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Online Gamers Struggle To Mourn Real Death In The Virtual World
By
Shannon Snow
February 7, 2005
A large moon set behind the mountains late Friday evening as
dozens gathered in a memorial vigil for Chris Liberty, a 24-year-old
Florida man recently killed in a car accident. Many sat in quiet
remembrance by two flickering fires and several reported shedding
tears.
But it was no ordinary funeral. The attendees were trolls, orcs
and the undead. The location was not a church, or anywhere in
the physical world, but a web server. And until he died, many
of the mourners never knew Liberty’s real name.
Liberty was one of 600,000 people in the gaming community World
of Warcraft (WoW), a massive multiplayer online role-playing
game, or MMORPG. The average MMORPG player is 26 years old
and spends 22 hours a week playing online. Players of WoW,
which was released late last November, interact with thousands
like themselves as they quest to solve puzzles, kill monsters
and undertake other virtual adventures.
While the world the players meet in may be fantasy, the relationships
that develop in online games are real, according to Nick Yee,
founder of The Daedalus Project, which is devoted to studying
the psychology of MMORPG players.
“Good friendships are often built on situations in which
a person needs help and a friend steps in,” said Yee, a
doctoral candidate at Stanford University. While Yee says these
situations are becoming less common in real life, “they
happen every day in online gaming.”
By raiding castles, exchanging goods and fighting enemies, camaraderie
develops that is very powerful, according to Yee. “People
feel they can judge a person’s character by the way they
interact in the game.”
Studies have also shown that people are more open and forthcoming
when interacting with others via computer, resulting in relationships
that may seem closer than those in real life.
So when a player dies in a physical way that cannot be resurrected
by a restart or a saved game, members of the MMORPG community
can feel not just virtual, but visceral grief.
Liberty’s funeral wasn’t the first one held in the
virtual world. After September 11, players of the popular MMORPG EverQuest held
a mass vigil for those killed in the tragedy.
Death in the virtual world can also be met skepticism, according
to Yee. It is not unheard of for a player, especially one who
is heavily invested in the game, to burn out and want to stop.
Guilty or ashamed, they opt to “kill” their online
identity instead of telling the truth or leaving the forum without
notice.
“People take their online identities seriously,” said
Jeremy Bailenson, professor of communication and head of the
Virtual Reality Lab at Stanford University.
The few who questioned the legitimacy of Liberty’s death
were outnumbered by believers in Syctharic, the online identity
in which Liberty spent up to eight hours a day.
Recently unemployed, Liberty often chatted with players on Instant
Messenger and participated in online WoW web forums,
according to Michael Ten Hagen, a close friend who was with him
the night of the car accident.
Ten Hagen was the one to post the news of Liberty’s
death on the WoW online forum.
“He had many friends [in the game],” said Ten Hagen,
also a WoW player under the identity Freaks. “I
had to post for him since it was only right that they knew even
though they had never seen him in person. I would have wanted
to know if I didn’t know him in person.”
The posting elicited hundreds of responses expressing shock,
sympathy and grief. Some players wrote emotional messages to
the web forum recounted their pleasant memories of playing with
Syctharic, a few calling him one of their “best friends.”
Some messages were so heartfelt that the deceased’s sister
printed them out and displayed them at the funeral visitation.
Many guests attending had no idea of the man’s involvement
in MMORPGs.
But players at the virtual funeral already understood the significance
of the time Liberty spent in WoW.
The vigil “was one of the most impressive things I’ve
ever seen in my 10 years of online gaming,” wrote one WoW player,
identified only by his game identity Capmichele, on a web forum. “I’m
honored to say I was there and that I felt the meaning of what
we were doing deep down in my soul.”
Contact Shannon Snow at ssnow@stanford.edu
