The Apps That Aim to Make Falling in Love as Easy as Playing a Game

You could feel it even in the primitive days of internet dial-up, desperately hoping a letter-shaped notification would be waiting inside your AOL mailbox when you finally logged on. The promise of that little ping, and the adrenaline surge that comes with it, has always been enough to cause a minor screen addiction. Twenty years later, our phones essentially function as pocket-sized factories for dopamine hits—especially dating apps. You swipe right, a little notification pops up that says “It’s a match!," you feel that small rush of satisfaction, and on it goes.

Those small payoffs are the reason users keep coming back. And now app developers are trying to harness that same psychological response and apply it to the logical next step: deepening relationships and exploring intimacy. Alongside the stable of apps designed to help single people find a partner, like Bumble and Tinder, there’s a growing subsection of romance apps dedicated to helping users learn about their partner, from their favorite color to their sexual fantasies. They are, in other words, gamifying intimacy the same way they gamified dating.

Amelia, twenty-one, and her boyfriend were actively looking for a game they could play together when they were geographically separated—they’re admittedly both a little competitive—when they found Happy Couple, an app that generates five questions to answer about yourself and your partner every day and scores you based on the percentage of questions you each answer correctly. “[We] played it pretty much every day for almost six months,” Amelia says, until the questions started to feel repetitive.

“Even though we went into it as a game,” she says, “I think that it did teach us a lot about each other.” Some questions, like, “Do you ever say yes even when you are not in full agreement?” functioned more like a bite-sized, swipe-able version of couples’ therapy as opposed to a playful get-to-know-you exercise. Others were lighter, though, asking each person to choose between a date at an art museum or a zoo. Playing “was like a virtual The Newlywed Game,” says Amelia.

Perhaps it's my general awkwardness with technology (I never remember how to use the flashlight on my own iPhone) or my singleness (I coaxed a skeptical friend into downloading a smattering of the apps to play with me), but I had a hard time imagining myself using the app to figure out whether my hypothetical significant other would rather go to a museum or a concert on the weekend, when I could simply text them to ask instead. I couldn't quite figure out the appeal.

As with any video game or dating app—the two really aren’t so dissimilar—we’re motivated to keep coming back thanks to the little pleasure-hits we get along the way. Jamie Madigan, an expert on the psychology of video games, says that apps like Happy Couple work because of our internal reward systems, and the fact that we build habits around routines. In other words, if we’re used to swiping or playing at a certain time, and our brain is used to positive reactions from that experience, we’ll be more compelled to repeat it.

“We're motivated to do things that make us feel important to other people,” Madigan says, like team sports or multiplayer video games. The game structure essentially “create[s] a feedback loop of ‘Hey, not only did I get this question right, but the other person is pleased with me’ which feels good, especially if you're into them.”

Co-founder and CMO of Happy Couple, Arnaud Le Mérour, says the app has 800,000 registered users. The focus, he says, is on improving communication. “It wasn’t built to exploit user engagement, and it wasn’t designed to replace real life interactions,” said Le Mérour, who explained that many users play the game while unable to have face-to-face communication because of distance or alternating schedules—kind of like a romanticized Words With Friends. “We want[ed] to create a tool that helps people to learn more about their partners and facilitate conversations around both tough and important topics in fun ways,” continues Le Mérour.

That was the case for Amelia, who said that when she or her boyfriend would get a question wrong, it would sometimes open a deeper discussion off the phone (which typically ended with them agreeing that none of the default multiple choice answers adequately captured their opinions). “I also think that if you’re starting a relationship now, you’re getting to know each other with technology, whether it’s texting or social media stalking,” says Amelia, noting the couple met on Tinder. "Apps like Happy Couple are just another way to do that.”

But is the game format really a substantive replacement for having these conversations face-to-face?

Robert Weiss, PhD, a digital-age sex, intimacy, and relationship specialist, believes these apps can work for some people, especially millennials who grew up with an intimate relationship to technology. “There was a time when we met and chatted in libraries and coffee houses and on in-person dates,” he says. “Many people, especially younger people, view online and in-person interactions as equally valuable and meaningful.”

Some apps in the space are designed specifically to jumpstart real-life interactions, especially conversations that can be awkward or difficult to initiate. Desire, which has over one million downloads and users ranging in age between twenty-five and forty-four, according to co-founder Marta Plaza, lets couples select from a variety of dares, from relatively tame to relatively spicy. Each dare is assigned a point value. The more points you rack up, the closer you come to unlocking the “hottest” challenges.

Kindu, a similar app, is intended to increase physical intimacy using suggestions like, "surprise your partner in the shower one day." Each person opts in or out, or says maybe, and the app surfaces the responses that match. “Kindu tends to be useful to long-term couples who are looking for fresh ideas to spice things up, and [new] couples looking to find common ground,” explains founder Thomas Nicholas. The goal of apps like Kindu is removing shame and shyness from conversations about physical intimacy, providing a comfortable digital buffer to express what you want.

Alyssa Siegel, a sex and relationship therapist, sees this as an issue for many of her clients, who admit they want to know more about their partner's sexual desires, but don't know how what to ask. “Our culture sadly has not done a great job of preparing folks to have healthy relationships and sex lives,” Siegel says. So, apps like Kindu or Desire could remove some of that awkwardness, not unlike IRL couples' games and sex toys. On the other hand, she notes, you lose the tone, eye contact, and organic follow-up questions due to the rigidity of a Q&A format. “When trying to create [virtual] equations for the human experience, especially sexuality, which is incredibly complex and contextual, things get lost.”

Of course, relying on apps to develop intimacy also creates ample opportunity to squash it, as phone dependence is already a touchy subject for some couples. Most of us have tried to have a conversation with our partner in which they pretend to pay attention by occasionally saying “That’s so crazy,” when in reality they’re scrolling away on Instagram.

Meredith David, an assistant professor of marketing at Baylor University who’s researched this experience, which she refers to as phubbing (phone subbing), found that it caused people on the receiving end to report higher levels of stress, depression, and a sense of social exclusion. Further, somewhat counterintuitively, instead of turning to face-to-face interaction to regain the feeling of inclusion, study participants took to social media to reestablish their sense of belonging.

“Although the stated purpose of technology like smartphones is to help us connect with others, in this particular instance, it does not,” David says. It isn’t a reach to see how more screen-time could become a wedge between partners, especially if playing the games becomes just another chore to check off your virtual to-do list, or it gets easier to just play the game rather than talk with your partner.

As with all things on the internet, data privacy is another big concern—especially when the substance of these apps tends to be especially personal. Having your Netflix password hacked, annoying as it may be, doesn’t quite equal the ramifications of, say, your coworkers learning that you’re into BDSM.

“Romantic relationships are very personal and private,” says Dr. Christoph Lutz, an associate professor at Nordic Centre for Internet & Society. “Thus, the data produced within such apps is sensitive, potentially even more sensitive than the data produced through dating apps, since we might be more authentic on relationship game apps.” Given how new the bulk of these apps are, they’re likely still in the process of finding their business model and exploring monetization. “Leveraging the data produced, which is a valuable asset given its personal nature,” he says, “is an obvious avenue for the apps.”

To combat privacy concerns, relationship apps have attempted to take extra precaution to make their members feel comfortable. Kindu, for example, doesn’t request or store any identifying data, according to Nicholas. They advise that your username contains no personal information, and your account isn’t tied to a Facebook page, IP address, or Google Account. Happy Couple, which launched a few months after the infamous Ashley Madison hack, says it's “been a decision since day one to not sell any user’s data.”

Additionally, there's emotional side to privacy risks that comes with relationship game apps. Lori Schade, PhD, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says “digital communications are often stored indefinitely, so if something was misinterpreted, the emotional pain can be revisited repeatedly—potentially forever.” She’s seen couples save their worst text fights, akin to “bringing up the past on steroids.” Depending how answers and matches are scored and archived within the app, it could turn what should’ve been coy game into a painful memory. “Asking partners to answer questions like the ones in the app can potentially create closeness and real positive feelings,” she says. “But it can just as easily start an argument if one of them misinterprets an answer.” Even a seemingly innocuous question—for example, Happy Couple asks “How often do you tell your partner that you’ve got the hots for him/her?”—could be fight fodder if one person is feeling under-appreciated, while others, like Kindu’s suggestion to watch another couple have sex, could easily incite an argument.

Since the games offer different sets of questions, the more points you accumulate (or the more in-app purchases you’re willing to make), it’s possible the trivia gets meatier as the game goes on. But after playing for a few days, I found myself wishing for a little more depth. I'm just not that curious whether my significant other would be willing to split the cost of attending a destination wedding. It seems like the idea of a game might be more appealing than the questions themselves.

One reason gamification works, though, according to Madigan, is that it gives you “better feedback and better opportunities to become a master at something,” he says. Whereas in real life, feedback can be delayed and ambiguous, there’s clarity when using something driven by points and correct answers. In his view, for better or for worse, you know where you stand when you’re engaged in a game. Maybe that’s part of what keeps us playing.