Bespectacled Marie Cheng, a final-year undergraduate, bought a teal-coloured bikini a few years ago.

But the 23-year-old has never worn it.

"I'm too self-conscious. I don't have the figure to carry it off," she said, nervously tucking her long straight hair behind her ears.

But in Second Life, an online fantasy game, she wears nothing else but two-piece smokin' hot outfits.

As Jui Aeon, her "avatar" - a digital representation of herself - she traipses about in fantastic lace-and-feather confections.

Jui Aeon is often chatted up by male inhabitants in this virtual world, which is populated by over 13 million residents worldwide. On average, 50,000 to 60,000 are logged onto the game at any one time.

But Ms Cheng said Jui Aeon was "tame" compared to her past incarnation, Lone Wolf, who wore the skimpiest of outfits and was a dance hostess in Kay's Tiki Lounge.

She also had the occasional fling. "If I am going to live in a fantasy world, I might as well do all the things that I will never do in my humdrum real existence," she said.

But a year later, she killed off Lone Wolf and shut down her Second Life account when she became hooked on playing the game. At it for five hours at a stretch daily, her studies and relationships suffered. Today, she still ventures into Second Life daily, but for no more than an hour, or not at all if she is meeting her boyfriend.

Experts who deal with Internet gaming addictions applaud Ms Cheng for snapping out of it. They say they are seeing more Singaporeans who cannot break free from the stranglehold of their virtual world existence.

Institute of Mental Health consultant psychiatrist Munidasa Winslow, who has seen a few cases of gaming addictions affecting relationships, expects it will become common as more Singaporeans immerse themselves in virtual worlds.

Mr Poh Yeang Cherng, manager of the cyberwellness centre run by Touch Community Services, noted that online interactions through e-mail and discussion groups have been around for a while.

But the full-colour, multi-faceted nature of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, or MMORPGs for short, offer more emotional bandwidth, heightening the experience of gamers. MMORPGs such as World Of Warcraft have a big following here, with a reported 60,000 local subscribers last year.

A more modest number of about 20,000 Singaporeans, mostly in their 20s and 30s, are registered as Second Lifers.

Game developer Linden Lab in the United States said that, of the lot, 1,233 were "active" in February this year: that is, they spent at least an hour in the month logged onto Second Life. A total of 42,947.67 hours were spent there that month, which means an average of 35 hours a month.

Unlike games such as World Of Warcraft, where adrenaline- charged players slay monsters, Second Life gamers have nothing to shoot and no quest to fulfil.

They use their mice and keyboards to roam endless landscapes and cityscapes, chat with friends and attend events. The most exciting part of the game is its technology that allows people to create objects such as clothes, jewellery or storefronts from scratch - sort of Lego- style - using "prims", the building blocks in Second Life.

As in real life, many Second Lifers also "connect" with other avatars and form relationships.

Linden Lab could not give a figure for the Singapore-based participants who had partners in Second Life. But of its 13 million population, 60,000 are in partnerships.

Partnerships are akin to marriage and participants indicate these on avatar user profiles. Partners instant-message each other, hug, kiss and even have virtual sex in private areas.

Second Lifers such as Ms Marina Noordin, 31, who have tried it with their virtual partners, describe the act as "awkward and clunky".

Should sex between consenting clusters of electronic pixels be a matter of concern?

Well, the flesh-and-blood partners of gamers who suffer neglect do care, especially if the online exchange of e-mail and cybersex migrate to the real world.

National Institute of Education's Associate Professor Angeline Khoo said research on the social dynamics of the virtual world showed that people responded to interactive technology on social and emotional levels much more than previously thought.

It is not surprising, then, that in a Stanford University study of 30,000 gamers, nearly 40 per cent of men and 53 per cent of women said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends.

More than a quarter of gamers said the emotional highlight of their past week occurred online.

Prof Khoo, who plays World Of Warcraft, said: "When your team goes on a raid and slays the monster, there's an adrenaline rush and your feelings for your team members are heightened."

Dr Winslow said an online relationship did not have to turn physical to constitute an affair.

"Whether it's an emotional affair with no sexual contact, an e-mail relationship or a virtual reality relationship, you are still fostering loving feelings or sexual feelings towards someone other than your real-life partner," he said.

Certain factors make Internet affairs particularly dangerous liaisons.

Online communication tends to remove inhibitions.

There is also an endless supply of potential partners, coupled with a lack of clear norms about acceptable behaviour.

Another danger, experts say, is that what you see is not what you get. Gamers' online personas may be very different from reality.

Indeed, a study done by academics at Cornell University in the US found that online daters usually fib about their appearance. Men overstate their height; women understate their weight. Once an enthusiastic Second Lifer, 33-year-old Joanna, an operations manager who wanted to give only her first name, started romancing a Frenchman who went by the avatar name of Neo.

Three months later, she found out that Neo was a 44-year-old Danish woman.

Linden Lab said 14 per cent of male gamers take on female forms.

Joanna, who has since sworn off virtual worlds, said: "I began to have real feelings for Neo. I was crushed when I found out that it was a woman. I went into depression for three months and I nearly lost my job in the process.

"It's okay to go into worlds such as Second Life, but remember, it's not real."

This story was originally published in The Sunday Times on 20 April 2008.