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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?!?!?!
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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
"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
"she will require more flowers and gifts than many real women"
Is that even possible?
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?
If I ignore the VG, will she die like the Virtual Pets did?
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!
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?
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.
I am sure she/it puts out but I think we all know who gets stuck cleaning the phone afterwards.
No, but if you pay enough, she'll introduce you to her girlfriends and you might get to see some girl-girl action.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
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
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 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
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.
There are some things that are simply built into the genes. Human men are compelled to have sex without commitment; women are compelled to form commitments. It's a broad generalization, but all of anthropology, sociology and natural biology boil down to this simple axiom.
You can try to deny it, argue it, or change it, but human nature will always defeat you in the end. The successful social institutions are the ones that use this nature to achieve good ends, the way democracy uses selfishness to achieve good government. Marriage, in essence, is a way of getting men to commit to a woman and her children by promising him an available sexual partner at all times.
Pornography in all its myriad forms, including "virtual girlfriends", is a way to give men (limited) sexual gratification without bothering with a relationship. Romance novels and movies do the same by giving women a relationship fantasy they can enjoy without an actual partner. Both businesses have been spectacularly successful over the decades because those principles are true.
SHOW US YOUR TITS!!
Ok, just kidding.
But you know, you're going way overboard. While sexism is most definitely a problem in today's societies, this little gadget is not a representation of that at all. How is this in any way sexist? It's fun and harmless. I could just as easily see a "virtual boyfriend" game. There's no sex involved here and it no more "objectifies" women than any other form of media.
A society without gender or race? You would do well to read up on some evolutionary biology/psychology. Biodiversity and two sexes are crucial components to ensure our long-term survival. We need to get rid of societal prejudice, not our biological markers. You're attacking the wrong problem.
Gender warfare may not be a "good" or "moral" state, but it IS a natural state. Hmm. Read some Richard Dawkins or Steven Pinker. The two genders evolved to perform different functions and the conflicts between them can be attributed to their differing needs and goals. This doesn't justify sexism, but that doesn't mean we can pretend there are no differences between the sexes, because there are.
There are some things that are simply built into the genes. Human men are compelled to have sex without commitment; women are compelled to form commitments.
This belief is one of the most successful memes of all time, for obvious reasons; it allows both sexes to justify things they want to justify in the first place. (Men get to say, "I can't help it, it's in my blood." Women get to say, "See, men are pigs! We're so much more virtuous.")
There's only one problem: it's not true. The fact is that both sexes are equally promiscuous -- perhaps for different reasons, perhaps not, but everyone pretty much screws around equally.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
The point is that those are all cultural factors, not genetic ones. Citing the behavior of women in patriarchal cultures to justify a claim about inherent tendencies toward certain types of sexual behavior is kind of like citing the behavior of black people in Mississippi in 1952 to justify a claim that black people aren't interested in voting.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Who's the 1% you've included that can't even get the virtual girl?
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
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
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?
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. ;)
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