-$200. Anyone care to shed light on what that one was, and whether it is still in business?
:-p
*sigh* nothing quite like the exploitation of desperate single guys...fortunately I'm married and am above such exploitation...now off to Proflowers.com to get her a few
...in bed
All the cost and none of the sex? Whats the friggin point?!?!?!
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot. Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
I might actually be able to get a date!
Target audience seemed to drift during the interview from 16-30 to 15-35, either way, seems to paint a bullseye on Comic Book Guy and the like. He was also evasive on how much the player pays for gifts for the girlfriend, which suggests the hook. Next it'll probably be people selling Virtual Pink Corvettes on eBay so you can meet 'her' special friend 'Skipper'.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Will she put out or is this prudish software?
"tsk, tsk...they never had a chance..."
You know what?
people will actually buy it.
"For men without a partner, help may be at hand..."
Duh
just spend it intelligently. Sure, you're wife/girlfriend will appreciate getting flowers, but haveing them delivered to her place of work is even better. I've done this on a few occasions, and trust me, its worth the $20 or so delivery charge as opposed to her just coming home and finding them on the table or such.
"she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women"
Is that even possible?
WTF!!!???
Who would buy this service!?
Thanks to that sentence and the topic of virtual girlfriends in general, I almost want to sit down and cry.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Can you add a 2nd one for a threesome?
Looks like the porno world can have a new market for selling artificial sex devices now... put that bluetooth connection to good use ;)
gShares.net
-------
artlu.net
95% of all Slashdotters have reserved a copy of Virtual Girlfriend. The other 5% are holding out for the porn expansion pack coming 2005.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
If I ignore the VG, will she die like the Virtual Pets did?
I saw this article yesterday and have since wondered when women came to be portrayed so badly. I don't really understand why you would throw money away so that a VR girl, who seemingly won't ever do much other than reveal things about herself, will talk to you. Not only is it a waste of money, but it doesn't teach men skills they actually need to hold onto a girlfriend. I'm sure there are a number of women who would prefer a money tree to a human being, but most of us can't be made happy simply through materialistic things. I'm frustrated the company would choose to reinforce this unfair stereotype about women. What's next? A virtual boyfriend who will only talk to you if you encourage him to spend all his time watching the game and going to strip clubs with his friends?
Live free or die
your insensitive clod...
how long until
Then I get pissed I didn't think of it first.
great, a Tamagoochi that wants gucchi.
The first rule of being a player, and the one who gets all the chicks, is not to buy her drinks!
here
Virtual girlfriend could end dating woes
HONG KONG, China (AP) -- She needs to be coddled with sweet talk and pampered with gifts, but you'll never see her in the flesh, says a Hong Kong company that's developing a "virtual girlfriend" for new cell phones with video capability.
Artificial Life, Inc.'s electronic love interest will appear as an animated figure on a telephone screen. But she'll require a lot of attention, involving virtual flowers and diamonds, company spokeswoman Ada Fong said on Monday.
The gifts will keep the relationship going from one level to the next -- and even though it's all made up of cold, hard data, suitors will have to pay cold, hard cash for the gifts.
The amounts have yet to be determined, Fong said.
Users of so-called third-generation, or 3G, cell phones who subscribe to the game can send text messages to the virtual woman, who'll respond by voice, Fong said.
If she's neglected, "she'll be unhappy and she won't talk to you," she added.
The game doesn't allow interactions of a sexual nature, Fong said, calling it "suitable for all ages."
The company hopes to develop a virtual boyfriend for women by early next year.
The virtual girlfriend is similar to the popular Tamagotchi "pet" concept developed by Japan's Bandai Co., Fong said.
Artificial Life hopes to launch the service in the English, Japanese and Korean languages in late November. No 3G operators have agreed to offer it yet, she said.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I know that a guy who is bad with girls can use the simulation to practice, but really, just try a real girl. You don't have to date. Just hang. Also, this game is going to be used by guys with girls, but instead of talking and spending time with thier girlfriends, they are going to be wasting time on this. A girlfriend is more than just a convinent hole and someone to make you dinner.
A long time ago, when I was taking sex ed, the book, Boys and Sex, talked about masturbation. It pretty much said all things in moderation, and solo activity should allow, not take the place of forming real relationships that are neccesary for emotional development. It sounds like this is just anothe thing that is going stunt the growth of a generation of teenage boys.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
..but each girl will behave differently - depending on how much money is spent on her.
Since you're not getting any sex, she's more like a therapist than a girlfriend.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
So, the men have virtual girlfriends on their phones, the women have arm pillows instead of boyfriends. Is it any wonder the birthrate in Japan is so low?
Tammy Gotcha
Is Taco scanning comments from earlier in the day to find his new stories?
Cue "Welcome to SlashDot!" jokes.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
Why would anyone in their right mind want to pay for virtual gifts for a virtual woman. This is the ultimate version of hell. Appearantly she nags at you if you don't spend money on her. It's like all the punishment and none of the reward. Morphix Game Rate: -5 (Would rather run tongue across a rasp than play this game)
You get the same endorphin release even if the hugging stimulus is artificial. Shelton's research found that if opiate receptor blockers were used, monkeys would go crazy for their endorphin fix, and hug just about anything.
A hugging pillow would do a lot of good to mildly depressed people. Even if you don't think it should work, apparently the body still responds.
I have a pet theory that some bondage/constriction etc fetishes are caused by endorphin depletion.
Thinking about it, that's kinda sad too.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
Slashdot is my virtual girlfriend, you Insensitive Clod!
Seriously though, when I had a girlfriend, the most annoying thing about her was that she was always on my mobile phone!
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
The match made for geeks and nerds. 99% of geeks find a successful match.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Ten years after Demi Moore went for a million bucks, we've found a way to bring the objectification of women to a new level. The computer is apparently Larry Flynt's new meat grinder.
It's sad to see the rate at which our runaway technological advances outstrip the advancement of society. In one hundred years we've developed flight, space travel, nuclear physics, gene therapy, and global digital communications networks, but we still can't get past treating women like property instead of people.
Articles like this are why I'm so excited about the possibilities of genetic engineering. I feel like the only way to get this bug out of the system is to change the source code. Imagine a world of humans without gender or race - imagine what we could accomplish!
For now we're stuck with a world where we hang female children for mouthing off, create computer programs to be interchangeable currency for female slaves, pretend that gender warfare is actually a natural state, and where female developers can't post on Slashdot without seeing the first ten replies read "show us your tits".
Humynity sure has a long way to go.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
I thought I'd seen this before on EBAY!
(Not necessarily a work safe link)
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Women get something more practical; The Boyfriend Arm Pillow
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Yes. FunHi
here's an opinion. (I'm still too speechless from seeing the site the first time to form an opinion about it. I'm still at the "banging head on monitor repeatedly" stage)
There is a gift store, which allows people to buy gifts for people they like. Which mostly means that guys will try to attract the attention of the girls who've uploaded the most enjoyable bikini pictures. The gifts are simply a small GIF file with a picture of something. Like flowers or a private jet. The gifts start at 1 cent. And there's nothing wrong with the gifts that cost 1 or 5 cents. But, somehow, the social dynamic of showing a list of who gave what gifts to what person, and them being listed in reverse price order, means that some people will be very motivated to buy the expensive gifts. Like the $14.99 jet plane or the $30 credit card. Remember, they're just GIF pictures. You don't even download them. And, remember, you pay for them with a real credit card.
-Flemming Funch, ming.tv
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
Oh, come now! I'm sure you've turned off plenty of women.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
It is indeed one of the most pathetic things on earth, but tell you what, I think most of the "boyfriend/husband skills" you learn with "Female Simulators" like this pay off in real life.
I'll give you a real-life example.. The other week I forgot our anniversary. This is one of the dumbest mistakes that you can make as a man and regardless of the experience you may have it may happen to you. I came home, and T. didn't even want to speak to me. She just looked away. Thank God, I remembered just in time and bought $200(!) worth of red roses. At first she told me to shove those roses up my ass but I kept producing them one after another telling her how sorry I was and how much I love her (I do, you know) and after a bunch of roses she fell around my neck and told me straight to my face what a miserable bastard I am and how much she loves me. (NEVER EVER underestimate the power of red roses!).
This gadget requires that you jump through hoops and buy it stuff and the like (much as many girls do) but does NOT give you sex, human companionship, a shoulder to cry on or any of that? Well I have just one question then: WHY?????
Sounds like all parts of relationships that guys DON'T usually like with none of the parts they do. Spending money on someone (or worse yet something) seems, well, really stupid.
Upgrading to Wife 1.0
Last a friend of mine upgraded from Girlfriend 4.0 to Wife 1.0 and found
that it's memory hog leaving few system resources for other applications.
He is now noticing the Wife 1.0 is also spawning Child-processes, which is
further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular
phenomenon was included in the product documentation, though other users
have informed me that this is to be expected due to the nature of the
application.
Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself so that it is always launched at
system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. Some
applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BachelorParty 2.5 and PubNight 7.0
are no longer able to run on the system at all, causing the system to
lockup when launched (even though the apps worked fine before).
Wife 1.0 provides no installation options. Thus, the installation of
undesired plug-ins such as Mother-in-law 55.8 and the Brother-in-law Beta
is unavoidable. Also system performance seems to diminish each passing day.
Some features my friend would like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0:
A "don't remind me again button"
A Minimize button
The ability to delete the "headache" file
An install feature that provides an option to uninstall 2.0 version
without loss of other system resources
An option to run the network driver in "promiscuous mode" allowing the
systems hardware probe to be much more useful/effective.
I myself wish I had decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with
Wife 1.0 by sticking with Girlfriend 3.0. Even here, however, I have found
many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 4.0. You must
uninstall Girlfriend 3.0 first, otherwise the two versions of Girlfriend
will have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port.
Other users have told me that this is a long-standing problem that I
should have been aware of. Guess that explains what happened to versions 1
& 2.
To make matters worse, the uninstall program for Girlfriend 3.0 doesn't
work very well, leaving undesirable traces of the application in the
system. Another identified problem is that all versions of Girlfriend have
annoying little messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0.
VIRUS ALERT
All users should be aware that Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you
try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will
delete MS Money files before doing the uninstall itself. Once that
happens, Mistress 1.1. won't install and you will get an "insufficient
resources" error message. To avoid the aforementioned bug, try installing
Mistress 1.1 on a different system and 'never'
run any file transfer applications (such as Laplink) between the two
systems.
I'm still going to be lonely.
How much you want to bet, she'll either blow a capacitor or overheat after 10 minutes with me.
Then she's gunna dump me.
And cheat on me with my Mac.
Dammit, that's not a troll. It's both funny and insightful. /me awaits the karma burnage
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
It's an X-rated Tamaguchi!! Do you have to pet her and feed her and talk to her?!?
I can think of better ways to spend my money, thanks!
--LWM
My Virtual Girlfriend ran off with her Virtual Boyfriend, so here I sit reading slashdot again.
There was an optional mini-quest involving a lonely, melancholy woman who spent all day near the town shrine, wondering whether her father was still alive. You could offer to help find out what happened to him.
As a 13 year old boy with very little female experience, I was really enraptured by this quest, and made it my top priority! And even though the game engine's reward was (no kidding) a text message of "She moans deeply as you passionately kiss", that was pretty cool. And it's a fond memory to this day.
This phone game is just another way of letting people have fantasies. I don't see the problem, except that "money" is such an important factor.
Nothing is so smiple that it can't get screwed up.
I have this overwhelming sense of pity for some poor lonely guy out there who would have to get a Virtual Girlfriend because he cannot hold a real relationship. All this guy wants is a bit of love and respect, but he just can't get it. Then I get disgusted at the greedy, money-grubbing company trying to capitalize on these poor souls, feeding their thirst for money off of their victim's need for love and acceptance...
I'm not sure if all of this is meant to be a joke (as one respondant has already suggested) but since you are being modded as Insightful I'm going to reply as though you were serious. This company is providing a service. To think of them as exploiting someone is a real misunderstanding of commerce. Do grocery stores exploit me because I have a biological need to eat? There are numerous reasons why some guy may need to find love and finds this Virtual Girlfriend thing to be a less-risky outlet. Perhaps someone has recently been hurt very badly in a relationship (e.g., engaged and then his fiance ran off with someone else) and just isn't ready to date real people just yet. Rather than forcing him to interact with other (real) women when he's still thinking about his loss (which wouldn't be very much fun for the women he meets) or having him sit on his couch bawling to himself, this Virtual Girlfriend may actually serve a theraputic purpose. In this case, the company is not exploiting him but is helping provide a way for him to get over his loss. Yeah, it would be great if this company provided this free of charge out of the goodness of their hearts but that's not the world we live in. They developed the technology and need to recoup their investment as well as reward those who came up with the idea. This is legitimate commerce, not exploitation.
GMD
watch this
They'd get further creating a Virtual Boyfriend on cellphones for the women. At least that way, the cellphone itself can double as a self-pleasuring device.....
The whole thing is stupid. Sounds like someone just rehashed the whole Tamagotchi thing, with a human face instead of some other creature to take care of.
... Real Doll *** don't go to link if you're at work, obviously *** and you got yourself a winning product!
Funny, but when I forget our anniversary, I apologise to J. and we move on with our life. I don't know where this stereotype of women being hung up on random stupid shit came from, but I'm sure glad I seem to have missed it.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
(Future Onion Headline)
Bill Jones broke up with his real Girlfriend Cathy Smith today because in his words, "At least the Virtual Girlfriend puts out." When questioned about the break-up Cathy was perturbed, "Like I wanted to put out for that Lo-oo-zer! He was like always giving me these virtual things... never anything real... I mean... I'm like flesh and blood here I want real stuff. My other boyfriends bring me actual gifts."
It is this reporter's opinion that Bill is indeed better off with his HK Virtual Girlfriend because his real one was a total brat.
[signature]
I played this game as the female avatar. This made the passionate kiss at the end even hotter... ;-)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
then we can use the cell-phone itself to sterilize any idiot who actually buys things for someone who doesn't exist!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
... but she's no Laura Croft.
What are those? "A" cups?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
No, it's actually true. I really do wish I had thought of it first.
Just put your phone on vibrate.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
You, my friend, are whipped. Verbatim quote from the girl I've been dating for years, after I mentioned the fact "hey, we met X years ago today."
"You know, don't bother remembering stupid things like that. Even though my girlfriends think I'm an idiot for saying this, I'm sticking by it. Make every day special for us, and I'll be yours forever. I will never ever get mad at you for not remembering these things."
Of course, it helps that she's Eastern European and doesn't grant importance to the Hallmark Holidays(tm). American women have bought into that bullshit wholesale, I'm done with them.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Enough said really... striking up a friendship or rapport with someone is the best ice breaker ever.
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
wow - someone finally made "other" people's cell phones even more annoying.
Now, instead of just ringing at the most inappropriate moments (e.g. theater) and with the most obnoxious rings (e.g. pretty much all of them), we now get the pleasure of hearing their phone bitch and whine.
Yay us.
The Japanese have been pumping out dating sims for years now. Very few of them have moved outside of Japan though, and the few that have are usually hentai.
When I pondered the nature of this phenomena I could draw only one conclusion - they're much like flight sims in the sense that you could theoretically apply the skills you've built there to real life. Remember key facts about her. Give gifts. Manage your time so you can work to earn money to buy said gifts while still maintaining a relationship. Say the right things. Do everything right on a date. Climb the relationship ladder so she'll put out.
Of course the details vary by game and all of them have a distinctly Japanese sense of relationships, which is why you see so few outside of Japan. And it doesn't have anything like the nuance of real relationships - it practically trains you not to do or expect anything unique either. And when it comes to the hentai, the "lessons learned" are frequently worthless and often morally repugnant, but nevertheless fit into some twisted perception of dating.
So, this expensive mobile realtime version of a dating sim is just an evolution of the concept. Albeit a rather expensive one. Frankly, it doesn't seem like it needs to be online. And the fact that all "girlfriends" look alike reeks of encouraging either mental or programming laziness. It must have some other special realtime hooks, like an advanced voice synthesis and interpretation engine, or an extensive and up-to-date library of keywords and responses.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I think this is very apt
[snip]So is this the image they're pushing to our men out there, now? Everyone knows that the woman you are with doesn't want you for you -- It's really only the gift that matters -- and it's obviously only diamonds that we want! So forget those little, inexpensive but nice tokens of appreciation, forget going on walks in the city or countryside, and forget just plain conversation! Buy your woman a great big fat rock. Everyone wants a big shiny rock. Especially women. You are now a sex-god if you give your woman a shiny rock. Rocks good. Sex good. Rocks get sex. Buy rocks.
There is always this scene in one show or movie or other where the man takes his fiancee to pick out a ring. When she picks this diamond encrusted, platinum looped, gold finished, ruby studded abomination of metal and stone and the man refuses because he simply isn't willing to pay sixty grand for a ring, she freaks out at him.
Obviously the man sees it as a huge practical loss, sixty thou for a fucking circular band of metal that could fall down the toilet whilst his ugly wife is using her daily douche or whatever it is high-maintenance women do in the bathroom.
Either that or he has the horrendous statistic in his head, the 50% of marriages break up after year one... Or was it six months? Well, anyways, the man has the practicality of the situation at hand and tries to persuade his picky fiancee into a cheaper, more plain ring. [snip]
if you have a boy first time you don't try again, if you have a girl you try again, so there's a 75% chance a child is a boy).
No, 50% of all first born are male. 50% of all second born are also male. So 50% of all born are male. It does not matter that the second born only happen in the case where the first born was female.
Tor
Any such strategy you try will not change the basic probabilities. Choosing whether you have another child, based on the gender of the last one, will not affect the gender of the next one. (Ultimately, the next couple to have children will only be picking up where you left off.)
It could be said that the strategy described encourages those who are somehow predisposed to having girls, to have more children, but whether that occurs is outside the scope of this argument.
It's tragic. Laugh.
Modern japanese women expect/want a more equal partnership and modern japanese males seem unable to supply that. So many girls are putting of getting married and therefore getting kids. You have heard of the baby boom? This is the opposite. A baby implosion. Even if the women simply postpone getting kids it will have a huge effect as later in live the changes of getting a healthy child go down alarmingly.
I have now seen several documenturies on the problem so it seems to be real.
I got the real sense that there was a huge culture clash going on with both sides expecting the other side to be something they are not.
It is easy to say that feminisme is to blame but if you ever watched a bit of japanese culture it is also easy to see why women are fed up. A male who claims he is starving because there is nobody to cook is pathetic by western standards. I can imagine that Japanese women have grown fed up with it. It is not that the japanese women don't want to get married and have kids. They just don't want to be a slave to their husband. On the other hand the boys are still raised with the ideal of the demure wife who never talks back or makes demands.
Having a few confirmed bachelors around the place adds color to the world. Having a nation of people unwilling to create families is asking for trouble when people are living longer and longer. Japan may not have enough people to take care of their old ones in a decade or two.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Is anyone else crying about the state of the world when a guy needs to buy flowers for his virtual blow-up doll?
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
You pay money for the Virtual Girlfriend program. There is no sex involved, no nudity, no dirty talk, no physical contact, not even a kiss.
Ok, now, in order to have her talk to you, she requires virtual gifts. Lucky you, for the company that makes Virtual Girlfriend can sell them to you FOR REAL MONEY, yet she will keep requiring more and more from you, otherwise she won't speak to you.
Apparently, as I understand it, not only does it waste your time, it also wastes your real money, and only rich people can afford to keep her talking to them. The amount you have to spend has not yet been determined, yet I got a funny feeling that they can change the setting on you to make her require more "gifts" that end up costing you more money. You might, oh, start by spending $20 a week on her, and then they send an instant message to your phone that turns on the golddigger routines to make you pay $200 a week. That is what I think will happen.
If you want to waste your time and money, find a webcam whore, cell phones have amazing web browsers now and the Internet fees and webcam fees can potentionally be less than the Virtual Girlfriend. I used that link because Maddox explains how to be a Web Cam Whore so well, that you'll know what to expect. At least you might be able to see some female body parts for your money, and be able to get some bad poetry, which should be better than the Engrish responses the Virtual Girlfriend would give you. I think Virtual Girlfriend is targeted towards the guys who visit Web Cam Whores anyway, both the Web Cam Whores and Virtual Girlfriends seem to have the same intelligence anyway, and the same low intelligence audience that cannot get a date even if they were the last man in town, with $1 million USD in a suitcase, a 2004 BMW, and used phermones to attract women.
The whole business idea of Virtual Girlfriend is to get the sad lonely loser hooked, until he is paying more money than a crack addict for a fix.
I hope that someone like Maddox writes a sarcastic review on it, besides me. ;)
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Except peasants will usually get rid of the girl, because peasants can't afford to pay the tax for having a second children, and they don't want a girl as their only child since a girl won't be able to provide for them, and will even require a dowry when she gets married. There's approximately 20% more men than women of a marriageable age in mainland China currently - it's so problematic that the Chinese government has recently announced they would change the system, so that people will get some rewards for raising a girl, and penalties for having a second child will be reduced or removed if the first child is of the female persuasion.
Karma: Could be worse (could be raining)
Or was anyone else shocked to see the quality of that rendered screenshot. What phone is capable of putting out graphics like that?