WoWInsider today has an article called "What to do when a player dies".
It's an interesting subject for me, because while writing policies for Metaplace I have done a bit of research into this subject lately. While the article mostly focuses on alerting their in-game friends of their death, a more interesting topic for me is the concept of virtual goods. When your virtual space has a currency, and that currency has a real life dollar value, and you buy virtual goods with that currency – when you die the question of "what happens to your assets" is a bigger deal.
Second Life actually has a support policy on this. They require you to have it written in your will and require:
- A testamentary letter or other appropriate order
- A copy of the death certificate
- A copy of the will
- A copy of a government-issue ID sufficient to identify you
They can also alert your Second Life friends if you happen to write that into your will as well.
This is pretty serious business. What happens to a user's virtual life when they pass away in real life is a very real issue.
Tami Baribeau is the Associate Producer for Metaplace, Inc, currently working on Island Life. She is also the Lead Editor of feminist gaming blog The Border House, and the National Facebook Games Examiner for Examiner.com. She can be reached on Twitter or by email.
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That is actually rather interesting, and I suppose it does make sense, given that goods in SL do, basically, directly relate to money.
As a side note, a friend and guild member of mine died during the early testing of Star Wars Galaxies – they gave him a memorial on Tattooine.
I have been thinking about this a lot the past week. I was wondering if anyone in game would even know if I died. How would SOE even know that I died so that they could alert my friends. I felt sort of sad for my character that she would never get to roam around Norrath again.
It would be brutally sad if no one cared if you died in Second Life, and no one cared if you died in first life either.
Of course, you wouldn't be around to see it so maybe you wouldn't mind.