Comments on Pixel Poppers: Love By Proxy: Relying on Fake Relationships

Who would have thought that Castaway was predictin...

2010-06-16T17:26:14.121-07:00

Who would have thought that Castaway was predicting the future? "WILSON!"

I have nothing smart to say, except thanks for fur...

2010-02-23T11:12:54.368-08:00

I have nothing smart to say, except thanks for furthering the discussion! My knowledge was certainly increased today. B)

@cl...

2010-02-23T01:24:46.980-08:00

@clean3d:
You certainly take this idea in interesting directions! :)

So I did some research, and it seems that the defining trait of a parasocial relationship is that it is one-sided, not (as I had believed) that it involves only one real person. You can have parasocial relationships with television and videogame characters, or bloggers, or news anchors, or sports teams - what makes it "parasocial" is that you know a lot about them and they know nothing about you.

That said, there are still useful differences between parasocial relationships with people who exist and ones with people who don't, since the former can become genuinely social and the latter cannot.

Either way, interacting with NPCs is parasocial as long as the NPC is not a real person, because a fake person can't know anything about you. It's conceivable that somewhere down the line as AI improves, NPCs could be artificial-but-real people in their own right (though I really, really hope not because DAMN would that be irresponsible). In that situation, you'd have two-way interaction and knowledge about each other. It would not be parasocial.

As far as I can tell, though, that's not quite what you're asking. You seem to be asking whether there's a meaningful difference between a limited discussion with a human, such as via blog comments, and an in-game high-quality unscripted conversation with a non-sentient NPC. And that gets into questions of what defines a person, and whether an AI that passes the Turing test can be non-sentient in the first place - thorny questions indeed, and ones I'm not prepared to answer here today.

But it does connect into an issue I purposefully left completely untouched in this post, because it is complex enough to warrant an own entire essay to itself - relationships with fellow players in an MMO. A guildmate in WoW whom you never meet in person is, in your experience, functionally similar to an NPC with extremely advanced AI. Is a text-based relationship in a game meaningfully different from a text-based relationship on a blog? Maybe not.

But they are both meaningfully different from an in-person relationship, if only because of how humans are wired. For most people, text-based relationships are a lot better than nothing in terms of guarding against loneliness, but having people you can see and hear and touch is far, far more powerful.

The moral, therefore, remains the same: don't let the weaker substitutes get in the way of your ability to experience the real thing.

Impressive response, and I think you're right....

2010-02-22T20:30:44.931-08:00

Impressive response, and I think you're right. For the sake of the argument, though, here are a couple thoughts. ;)

Although commenting turns blogs into a discussion, does it differ enough from talking to an NPC to matter? Granted, a real person will give more intelligent responses, but that would mean the only thing keeping NPCs from being as good as people is the strength of the AI. We're pretty far out from having convincing game AI that can hold a conversation, last I knew, but I'm not willing to bet someone won't produce something like that in the future.

Perhaps I misread your reply and you already addressed this point?

@cl...

2010-02-22T16:07:49.689-08:00

@clean3d:
Interesting question!

I'd say this should be classified differently, however. There is, after all, a real person writing those blog posts. Reading their posts may be a limited, one-sided sort of connection that can mislead the reader as to how well they know the writer - but the reader can always turn it into a dialog by doing things like commenting. No one involved is fictional, and the relationship can become a real one. That's an important distinction.

It's the difference between having feeling like you know a TV character and feeling like you know the actor who plays the character - only you're more likely to be able to get a blogger's attention than an actor's, most of the time. :)

Can the same be said about reading blogs, then? As...

2010-02-22T15:27:47.977-08:00

Can the same be said about reading blogs, then? As much as I'd hate to admit it in relation to this discussion, I almost feel as if I know some of the bloggers who I read. Without a doubt, this would prove completely untrue in real life, though.

Does it say something about me that when I feel do...

2010-02-15T16:09:24.972-08:00

Does it say something about me that when I feel down, I play GTA: Chinatown Wars, and set innocent bystanders on fire for kicks?

I feel this one. Persona 3 and 4 wrecked me on re...

2010-02-15T15:35:18.081-08:00

I feel this one.

Persona 3 and 4 wrecked me on real life for a while. I was getting sub-standard grades with a very easy class schedule while moping whenever I couldn't grind social links with my virual friends.