Awww ... there's nothing more romantic than two gamers falling in love over a video game. Especially when that video game lets you get that lovin' feeling while killin' skags, skythids and spiderants in the post-apocalyptic badlands on the planet Pandora.
But maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic.
It seems Ben Ambroso, a big fan of the hit role-playing shooter game "Borderlands," contacted the developers at Gearbox Software with a story of true video gamin' love. And he had a unique request for them.
Ambroso told the developers that when he had first met his girlfriend Tora, he had prepared "the gamer talk" — a talk in which he had to explain that he enjoyed video games and that his hobby might just take up a lot of his time. Little did he know that Tora was a gamer too.
Tora's response: "I love Borderlands! Let's play!"
Ambroso told the folks at Gearbox (and at gaming site Kotaku) that he and Tora played "Borderlands" plus the game's downloadable content cooperatively from start to finish. And he said that, "Borderlands easily made that awkward starting-out stage of any relationship go extremely smooth." (By the way, both of them are level 61, with Ben playing as Roland and Tora as Lilith.)
Ambroso then asked Gearbox if they might be able to help him out with a marriage proposal. And as you can see below, the developers answered with an enthusiastic yes. Well, perhaps Claptrap — the personality-plus robot sidekick from the game — wasn't exactly enthusiastic about the job. Still, he was eventually coerced into helping out:
Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford himself even got involved, Ben told Kotaku.
"He was one of the biggest pushers of the idea, saying 'We really need to do something on this,'" Ben said, explaining that he got to meet Pitchford a couple of times when he visited the Gearbox office to work on the video.
You can probably guess what Tora's answers was. But if you want to see how the proposal went down, check out this video right here:
You'll note all the people gathered for the popping of the big question. Apparently they told Tora that it was just a party to celebrate Ambroso's upcoming birthday
I myself have sung the praises of "Borderlands" as a great way to bring a couple closer together — even an old married couple. I'm telling you, there's nothing like gunning down post-apocalyptic psychopaths and various bloodthirsty beasts with the love of your life.
Go on, give it a try. I think you'll agree.
(Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up.)
For more video game lovin', check out:
- Video games are cheaper than couples therapy
- Gamers worried about credit cards as PlayStation outage continues
- Nintendo says Wii successor is on the way
Winda Benedetti is the hopeless romantic who writes about games for msnbc.com. You can follow her tweets about games and other things right here on Twitter.