A member of a WOW guild suffered a stroke in real life and died. Her guildmates, knowing her only through the game, but nevertheless wanting to offer some remembrance for one of their own, decided to hold a memorial service in the game. A rival guild decided that would be a great time to show up and kill everyone. Hilarity ensued.
Now, is it sort of creepy and vaguely sad that a group of people elected to hold a virtual funeral? I’d say so. It lends a depressing weight to the stereotype of basement-dwelling gamers who can’t function in the real world. In my opinion, it trivializes the real loss that this person’s real-life loved ones feel. But saying gamers aren’t the most socially adept subculture isn’t going to surprise anyone, and the fact is, these people did have a relationship with the deceased, however unorthodox. You can’t criticize someone for feeling grief simply because they haven’t met the deceased in the physical world.
[..]
Is killing a person’s avatar the same as killing a person? Of course not. It’s not close. But it does have a real effect on that person. You are inflicting suffering upon someone else, even if only putting them through the tedium of building up another character. We have ways to describe people who get off on inflicting suffering on others. One of them is “sadistic.” Another is “evil.”–Joe Rybicki —The Real and the Semi-Real (1up.com)
The Real and the Semi-Real
This is what the techbros are excited about? Really?
Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever
New infographic to help our graduating English majors make sense of their capstone project...
Pushing and pulling vertices. Components that fit together perfectly when I model them in ...
Just look at the light on this Mary Cassatt painting
Quantity leads to quality - Austin Kleon
We live in such a strange world where everything is possible, even a virtual digital funeral..
We live in such a strange world where everything is possible, even a virtual digital funeral..
Well put, Will.
It’s like he said later in his article “The important distinction here is that for many (perhaps most) players of MMORPGs, the game is just a medium for socialization.”
Just consider this – who do you think you would feel more grief for dying, your occassionally obnoxious neighbor next door who you rarely talk to but have met “in person”, or someone you’ve constantly gamed online with for the last year?