Every other week, Bonnie Ruberg contributes Playing Dirty, a column on sex and gender in video games:
Do you ever get the feeling dating is a game? Or that racking up MySpace friends is like scoring points? Or maybe that being charming is all well and good, but you should just be able to bid for girls' attention? Well then, cynical love birds, you might want to check out i'm in like with you. Started by Dan Albritton, an ITP student in New York, and his partner Charles Forman, the self-proclaimed game is like Facebook meets Ebay. Except, of course, that the money isn't real, no one regulates the "services rendered," and there's never any shipping and handling. Unless you count the cost of sending your date back home in a taxi at the end of the night. Or the next morning. Or whatever.
Things start out pretty normal in i'm in like with you. You go in, you set up your profile, you pick a sexy "favorite drink." But unlike other social networking sites, the only way you can contact people is by setting up other "games." These games are actually one- to three-day auctions. Usually they're based on questions like "Want to take me out for drinks?" or "Who's the coolest Power Ranger?" Other players bid their points to be one of five top responses to the question. Then whoever started the game picks a winning bidder, and gets the chance to send him a flirtatious message. It better be a good one though, because he just paid for that wink-y smiley face with a hefty chunk of points.
I'm in like with you makes itself out to be a game about real-life dating. An introductory flash video on their site shows us "Samantha," a pretty girl who's new to the city, searching for "a cute guy to take her to the movies." The actual number of people meeting up through auctions seems up in the air, though. What's more interesting is the different ways players go about advertising for potential playmates -- and which ways are most successful. Some people ask directly ("Let's go get ice cream" or "Convince me you're normal and we'll do dinner"), but the auctions that bring in the big bucks are the ones that are more subtle. A hot blond pictured with her laptop asking about l33t? Please, take our points and do with them what you will!
Since i'm in like with you is in closed beta, the community is still somewhat small and techy-- although the gender divide is surprisingly even. Even in that kiddy pool of players, there's a descent amount of variety in what people want out of the game. Is the goal to meet someone? Or just to socialize? (There are plenty of auctions that don't have anything to do with real-life dating.) Or maybe just to rack up as many points as possible? That's up to you to decide. Then there are the other questions yet unanswered. What if you don't deliver as promised on your auction? What about non-heterosexual hook-ups? The game's makers are clearly orienting it toward a straight crowd, but the mechanics themselves leave all possibilities open. And what about the delicate question of point prostitution?
Whether or not i'm in like with you will work out as a dating site has yet to seen. In the meantime, it's at least giving us a new way to look at social networking in general: as one big game.
Bonnie Ruberg is a writer, researcher, and all around fangirl with a big crush on games. Find more of her work at Gamasutra, The Onion A. V. Club, or her blog, Heroine Sheik. She can be reached at 
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