Touching online funerals that gamers hold for friends they have never met

The level of camaraderie felt between online players mean funerals for online friends an important part of the grieving process

Gamers forge deep connections in online role playing games (Yuri_Arcurs/iStock)

For gamers who spend hours-upon-hours online, in-game funerals and memorials for people they have never met but have formed close bonds with are part of an important healing process for pain that is very real indeed.

Gaming is a billion dollar business to rival music and sports, and detailed role-play games like World of War Craft and Final Fantasy enable people who have never met to form close bonds as they navigate detailed virtual universes in teams that can become like families.

Virtual funerals have existed in one way or another since 1995, with the advent of the World Wide Cemetery memorial website. For years, gamers have been organising in-game memorial services to commemorate the lives of often young players who have passed away in real life.

The level of camaraderie and co-operation that goes into lengthy Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) can make a person's absence particularly noticeable.

“Much attachment a player feels online is towards the avatar of the other player,“ the authors of the Royal College of Psychiatrists Gaming the Mind blog told The Independent. ”Players construct identities online in terms of their appearance, attributes and their own actions, forming an online persona. This is not unlike identities we create offline within various contexts, such as at work or with friends.“ One of the most notable examples saw Final Fantasy XIV players gathering to pay their respects for 29-year-old player Codex Vahlda, an impressive level 50 bard on the game’s Gilgamesh server.

Below: An online memorial service

Below: An online memorial service

Standing side-by-side, the group of friends gathered at a beach in the game, spelled out the name “Codex” on the messaging system and put on a light show. This virtual mourning was then streamed into the player’s hospital room for the family to see.

“My wife's uncle was big into Lord of the Rings Online,” wrote on Reddit user about an online ceremony on a thread discussing the phenomenon. “When he passed away, several of his guild members organised a ride in his honour.

“It was very touching, and was great to see that he had so many people who cared about him that we never even knew of. Turbine (game developer) also gave his family a life time subscription to keep his account alive."

Mourning also has its own language online. In the space-based game Eve, players use the code “o7” as a virtual salute in a sign of respect of the last time the person logged off for good.

But memorials in gaming go further still. Just as loved ones cling on to photos, voicemails and belongings of dead friends and families, saved games also offer a precious, comforting snapshot of a person’s life. By re-watching the last save in Skyrim – am elaborate role-play universe – one Redditor was able to relive the final in-game moments of his brother Taylor. As word spread, moderators created a memorial mod to add a stone to the location where the gamer last played.

And as flowers and tributes are laid for celebrities by fans IRL, high-profile figures are also commemorated in games. Actor and World of Warcraft fan Robin Williams, who passed away in 2014, was commemorated in by its makers with expansions of non-player characters (NPC) based on his best-loved movie roles including Mrs Doubtfire and Genie from the Aladdin.

“Players will find a sense of closure from online death rituals which they would otherwise not experience," explained the blogging group. "The offline death rituals may be physically impossible to attend, and may be limited to close friends and family. Online mourning offers the community who knew the deceased within the game an opportunity to hold a similar service with carried-over rituals from the offline world.”

This, say experts, can help people recover from very grief that is far from virtual.