Role-Playing Games: Bridge or Barrier to Object Relationships in Socially Isolated Teens?

“Ain't nothing like the real thing.” Perhaps Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell's soulful rendition of the Ashford and Simpson lyric put it best.

The need for close affectional bonds is presumed universal in humans. It is experienced most acutely in circumstances of danger, separation, and loss. For Bowlby (1973), the primary affectionate attachment is a form of social relationship that admits of no substitute. It might therefore follow that the other's presence and proximity is nonnegotiable, intrinsically linked to what it means to have and to be in a relationship.

Has Internet technology invalidated this most basic intuition? Has “techno-intimacy” (Dryer and Lijtmaer, 2007) replaced the need for the “real thing”? It is doubtful, to say the least. In the end, an exclusively virtual relationship necessarily falls short. It mimics, but is never identical to, an in-person, mutual, embodied relationship. However, posing the question in this way presumes that in-person relationships are the standard against all relationships, and this must be re-evaluated. It wrongly dichotomizes the real and the virtual. If one suspends this assumption and instead interrogates virtual relationships as such, their “shortcomings” turn out to be neither regrettable nor pathological.

With these qualifications in mind, I wish to advance the hypothesis that virtual relationships can be as legitimate, meaningful, and real as any other. I shall argue, first, that role-playing games (RPGs) express the uniquely human capacity for multiplicity. Once sundered from any direct connection to the body, identity becomes an amalgam of ever-present possibilities, something that may be fashioned and customized in accordance with one's wishes. Second, although particularly appealing for those on the autistic/schizoid spectrum, these relationships should be evaluated in terms of how they are used to negotiate conflicts between closeness and separation, contact