*This was originally published on Geektime at https://www.geektime.com/2016/11/04/a-dating-site-to-help-gamers-find-their-player-two/ on November 4th, 2016. Geektime migrated their site and lost articles published before 2019. As a result, only my own copies of these previously published articles can be made available. Original links are included but broken.
Meet LFGdating
Looking for group?
We’ve all been there, both in the gaming world and outside of it. Finding the right someone to team up with can be hard.
That’s where LFGdating comes in. As a site that can find you a real-world romantic connection, and maybe someone to game with too, it’s a welcome break from the traditional dating scene.
Speaking of which, have you been out there lately? Meeting people in bars can be such a mess. Sure, that person’s cute, but do they like the same things I do? And – this is important – will they be understanding when I don’t come to bed early on those nights where my guild has got to stop wiping and down this boss before the server reset? Finding that special someone is hard!
If you’re like me, maybe you’ve gone the other way with it and dated people you’ve met through gaming as well. I believe that sharing a hobby that’s important to you and takes up a lot of your time is a good way to begin a relationship. However, a game is not a dating service, and you don’t always know the person behind the character as well as you may think. I’ll admit that my problem so often has been first falling for someone’s online persona, not them as a real-life person, and soon it becomes clear that the two aren’t the same, and I’ve led myself down a rabbit hole rather than to a good relationship.
So how can you find someone whose personality you like, whose interests align with yours, and that you can get to know in a real-world context? LFGdating founders Casey Tebo and Patrick Rafferty say that, “There is a large difference between sticking out as a gamer and standing out for your passion,” and they’re devoted to letting the spotlight shine on their users so that their in-game and IRL worlds combine to help you find someone who can fit nicely into both.
Photo credit: LFGdating
The site is free if you just want a basic account, and signing up is easy. I didn’t know that at first, so I was thinking back to my time getting started on other dating sites and dreading a time-consuming questionnaire. Expecting that, I waited until I had a free weekend to devote to the monotony and got ready to limber up for all the hoops I assumed I would have to jump through to get my profile set up. Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised! The questions are both simple and telling: You can answer things like what sort of reading you do and what TV or movies you watch, but my favorite question of the bunch was what kind of activities you enjoy – replete with choices ranging from getting drinks to Fourth Meal to LAN parties and LARPing!
They get to important real world stuff too, like your highest level of education, what language(s) you speak, and what kind of pets you have, if any. One incredibly clever question asks the user’s gaming personality, and its answer reveals much about a person, both in-game and out, without the need for verbosity. Through inquiries like these, LFGdating does an excellent job of intertwining your gaming life with your real personality to give users a good idea about their matches, and all without anyone having to fill out a hundred-question survey or write personal essays. (There is an area on your profile where you can wax poetic about yourself as much as you’d like, though, if that’s your cup of tea.) The process they’ve come up with is an ingenious way for you to share both aspects of yourself simultaneously.
As a woman for whom gaming is an important part of daily life, it is refreshing to see a site devoted not just to dating and talking about gaming, but about connecting people with gaming being the common thread between them. The founders want to provide their users all the pieces to begin the process of building a solid relationship, and Casey explains that this site is unique in its efforts to meet that end because they “don’t just focus on who a person is or what a person likes,” but they add that important third element missing from many dating sites: “Focus on what our members want in their relationships.”
The site itself is ad-free and not ugly or with overwhelming décor. Its simplicity makes it very approachable, and the lack of pop-ups is also appealing. The user can choose to browse at no cost, but the fee to get full access to the site for things like breaking down matches by photos or even gaming consoles is an incredibly reasonable $5 a month, and I’d say a price well paid.
If you find yourself looking for that special someone to team up with in life and in game, give LFGdating a shot.
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