warcraft, death and fictive kinship groups December 12, 2006
Posted by mwj as art, death, games, religion, technology, world of warcraft. trackback.
Assuming that what Stan says is true, there is a place for bonding in World of Warcraft (WoW). A very real place, since the average amount of time spent in the game by each of its >7 million subscribers is around 2 hours a day.
With that kind of emotional energy going into building characters, amassing wealth and killing monsters, it makes sense that some people now see games as viable venues for public expressions of more taboo subjects such as death and grieving, and “a new wave of online funerals, memorial services, and tributes to the deceased makes attending a funeral as easy as logging onto a website,” according to a recent article on UTNE. The immersive nature of games allows players to virtually participate in the full gamut of human experiences, forming relationships “with people they will never see in reality.”
This invasion of the social into the virtual has led to some major questions. About a year ago, a funeral was held in WoW for a female player nicknamed “Snowly”. She had died after playing non-stop for several days “in preparation for a difficult stretch of the game.” These sort of stories have become commonplace. How are we to respond to an experience that has the potential to elicit powerful emotional responses from people without any of the usual checks and balances (a physically present community, the bodies natural defense mechanisms - “I’m tired now, so go to sleep”, etc.) that go along with such responses?
Another question heads us off on a completely different direction: how serious should we take a virtual funeral for a non-virtual person? If we take it too seriously, we risk redefining a very central element of online world, namely that they are not serious, not real, and places where we can transcend the usual limits of human experience. But a danger lies in the opposite direction too: without any opportunity to grieve virtually, our second life retains its status as unreal and without bearing on “real” life, even while continuing to play a larger role in the formation of the “fictive kinship groups” that help us make it through this life (thanks Logan).
The birth of eFunerals allows people to participate in mourning across the globe, so that players in Thailand can express their sadness over the death of the crocodile hunter. But as mortality continues to crowd in on our virtual lives, the place it has in these online worlds will be a huge source of tension and concern.
My prediction is that we’re going to see a lot more of this:
WARNING: strong language and graphic scenes of [virtual] violence. Not for the dainty
Comments»
Girls Of Warcraft
That neatly balance the economy to make a long-tearm relationship across multiple game players. due to their offices…
Interesting……the boundaries between the real and virtual, game and play are certainly blurred these days. What always seemed to be “natural” dichotomies appear to be flexible human constructions after all…Read my paper on MMORPGs; I’d like to know what you think of it (although by now, my perceptions and opinions have shifted here and there).
See you in Azeroth!