This brings back memories of a lost friend for me too ... years ago i spent a lot of time playing Grand prix legends online against folks from around the world .. not quite a role playing deal since we all knew a fair bit about each other which helped build real friendships but it was a real shock when one of us was diagnosed with cancer and was dead within a month ,,, even tho we'd never met in person, it hurt just like losing any other friend.
Guess the virtual world is realer than we realise sometimes
I'm sorry for your loss. *Hugs* It's always devestating to loss someone we love or care about. I also can't say I've lost someone online due to death in RL. What I do know is no matter what even if you can't perform a funeral or a memorial for that person in game it might not seem like much but there are friends that will be of comfort in game even if it's not physical they can still give words of comfort to help you thru your grief. I've never lost someone in game but i've dealt with situations that left me sad or hurt & I've always been able to turn to my friends for support. Words of comfort & support can mean so much even if that person isn't there to hug you in RL. Although I agree sometimes it's nice to have hugs in RL as well cause sometimes both are needed.
I remember in the early days of DAoC when we learned that a well-known player on our realm had died in a car crash. The GM of our server arraged a memorial service and literally hundreds of people from all three realms would gather in the frontiers. We couldn't communicate between realms, so we just all payed our respects in silence. It's sort of a sad memory, but at the same time it was also moving to see this sense of community. I am not sure that could ever happen in 'modern' games.
Numerous psych studies (most noteably Yee, 2006) have shown that regular MMO players find their online friendships as satisfying as their real world friendships. I have met more than a few of my online frineds in real life. They are on my facebook page, we send each other emails. One great thing about MMORPGs is that you can make friends with people who may have very different religuous, political or social views than your own. You can meet people across the world and form bonds and inside jokes no matter who they are or where they live. Doctors, lawyers and janitors can all be friends. It's kindy like a great utopia where everyone spends most of their time killing things or making things >.>
I know also what you mean. There was a guy in my guild who had a lot of problems. I didnt get closure as because of not really knowing much about him. I was never able to find out what happened to him, he simply stopped playing.
I've made a fair number of friends online. I almost put that in quotes, because I don't really feel as though you truly "know" someone or can befriend them until you actually meet them and get the full measure of who you both are. However, with the advent of Teamspeak, it HAS become much easier to get to know people and get a better idea of who you are dealing with. It's not perfect, of course, but it's a far cry better than just typing as a means to get to know someone. I feel for Jaime, and anyone who loses a friend to a tragedy like cancer. I also know that if certain people were to pass away in some of the games I've played in my life, I would miss them dearly and the game would be forever altered by their loss.
I've seen a lot of death as a medical professional. I'm also reaching the age now where I'm starting to lose a few high school classmates, and my parents are in their 'golden years', and I've lost nearly all of my grandparents. I have a younger sister who was just diagnosed with a serious case of cancer a couple months ago, so I share some of your pain in that arena. It is a horrendous diagnosis not only for both the person suffering it but also their friends and family.
I've lost a couple online friends, too. In these cases, they were both people I'd met on some forums, and a family member started a thread giving us the sad news, and the threads quickly turned in to lovely memorials as people poured out their feelings.
My online friends are no less important to me than my "Real Life" friends. Friends are friends no matter where we are blessed to find them--as next door neighbors or behind a monitor in a completely different country. In fact, some of my online friends are closer to me than my 'real life' friends, and I've met several of them when I've gone to different conferences around the country.
Having voice chat programs like Skype or Teamspeak helps further these interactions. Our common interests in gaming and our ability to share gaming experiences help cement those friendships. We should cherish these online friends just as we cherish our real life friends. We may make a difference in the lives of our online friends in ways we might never know. I've had some people tell me I'm their 'forum mom' and they like me better than their real mom. It's both an extreme honor and heartbreaking at the same time. Sometimes we make a difference in a very real, tangible way. An online friend came to a group of us on Skype and indicated to us that he was attempting to commit suicide. We had enough information to be able to call 911 in the city where he lived, and I talked to the dispatcher while the others frantically did research so we could give the police all the information we could. The paramedics and cops found him in time.
Sometimes, all we can do is just be there, as you were for your friend, Naga. I suspect she played so much because it took her mind off how she was feeling, let her do something fun, and gave her a way to interact with people without fear of what people would think about how she looked or felt. The fact that you have decided to honor her memory by supporting cancer research is wonderful and is a testament to how much she touched your life.
I agree that there is no easy way to grieve in-game. We often are playing with younger people who simply don't have a lot of experience with death, and as a result they tend not to have as well-developed social skills for handling that as someone who's seen a lot of it. As our gaming population grows older, however, I think we're going to see death happen more often. We'll be breaking new ground in this facet of life, and there are bound to be bumps in the road as customs develop. I think it's fine to have an in-game memorial service or funeral service, but I also understand some people are going to crash it because they think it's some kind of morbid fun. I also suspect some of those people are making fun because they're too afraid to face the reality of the end of life, and joking covers up their fear. The only suggestion I can make is to go to one of the more remote areas of the game and publicize it only to those who knew the departed. That's easy enough to do on a private guild website or by PM on a much larger forum.
I hope everything works out as peacefully as possible for your uncle and your family.
If you think about it the virtual world extends to the real world around us, we text eachother on our phones, talk to distant friends on our phones and these are the "real friends" but we sit in game many have voice and other times we use Vent or something simular, and these friends are our "online" friends. Lots of our "real life" friends we see less than our online friends. So really a friend is a friend period. The medium by which you communicate, phone, email, over a pizza, or in an MMO isn't the point. There are no virtual friends and real life friends, there are just friends. And when you lose one its a loss that you feel no matter what happens. But I also like to look at the half empty cup and call it half full, I still have other friends and hopefully I will make a few new. Never to replace the ones lost, but new friends to tell our little online legends about them when we were online together, there is nothing more theroputic than sharing a "no shit there we were" story with a new friend about a friend that passed on.
Great points, Eludajae!
I have been saying this for years. I met my husband playiing an MMO. I met the other significant person in my life playing City of Heroes. Friendships that started online often extend into the realms of reality.
There is no "virtual" world. Online is a form of communication. Just because the digital data of the online venue can be manipulated to simulate 'worlds' does not mean we have created anything. It isn't like you are using some dimensional portal to step into another reality. It's a mode of communication just like Eludajae pointed out - like texting someone, calling someone, or even (for the older crowd) pen pals.
Putting that in perspective proves that yes, the friendships are real. Behind every keyboard and monitor is a real living, breathing human being. Granted, the mode of communication makes it easier to be misleading as you have a certain measure of anonymity. But I have found that the 'for real' people - the good ones, are exactly the same either online or when you finally meet them in person. You have people who are phony, no matter how you meet them. You can find good, honest friends online. Becoming friends with them is no different than if you'd met them at any other social function - say a garden club or at the gym. You can care for someone regardless of what method you use to communicate. My husband and I carry on about 75% of our marriage via cellphone (thanks, Verizon, for having free member to member calling or we'd be too broke to pay my CoH subs, hahaha). His job requires him to travel to where he is needed. Does that mean our marriage counts for any less than a marriage where both people live in the home and are only away from each other for a few hours on some days? Of course not. So why should a friendship where distance separates be any different? It ISN'T.
Numerous psych studies (most noteably Yee, 2006) have shown that regular MMO players find their online friendships as satisfying as their real world friendships. I have met more than a few of my online frineds in real life. They are on my facebook page, we send each other emails. One great thing about MMORPGs is that you can make friends with people who may have very different religuous, political or social views than your own. You can meet people across the world and form bonds and inside jokes no matter who they are or where they live. Doctors, lawyers and janitors can all be friends. It's kindy like a great utopia where everyone spends most of their time killing things or making things >.>
Well I'd call it more of an equalizer - it allows people who would probably never interact otherwise to meet and become friends - but I see your point.
Jaime, beautiful piece. I'm sorry for your losses. I've met plenty of great people in MMOs, even complete strangers who I've come across (not in my guild, kinship, corporation). For the communities in some of these MMOs, that's a real feat, but it just goes to show that there's good people everywhere. In a way, I'm almost more comfortable when I'm not having direct contact with a person while I'm talking to them. There's that shield of anonymity - they can only see what you choose to type or how you choose to act. Yet I still pour out my feelings to my closest online friends, and I really don't feel like they're just random "online" people.
The old Plato attribution: 'You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation'
I'm an old enough fart to remember folks who kept up for years with one another by writing an extensive series of letters. There was a friend of my parents who spent most of WWII writing letters to the sister of one of his buddies: They met after the war, and after the first face to face get together, they decided to get married.
This is not that different from the online MMO experiance. The good people I've met online have been good in person, and the bad ones, well...vice versa. You can't learn everything about them, but according to Plato, you can discover a great deal.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
That was a touching article, even though I did not understand your point. You write about very human topics and you look at them with a virtual versus real world distinction. But at that level, that very distinction seems to dissolve.
Let me explain my point of view. It is moving for us to see fictional characters die. We know they are not real and it still works all the time. Maybe we are sad because we anticipated more adventures with them. Now look closely: does this resemble what is happening when real people pass away? You sometimes hear relatives and friends close to the deceased talk about the unused potential, the dreams he had, all the things she wanted to do.
The marvel seems to be that we can move our mind into other peoples heads, be at different places, different times and see different perspectives. That is how media and MMOs work in the first place. The people we meet are not different than characters in a novel. At that level, it doesn't matter if they are "real" or if some bot or author conceived their dialoges. And they are not less real than real people, as a strange matter of fact.
So we do not literally move our mind around. Conversely, we do "emulate". People, real or not, are emulated by our brains. That is "knowing" them. You have a mental model of everyone you know . And this is not less real than the real person. Because the "real person" from a scientific point of view is made of the very same material.
So while I am getting philosophical again, I'd say that it IS virtual. But our empathy is virtual too. I therefore disagree with the idea that we have to proclaim virtual relationships as "real" to make them serious. Because face-to-face and physical contact is a completely different matter indeed. Or put differently, if you love someone as a person, it doesn't matter if the person is physically present, because at that level the body is just "interface". Otherwise schmalz phonecalls wouldn't work and all that (to be clear, humans still need their bodies in relationships for ... certain things ... and the extra senses help feeding the mental model, but they don't need it to emulate other people and to feel empathy, consider paralytics).
I like to add that "keeping someone in your heart" is probably that: they are really still around, as the "emulation" is still running for some time until it fades away (gets simpler) due to lack of feedback loops. At the end, the emulation is very simple and consists only of few sentences, pictures and some iconic moments. If you want to be (truly) immortal, you have to be famous as "better" emulations of yourself keep running even if the prime strange loop you are is no longer around. For some it's equally important to get famous as to have have kids. Interesting that the memes of a person wants to live just like the genes.
One of the best damn rogue's I've ever had the honor of playing with. Guild was amazing, when he had passed away we were all pretty upset. But not as upset as we would be if we had known him in real life.
It hit me hard, brought me back to reality, and I was really down. But I never shed a tear, as I would for someone close to me in reality.
I am old enough to have lost a lot of friends in RL.
A friend wheather in real life or in the virtual world is a treasure.
When I was playing EQ 1 I met this person while camping orcs in the commons. We started talking between spawns and became friends. We would meet up and play together whenever we were both online. It really made the game fun. This went on for about a year. Then they just did not log on again. I dont know what happened to them. The character they played was a female human. I never knew if "she" was a female in RL as that never came up.
Later when I played EQ 2 I saw her standing in one of the cities and I ran up to her and tried to start a converstion but she never responded. I then realized that it was a NPC with the same name she used in EQ 1. Every time time I went through that city I would see her standing there. It felt like someone had twisted a knife in my chest everytime I passed by.
I almost didn't read this article (which was quite good by the way) because I knew it would bring memories to the surface that I would rather leave in the past, not because I don't like thinking about lost friends, but because along with those memories comes the hurt and grief again. Maybe not as sharp, but it's there all the same. I have lost more than my share of online friends it seems. Since my days in EQ which I began playing in '99, I have lost friends and guildmates, albeit some closer than others, in every game I've played (with the exception of my current game - EVE).
Strangely though, the hardest one was a very dear friend whom I met while playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. Not really an MMO, I know, but an online game none-the-less. He had started a clan of very strong players to combat the griefers and bullies of the game, and had invited me to join. Since I was already a member of two other clans with similar purposes, I politely declined his invitation. One night, he sent me a chat message. We talked for a while about the clans and then the conversation turned to just two guys shooting the bull. Before I knew it, the hours had passed by and it was the wee hours of the morning (and I did join his clan the next day). Despite our age difference (he was in his early twenties and I'm old as dirt) we had struck up a freindship that over the next six months was one of the most honest an open that I had ever had online with another guy (ummm, guy to guy thing, ya know?)
One morning I logged on only to find a bombshell of a message in my mail... he had passed away sometime the day or night before, His sister, who also played the game, had found him. We had had one of our late night into the wee morning hours talks less than 24 hours before. I was as upset as I have ever been for a RL person's passing. Then to top matters off, the leader of my first clan, the guy who had taken me under his wing when I was a Mafia Wars newbie, passed away just six weeks ago. I don't play Mafia Wars anymore.
In this day and age of the internet, cell phones, and instant communications worldwide, the planet Earth is a much smaller, intimate place. Anyone who doesn't understand that an online friendship, or any other relationship for that matter (I've had my heart broken online too, and believe me it hurt just as bad as a RL one does, but that's for another discussion - maybe) is just as real as a physical one is not as tech savvy as they'd like to think they are.
It sounds crazy but I've actually caught myself wondering how many major MMO accounts have gone dormant due to the death of the owner. This was a great article to read and thanks to the author for sharing.
This isn't meant to be rude, but this read more as a story then an article. An article generally discusses points from both sides and asks questions of the reader, where as this was an account of an event in your life, a tragic one at that.
Personally I am one of those people that keep my personal life out of my gaming. I don't share what's going on in my life, what I do for work, what my relationship is, my likes/dislikes, etc. I play the game when I'm in the game, and I tend to leave groups who are doing too much talking about real world stuff.
I think for a lot of people gaming is a chance to get away from the real world for a bit and just have some fun, so that is why they don't talk about the real world. It's like people that go to a spa, get a massage, go watch a movie in the theatre. It's a form of entertainment meant to distract you from the real world for a an hour or two before you get back into your regular life.
it is an article and not merely a story because she discusses her thoughts and insights to a given experience she had. it doesnt have to be two-sided for it to be an article.
additionally, you don't have to open your personal life in game. in fact very few people do. the point of the article is not that, but rather to suggest that in-game experiences with other people are enough to form true friendships (albeit in a virtual world) which can result in genuine feelings of loss, anguish, etc. when you learn that someone whom you've spent considerable time with in-game dies.
unlike going to a spa, theatre, movies which you do with friends or your partner, in a virtual world (MMO or otherwise) you meet people. granted they are behind an avatar but as the article suggests they are people nonetheless.
you come across as a solo player who choses to log-in, play on your own or pick random groups and log out; and thats fine, but not everybody plays this way.
I think it likely that MMO’s are attractive to those who are ill, so you will find more of them there than say at a football match or anything outdoors for that matter. They get to do something in a safe environment that is not overly effected by even life threatening illnesses. Well at least not till you are in the final stages.
Online interaction is at arms length, so it poses many quandaries about how to react to events which occur in the RL of players. We tend to use the experience we have of RL and impose that on our online life. That is the best you can do, but it is not always going to be a good fit. There are no easy answers here, it is just something we have to try to resolve as best we can.
1st of all, accept my condolences for your friend, i know how it feels to know the news of your friend's death is ( even in virtual )
ok while my self never experienced any of those, but i can imagine that and i dont want it to happen to me ever
and 2ndly
with due to respect, i dont agree with you, Virtual Relationship will always be different than real person relationship
i've been in MMO world since 2004, i have been in some guild more than 4 years, i never felt essence of a "real" relationship even if i say im their friends
even if im very close with them in game, unfortunately, we were never given the chance to do a gathering, because i live in a different country, thus, only making us a virtual friends
this i would like to admit, although many times probably you would see a guildmates defend you against outside's grievers or against other guild, but that's about it,
it's all part of "you're in my guild, its normal for me to defend you" stuffs
but the truth is, once you are over with the game, that's it, your virtual relation ends, you will never hear from them again vice versa, this, i believe you all have gone through
on the other hands, yes i agree with you, IF you are in a guild starting from virtual relationship to real life friends, that could mean something,
now this is what i got from my old MMO, Ragnarok, we started as a nobody to each other in a guild back in 2003, and we disbanded the guild in 2007, and we're still meeting each other sif we're a friend from primary, i know all of their addresses, their parents, we've hang out together in everyone's houses, even until at a point where we actually can travel overseas together
this is what i will never ever find again in this generation of MMO, well maybe there are, but probably less than 5% from all MMO, the immersive relation in virtual that led to the real life friendship, for me, will never happen again after the MMO industry have gone past 2007
I think it goes right back to treating the person on the other end of that internet connection as a person and not as a collection of pixels on your computer screen - or at least that's my opinion.
Back in the early days of SWG, I ran across a kid (he was about 12, so that qualifies as a "kid," hehe). He was exceptionally well-mannered and matured, loved playing the game, and had and unusual amount of time to spend playing during daytime hours. I didn't think much of it, since he was in another part of the world and since his dad also played and ran with us in nearly everything we did. Figured if dad was there watching and didn't mind, everything must be fine. Like Jamie's friend, he'd log off rather suddenly and be gone for days, but again, I didn't think much of it - he was quite young, after all. His dad would always log off and be gone with him, but again, not something you really think a lot of - boys have dozens of thing to do outside the virtual world.
One day, his dad logged on without him after a few weeks' absence and told me that the son had passed away. He'd had leukemia. And thanked me for playing the game with them and helping make the kid's last months happier. And yes, it made me sad and yes I grieved for the boy, just as a few years later, when one of the guys on my server that I palled around with and talked to frequently in chat and on vent was killed in an accident, I grieved and was sad. I'd known this guy for several years online, and even though he could sometimes be a real jerk (usually when he'd been drinking), I'd genuinely liked him.
The reality is, even in gaming, we are playing these games with real people. If any member of my multi-gaming guild was ill or passed away, it would devastate me. Many of my guildmates are friends in real life that I speak to on the phone at least weekly if not daily. Several are people that I live close enough to that we make plans to meet up a couple times a year as our schedules allow. Some, I even live in the same town as, so our meetings are far more frequent. Even those in my guild that I don't have a close a relationship with are not mere pixels, they are people - they're kind of like those cousins that you don't really hang out with all the time, nor would you, but they're still family. But then, maybe I just have a different view of how I should treat people - no matter where I "meet" those people - than what most of society has.
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I had a real good friend from a game die of cancer but sadly I didn't find out till 2 years after due to me having personal issues which resulted in me leaving the game for a few years. But when I first heard it hit me really hard cause she was just one of the nicest people you could ever meet.
Just because you don't know the person in real life doesn't mean they can't leave an impact on you. She was a really good friend and it was a real honor knowing her. I have yet to even remove her from my friends list and I honestly can't bring myself to do so. My friend also has a sister who plays and it brings back memories when she talks because it sounds just like her.
People do have emotions even when playing a game to say otherwise is just a lie.
Very very wellwritten article, I myself haven't really experienced anything like this, the closest being when a guildmate in WoW passed away in a caraccident a few years ago, I didn't know her personally or much in the game either but some in the guild did and were quite upset obviously, she was the sister of another player in the guild and a few of the officers and the guildleader tried being there for her ans she did keep on playing for a while.
Online relationships with other people aren't in my opinion very different from "real-life" relationships, I should know, I met my fiance through WoW and everythings great even though we were in different countries for quite a while.
One kind of connection to another human being is no worse than the next.
Peter Griffin: you know those germans, if you dont join the party, they?ll come get ya
I love gaming but online friendships are not for me. I like to interact with guildies and have lots of players added to buddy lists. But when it comes to friendship i prefer my real life friends. For me friendship is lot more then just interacting in virtual world. How many of these online friendships actually extend to real life?
Sorry to read of your uncle's health and the loss of your friend.
I don't really distinguish between real life and online friends, as the business I'm in I communicate with alot of people online (and now on the phone and text) and have for years that I've never met face to face and my two closest friends live out of the country so face to face is annually at best.
BUT I don't consider every person on my buddy or friend list or in the guild a 'friend'. My personal life and name are known by a half a dozen people that I've played with over the years and funnily enough a couple of us even refer to each other by our ingame name - as we're use to it - hearing my real name or saying theirs just seems so wrong!
Comments
This brings back memories of a lost friend for me too ... years ago i spent a lot of time playing Grand prix legends online against folks from around the world .. not quite a role playing deal since we all knew a fair bit about each other which helped build real friendships but it was a real shock when one of us was diagnosed with cancer and was dead within a month ,,, even tho we'd never met in person, it hurt just like losing any other friend.
Guess the virtual world is realer than we realise sometimes
I'm sorry for your loss. *Hugs* It's always devestating to loss someone we love or care about. I also can't say I've lost someone online due to death in RL. What I do know is no matter what even if you can't perform a funeral or a memorial for that person in game it might not seem like much but there are friends that will be of comfort in game even if it's not physical they can still give words of comfort to help you thru your grief. I've never lost someone in game but i've dealt with situations that left me sad or hurt & I've always been able to turn to my friends for support. Words of comfort & support can mean so much even if that person isn't there to hug you in RL. Although I agree sometimes it's nice to have hugs in RL as well cause sometimes both are needed.
I remember in the early days of DAoC when we learned that a well-known player on our realm had died in a car crash. The GM of our server arraged a memorial service and literally hundreds of people from all three realms would gather in the frontiers. We couldn't communicate between realms, so we just all payed our respects in silence. It's sort of a sad memory, but at the same time it was also moving to see this sense of community. I am not sure that could ever happen in 'modern' games.
Numerous psych studies (most noteably Yee, 2006) have shown that regular MMO players find their online friendships as satisfying as their real world friendships. I have met more than a few of my online frineds in real life. They are on my facebook page, we send each other emails. One great thing about MMORPGs is that you can make friends with people who may have very different religuous, political or social views than your own. You can meet people across the world and form bonds and inside jokes no matter who they are or where they live. Doctors, lawyers and janitors can all be friends. It's kindy like a great utopia where everyone spends most of their time killing things or making things >.>
I know also what you mean. There was a guy in my guild who had a lot of problems. I didnt get closure as because of not really knowing much about him. I was never able to find out what happened to him, he simply stopped playing.
I've made a fair number of friends online. I almost put that in quotes, because I don't really feel as though you truly "know" someone or can befriend them until you actually meet them and get the full measure of who you both are. However, with the advent of Teamspeak, it HAS become much easier to get to know people and get a better idea of who you are dealing with. It's not perfect, of course, but it's a far cry better than just typing as a means to get to know someone. I feel for Jaime, and anyone who loses a friend to a tragedy like cancer. I also know that if certain people were to pass away in some of the games I've played in my life, I would miss them dearly and the game would be forever altered by their loss.
I read this, and the only thing in my head is "A person is a person after all, a person is a person no matter how small"
yay Dr. Suess
What an exquisite, beautiful piece.
I've seen a lot of death as a medical professional. I'm also reaching the age now where I'm starting to lose a few high school classmates, and my parents are in their 'golden years', and I've lost nearly all of my grandparents. I have a younger sister who was just diagnosed with a serious case of cancer a couple months ago, so I share some of your pain in that arena. It is a horrendous diagnosis not only for both the person suffering it but also their friends and family.
I've lost a couple online friends, too. In these cases, they were both people I'd met on some forums, and a family member started a thread giving us the sad news, and the threads quickly turned in to lovely memorials as people poured out their feelings.
My online friends are no less important to me than my "Real Life" friends. Friends are friends no matter where we are blessed to find them--as next door neighbors or behind a monitor in a completely different country. In fact, some of my online friends are closer to me than my 'real life' friends, and I've met several of them when I've gone to different conferences around the country.
Having voice chat programs like Skype or Teamspeak helps further these interactions. Our common interests in gaming and our ability to share gaming experiences help cement those friendships. We should cherish these online friends just as we cherish our real life friends. We may make a difference in the lives of our online friends in ways we might never know. I've had some people tell me I'm their 'forum mom' and they like me better than their real mom. It's both an extreme honor and heartbreaking at the same time. Sometimes we make a difference in a very real, tangible way. An online friend came to a group of us on Skype and indicated to us that he was attempting to commit suicide. We had enough information to be able to call 911 in the city where he lived, and I talked to the dispatcher while the others frantically did research so we could give the police all the information we could. The paramedics and cops found him in time.
Sometimes, all we can do is just be there, as you were for your friend, Naga. I suspect she played so much because it took her mind off how she was feeling, let her do something fun, and gave her a way to interact with people without fear of what people would think about how she looked or felt. The fact that you have decided to honor her memory by supporting cancer research is wonderful and is a testament to how much she touched your life.
I agree that there is no easy way to grieve in-game. We often are playing with younger people who simply don't have a lot of experience with death, and as a result they tend not to have as well-developed social skills for handling that as someone who's seen a lot of it. As our gaming population grows older, however, I think we're going to see death happen more often. We'll be breaking new ground in this facet of life, and there are bound to be bumps in the road as customs develop. I think it's fine to have an in-game memorial service or funeral service, but I also understand some people are going to crash it because they think it's some kind of morbid fun. I also suspect some of those people are making fun because they're too afraid to face the reality of the end of life, and joking covers up their fear. The only suggestion I can make is to go to one of the more remote areas of the game and publicize it only to those who knew the departed. That's easy enough to do on a private guild website or by PM on a much larger forum.
I hope everything works out as peacefully as possible for your uncle and your family.
Great points, Eludajae!
I have been saying this for years. I met my husband playiing an MMO. I met the other significant person in my life playing City of Heroes. Friendships that started online often extend into the realms of reality.
There is no "virtual" world. Online is a form of communication. Just because the digital data of the online venue can be manipulated to simulate 'worlds' does not mean we have created anything. It isn't like you are using some dimensional portal to step into another reality. It's a mode of communication just like Eludajae pointed out - like texting someone, calling someone, or even (for the older crowd) pen pals.
Putting that in perspective proves that yes, the friendships are real. Behind every keyboard and monitor is a real living, breathing human being. Granted, the mode of communication makes it easier to be misleading as you have a certain measure of anonymity. But I have found that the 'for real' people - the good ones, are exactly the same either online or when you finally meet them in person. You have people who are phony, no matter how you meet them. You can find good, honest friends online. Becoming friends with them is no different than if you'd met them at any other social function - say a garden club or at the gym. You can care for someone regardless of what method you use to communicate. My husband and I carry on about 75% of our marriage via cellphone (thanks, Verizon, for having free member to member calling or we'd be too broke to pay my CoH subs, hahaha). His job requires him to travel to where he is needed. Does that mean our marriage counts for any less than a marriage where both people live in the home and are only away from each other for a few hours on some days? Of course not. So why should a friendship where distance separates be any different? It ISN'T.
Well I'd call it more of an equalizer - it allows people who would probably never interact otherwise to meet and become friends - but I see your point.
Jaime, beautiful piece. I'm sorry for your losses. I've met plenty of great people in MMOs, even complete strangers who I've come across (not in my guild, kinship, corporation). For the communities in some of these MMOs, that's a real feat, but it just goes to show that there's good people everywhere. In a way, I'm almost more comfortable when I'm not having direct contact with a person while I'm talking to them. There's that shield of anonymity - they can only see what you choose to type or how you choose to act. Yet I still pour out my feelings to my closest online friends, and I really don't feel like they're just random "online" people.
Again, nice article. Thanks.
The old Plato attribution: 'You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation'
I'm an old enough fart to remember folks who kept up for years with one another by writing an extensive series of letters. There was a friend of my parents who spent most of WWII writing letters to the sister of one of his buddies: They met after the war, and after the first face to face get together, they decided to get married.
This is not that different from the online MMO experiance. The good people I've met online have been good in person, and the bad ones, well...vice versa. You can't learn everything about them, but according to Plato, you can discover a great deal.
If you are holding out for the perfect game, the only game you play will be the waiting one.
That was a touching article, even though I did not understand your point. You write about very human topics and you look at them with a virtual versus real world distinction. But at that level, that very distinction seems to dissolve.
Let me explain my point of view. It is moving for us to see fictional characters die. We know they are not real and it still works all the time. Maybe we are sad because we anticipated more adventures with them. Now look closely: does this resemble what is happening when real people pass away? You sometimes hear relatives and friends close to the deceased talk about the unused potential, the dreams he had, all the things she wanted to do.
The marvel seems to be that we can move our mind into other peoples heads, be at different places, different times and see different perspectives. That is how media and MMOs work in the first place. The people we meet are not different than characters in a novel. At that level, it doesn't matter if they are "real" or if some bot or author conceived their dialoges. And they are not less real than real people, as a strange matter of fact.
So we do not literally move our mind around. Conversely, we do "emulate". People, real or not, are emulated by our brains. That is "knowing" them. You have a mental model of everyone you know . And this is not less real than the real person. Because the "real person" from a scientific point of view is made of the very same material.
So while I am getting philosophical again, I'd say that it IS virtual. But our empathy is virtual too. I therefore disagree with the idea that we have to proclaim virtual relationships as "real" to make them serious. Because face-to-face and physical contact is a completely different matter indeed. Or put differently, if you love someone as a person, it doesn't matter if the person is physically present, because at that level the body is just "interface". Otherwise schmalz phonecalls wouldn't work and all that (to be clear, humans still need their bodies in relationships for ... certain things ... and the extra senses help feeding the mental model, but they don't need it to emulate other people and to feel empathy, consider paralytics).
I like to add that "keeping someone in your heart" is probably that: they are really still around, as the "emulation" is still running for some time until it fades away (gets simpler) due to lack of feedback loops. At the end, the emulation is very simple and consists only of few sentences, pictures and some iconic moments. If you want to be (truly) immortal, you have to be famous as "better" emulations of yourself keep running even if the prime strange loop you are is no longer around. For some it's equally important to get famous as to have have kids. Interesting that the memes of a person wants to live just like the genes.
One of the best damn rogue's I've ever had the honor of playing with. Guild was amazing, when he had passed away we were all pretty upset. But not as upset as we would be if we had known him in real life.
It hit me hard, brought me back to reality, and I was really down. But I never shed a tear, as I would for someone close to me in reality.
I am old enough to have lost a lot of friends in RL.
A friend wheather in real life or in the virtual world is a treasure.
When I was playing EQ 1 I met this person while camping orcs in the commons. We started talking between spawns and became friends. We would meet up and play together whenever we were both online. It really made the game fun. This went on for about a year. Then they just did not log on again. I dont know what happened to them. The character they played was a female human. I never knew if "she" was a female in RL as that never came up.
Later when I played EQ 2 I saw her standing in one of the cities and I ran up to her and tried to start a converstion but she never responded. I then realized that it was a NPC with the same name she used in EQ 1. Every time time I went through that city I would see her standing there. It felt like someone had twisted a knife in my chest everytime I passed by.
I sure wish I knew what happened to her.
I almost didn't read this article (which was quite good by the way) because I knew it would bring memories to the surface that I would rather leave in the past, not because I don't like thinking about lost friends, but because along with those memories comes the hurt and grief again. Maybe not as sharp, but it's there all the same. I have lost more than my share of online friends it seems. Since my days in EQ which I began playing in '99, I have lost friends and guildmates, albeit some closer than others, in every game I've played (with the exception of my current game - EVE).
Strangely though, the hardest one was a very dear friend whom I met while playing Mafia Wars on Facebook. Not really an MMO, I know, but an online game none-the-less. He had started a clan of very strong players to combat the griefers and bullies of the game, and had invited me to join. Since I was already a member of two other clans with similar purposes, I politely declined his invitation. One night, he sent me a chat message. We talked for a while about the clans and then the conversation turned to just two guys shooting the bull. Before I knew it, the hours had passed by and it was the wee hours of the morning (and I did join his clan the next day). Despite our age difference (he was in his early twenties and I'm old as dirt) we had struck up a freindship that over the next six months was one of the most honest an open that I had ever had online with another guy (ummm, guy to guy thing, ya know?)
One morning I logged on only to find a bombshell of a message in my mail... he had passed away sometime the day or night before, His sister, who also played the game, had found him. We had had one of our late night into the wee morning hours talks less than 24 hours before. I was as upset as I have ever been for a RL person's passing. Then to top matters off, the leader of my first clan, the guy who had taken me under his wing when I was a Mafia Wars newbie, passed away just six weeks ago. I don't play Mafia Wars anymore.
In this day and age of the internet, cell phones, and instant communications worldwide, the planet Earth is a much smaller, intimate place. Anyone who doesn't understand that an online friendship, or any other relationship for that matter (I've had my heart broken online too, and believe me it hurt just as bad as a RL one does, but that's for another discussion - maybe) is just as real as a physical one is not as tech savvy as they'd like to think they are.
~ Adder ~
Quick, Silent, Deadly
It sounds crazy but I've actually caught myself wondering how many major MMO accounts have gone dormant due to the death of the owner. This was a great article to read and thanks to the author for sharing.
it is an article and not merely a story because she discusses her thoughts and insights to a given experience she had. it doesnt have to be two-sided for it to be an article.
additionally, you don't have to open your personal life in game. in fact very few people do. the point of the article is not that, but rather to suggest that in-game experiences with other people are enough to form true friendships (albeit in a virtual world) which can result in genuine feelings of loss, anguish, etc. when you learn that someone whom you've spent considerable time with in-game dies.
unlike going to a spa, theatre, movies which you do with friends or your partner, in a virtual world (MMO or otherwise) you meet people. granted they are behind an avatar but as the article suggests they are people nonetheless.
you come across as a solo player who choses to log-in, play on your own or pick random groups and log out; and thats fine, but not everybody plays this way.
I think it likely that MMO’s are attractive to those who are ill, so you will find more of them there than say at a football match or anything outdoors for that matter. They get to do something in a safe environment that is not overly effected by even life threatening illnesses. Well at least not till you are in the final stages.
Online interaction is at arms length, so it poses many quandaries about how to react to events which occur in the RL of players. We tend to use the experience we have of RL and impose that on our online life. That is the best you can do, but it is not always going to be a good fit. There are no easy answers here, it is just something we have to try to resolve as best we can.
Respect to you Jaime. I'm sorry for your loss, your post really touched my heart.
I wish more of my online friends were like you.
1st of all, accept my condolences for your friend, i know how it feels to know the news of your friend's death is ( even in virtual )
ok while my self never experienced any of those, but i can imagine that and i dont want it to happen to me ever
and 2ndly
with due to respect, i dont agree with you, Virtual Relationship will always be different than real person relationship
i've been in MMO world since 2004, i have been in some guild more than 4 years, i never felt essence of a "real" relationship even if i say im their friends
even if im very close with them in game, unfortunately, we were never given the chance to do a gathering, because i live in a different country, thus, only making us a virtual friends
this i would like to admit, although many times probably you would see a guildmates defend you against outside's grievers or against other guild, but that's about it,
it's all part of "you're in my guild, its normal for me to defend you" stuffs
but the truth is, once you are over with the game, that's it, your virtual relation ends, you will never hear from them again vice versa, this, i believe you all have gone through
on the other hands, yes i agree with you, IF you are in a guild starting from virtual relationship to real life friends, that could mean something,
now this is what i got from my old MMO, Ragnarok, we started as a nobody to each other in a guild back in 2003, and we disbanded the guild in 2007, and we're still meeting each other sif we're a friend from primary, i know all of their addresses, their parents, we've hang out together in everyone's houses, even until at a point where we actually can travel overseas together
this is what i will never ever find again in this generation of MMO, well maybe there are, but probably less than 5% from all MMO, the immersive relation in virtual that led to the real life friendship, for me, will never happen again after the MMO industry have gone past 2007
So What Now?
I think it goes right back to treating the person on the other end of that internet connection as a person and not as a collection of pixels on your computer screen - or at least that's my opinion.
Back in the early days of SWG, I ran across a kid (he was about 12, so that qualifies as a "kid," hehe). He was exceptionally well-mannered and matured, loved playing the game, and had and unusual amount of time to spend playing during daytime hours. I didn't think much of it, since he was in another part of the world and since his dad also played and ran with us in nearly everything we did. Figured if dad was there watching and didn't mind, everything must be fine. Like Jamie's friend, he'd log off rather suddenly and be gone for days, but again, I didn't think much of it - he was quite young, after all. His dad would always log off and be gone with him, but again, not something you really think a lot of - boys have dozens of thing to do outside the virtual world.
One day, his dad logged on without him after a few weeks' absence and told me that the son had passed away. He'd had leukemia. And thanked me for playing the game with them and helping make the kid's last months happier. And yes, it made me sad and yes I grieved for the boy, just as a few years later, when one of the guys on my server that I palled around with and talked to frequently in chat and on vent was killed in an accident, I grieved and was sad. I'd known this guy for several years online, and even though he could sometimes be a real jerk (usually when he'd been drinking), I'd genuinely liked him.
The reality is, even in gaming, we are playing these games with real people. If any member of my multi-gaming guild was ill or passed away, it would devastate me. Many of my guildmates are friends in real life that I speak to on the phone at least weekly if not daily. Several are people that I live close enough to that we make plans to meet up a couple times a year as our schedules allow. Some, I even live in the same town as, so our meetings are far more frequent. Even those in my guild that I don't have a close a relationship with are not mere pixels, they are people - they're kind of like those cousins that you don't really hang out with all the time, nor would you, but they're still family. But then, maybe I just have a different view of how I should treat people - no matter where I "meet" those people - than what most of society has.
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
I had a real good friend from a game die of cancer but sadly I didn't find out till 2 years after due to me having personal issues which resulted in me leaving the game for a few years. But when I first heard it hit me really hard cause she was just one of the nicest people you could ever meet.
Just because you don't know the person in real life doesn't mean they can't leave an impact on you. She was a really good friend and it was a real honor knowing her. I have yet to even remove her from my friends list and I honestly can't bring myself to do so. My friend also has a sister who plays and it brings back memories when she talks because it sounds just like her.
People do have emotions even when playing a game to say otherwise is just a lie.
By far the best article ever on mmorpg.com.
Very very wellwritten article, I myself haven't really experienced anything like this, the closest being when a guildmate in WoW passed away in a caraccident a few years ago, I didn't know her personally or much in the game either but some in the guild did and were quite upset obviously, she was the sister of another player in the guild and a few of the officers and the guildleader tried being there for her ans she did keep on playing for a while.
Online relationships with other people aren't in my opinion very different from "real-life" relationships, I should know, I met my fiance through WoW and everythings great even though we were in different countries for quite a while.
One kind of connection to another human being is no worse than the next.
Peter Griffin: you know those germans, if you dont join the party, they?ll come get ya
I love gaming but online friendships are not for me. I like to interact with guildies and have lots of players added to buddy lists. But when it comes to friendship i prefer my real life friends. For me friendship is lot more then just interacting in virtual world. How many of these online friendships actually extend to real life?
Sorry to read of your uncle's health and the loss of your friend.
I don't really distinguish between real life and online friends, as the business I'm in I communicate with alot of people online (and now on the phone and text) and have for years that I've never met face to face and my two closest friends live out of the country so face to face is annually at best.
BUT I don't consider every person on my buddy or friend list or in the guild a 'friend'. My personal life and name are known by a half a dozen people that I've played with over the years and funnily enough a couple of us even refer to each other by our ingame name - as we're use to it - hearing my real name or saying theirs just seems so wrong!
Proud member of Hammerfist Clan Gaming Community.
Currently playing: RIFT, EQ2, WoW, LoTRO
Retired: Warhammer, AoC, EQ
Waiting: SWToR & GW2