Ok, so he isn’t quite my husband yet, that’s something that we’re working on for 2025, but the statement still stands. If I never played this game I would have never met my husband-to-be. Despite our origins being quite “cringe” by modern standards, it almost seems fitting this is how we would meet each other in a rather comical way.
So first what is a “waifu” game for people that actually go outside and aren’t glued to their phone screens? Typically these games contain a wide variety of female characters, often in fan service like outfits and poses, targeting mostly straight men with their provocative design. Over the years games exploited the female form to best appeal to their core audiences since sex sells and it sells especially well when you can collect them. With the boom of gacha game, mobile game developers take advantage of the attractive designs to rake in 10’s of thousands, to even millions, of dollars a year. Despite the problematic aspects of the character designs, there are plenty of standouts with fun gameplay and world building. Admittedly, I initially chose to play the game for the illustrations, but I stuck around because the story was very deep and has made me tear up every so often with the tragic backstory they revealed. Also it was released on my birthday, I promise this will be relevant.
If you do not recognize where the characters in the photo above are from, they are from a Korean gacha game called Nikke: Goddess of Victory. It is a sci-fi rpg shooter game where you play as a commander of android women trying to reclaim an apocalyptic earth from alien robot creatures. Their biggest selling point is the rather “jiggly” Live2D physics as you watch the women shoot at the targets. Immediately you think that this is purely a fan service game, but after the introduction chapter you become very invested in the story. For someone that gets easily bored and usually skips the story, I have made an effort to actually follow the all major storylines since it’s initial launch on November 4th 2022.
So how did this mobile game lead me to meet my better half? For the first couple of months it was only playable on mobile platforms, but then the developers added a PC port. To promote the game they collaborated with the popular streaming platform Twitch, where if you watched a streamer play the game you would get in-game bonuses, and I was determined the maximize on the promotion. Being a streamer myself, I decided to passionately share my account with my viewers on the very first day of the promotion. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the bonus items, otherwise known as twitch drops, can only be received once and given out once you “watch” a certain amount of time. By the time I had finished my stream I had actually managed to acquire all of the twitch drops, but I was under the impression that it would reset the next day.
Logging in to try and claim more drops I carefully browsed the active streamers to choose from. In a sea of what looked to be male streamers, I tried to search for a fellow female streamer to show support. And then I spotted a cute blonde anime girl on my screen, I thought to myself, “Finally another woman is also playing this game!” To my surprise I my ears didn’t hear a chipper anime girl voice, but rather a jolly, nerdy male voice. As it would turn out there was a little creature on top of the anime girl’s head and that was the initial avatar of my significant other. I’m not gonna lie, I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to support another female streamer, but I figured I would give the streamer a chance and hang out before trying to find someone else to get twitch drops from.
While I started watching this streamer play I noticed that he was very early in the game. As it turns out he had only started playing the game for a couple weeks. So I started giving him some tips as someone that started playing since it’s release. After all I picked up a couple of tricks and strategies while playing, why not share to improve their account? It became a fun discussion on the game and the characters, and time quickly passed, but I wasn’t completely sold on following this random guy. I had finally noticed that I wasn’t gaining any bonus items, but before I headed out I decided to ask if he would like to know a fun fact about the game. He said sure, and I told him that the game was released on my birthday, November 4th! He then paused and asked if I was serious, because it happened to also be his birthday. We both got extremely excited to find a random birthday twin over the internet and we decided to mutually follow each other. To my significant other’s shock however, I was indeed a woman, and he began to worry that he might have offended me by being a little bit too “bro” with me.
Over the next several months we would actively watch each other stream and over time become very important figures in each other’s community. Often discovering shared interests such as illustration, old fandoms, music tastes, and have goofy personalities that made the other one laugh. We were extremely good friends, despite not reaching out to each other outside of stream, but also very cautious when developing our feelings. This is because we were very fearful of having a parasocial relationship with each other.
To explain, parasocial relationships is a phenomena in which viewers start to psychologically developing one-sided closeness to a fictional/media personality. There have been several cases when fans feel extremely close to certain content creators that they watch from the screen and start believing that their favorite creators are their actual friend. To a certain extent most content creators are very appreciative of their viewers and supporters, however many would not inherently consider their fans their closest friends. Most creators still want to maintain a level of space as to maintain some privacy, however there are incidents where fans feel entitled to their favorite creators space and feel very offended when rejected. Needless to say, my now fiancé and I did not want to risk developing these feelings, making the other party uncomfortable, or in the worst case, lose a really good friend.
What ultimately gave us the push to give our relationship a shot was ironically due to misogyny, thankfully not from my future husband, but rather from the Vancouver dating scene. Considering that we met on a waifu game that is still very exploitive of women and illustrating them for the male gaze, and it was because I was frustrated with dealing with a misogynistic individual that lead me to seek advice from a male friend feels almost comical. However I’m very grateful that the person I decided to speak to was very understanding, reassuring that I wasn’t going crazy, and now planning on getting married to, hopefully in the summer of 2025. Love will find you at the oddest time, and you might meet your significant other in not so classy ways, however it always makes for fun story that I love sharing, though admittedly not so much with extended family.