Should the dead live on in avatar form?

This reminds me of Nano
http://www.joystiq.com/media/2006/11/wow4twiw3.gif

I do think it's a bit weird to play a dead person's character. It's kinda like wearing their favorite outfit after they die. I'm not going to get bent outta shape about it, but I wouldn't do it. Seems a bit tasteless/disrespectful.

Brand figures like this tend to live on. Look at Colonel Sanders - with a voice actor for the animated version, and an RL double for live/live-action appearances.

All of this for a man who loathed the company who uses his image.

I agree with you Moo. I'm glad you wrote this article. I was saddened by Ginny's loss. I've never met her(him?) but I've spend plenty money in her store. I used to enjoy starring at the details in the clothes. It was always a joy to buy those clothes. When I heard of her death, the report on the site was so cryptic that I had to rely on other sites just to come out and say that my fav designer was gone. No one has said how she died or given out funeral information so that we can send support to the family. There was no real sense of closure. Then one day I'm hanging out in world and I get an update from Ginny. It made me ill.

Karl Lagerfeld designs for Coco Chanel because she is dead. He keeps the brand alive. If after Coco's death, someone were to dress and look like Coco and try to sell her clothes like nothing happened, people wouldn't take it too well. I think Last Call should live on but the Ginny Talamasca avatar should be retired so we can heal.

Tough choice, but I may have to side with Tateru on this one.

I think it is up to whomever is the inheritor or executor of the estate. Some writers have "literary executors" who have the power to do things with the writer's body of work, for example.

This may come hard to people who put a lot of emotion into the avatar, but some people think of their avatars as another "thing" such as a car or a cardigan. Would you be upset if a friend gave her car away, and you saw it on the highway?

I haven't been playing Second Life for more then a week, so I haven't run across these people.

But what ever happened to in game funerals? First time I heard of one in Everquest it was a little strange. However, it makes sense to hold a celebration of a person in the location where that person's friends were. Move everything off the avitar that might be needed for carrying on their work, but retire them with their full gear never to be played again.

No No NO...think of your AV. Is it you? I know my AV is me in so many ways. If someone came onto SL with my virtual presence after I'm gone, please, grief it till they give up in disgust.
My av is not a literary work, or something I'd let some "executor" play with. Why not just dig up my "meat"AV and play puppets with it.

It would seem as if this was a good case where a complete change of name for a particular account, or the ability to transfer all their assets, would be a good idea. The degree to which different parts of the account are part of the person is an interesting one for discussion... assets such as textures and property ownership aren't, really, anyone could own those, but avatar appearance certainly can be if the person rarely changed it radically (one gets very used to the appearance of friends, even if, technically speaking, anyone could look like that) and name _definitely_ is, since that can't be changed at all for an account.

I think there is certainly a case for an inheritance procedure but I too would find it disturbing to have a particular friend's name wandering around the net and grid even just knowing that the original person behind it wasn't any more - let alone if the original person had _died_. Popping up occasionally to transfer assets to a new account is one thing, but actually being active... I would have to remove the name from my list and, if I came across them in-world, avoid this new person's company.

Avatars _can_ be purely business entities without any individuality, but they rarely are, and nobody gets attached to them should they be.

Might be excusable for a multi-billion dollar brand name not for some trumped up excuse for a game, lol I never heard such utter rubbish.

Clearly, there are many different opinions on whether an avatar is the self of the user running it. My avatar isn't me, except when I get very immersed; it's more like a doll that acts out my wishes.

With such a wide range of feeling, I think the *only* solution is to have the owners (or heirs) of the avatar decide what is appropriate, for no other solution will suit. Compromise is when both parties are both somewhat displeased with the solution, as they say.

In many ways I think this is just the tip of the iceburg around issues of identity and I posted about it at length.

http://dusanwriter.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/death-in-virtual-worlds-play-magic-grief-and-the-search-for-meaning/

Not trying to advertise myself, sorry...but this topic is fascinating and in the long-term, potentially disturbing or transcendant. Is an avatar's identity separate from the typists? What about when avatars become more complex and intelligent and are able to act as independent agents without controller "live" input? If I work for a company and they assign me an avatar for a corporate project, who owns the avatar when I leave that company? Because reputation is such a critical part of how we relate and work with each other, how do we create portability of reputation when avatars don't "travel with us" (is this what IBM means by the universal avatar?)

Do avatars constitute different components? Do we grieve the living, the avatar, both?

Your question raises much deeper symbolic, practical, legal and ethical issues than whether we're creeped out seeing an old friend, now passed on, whose AV logs on.

Yea, you are totally right, I get the same feeling of sadness and loss whenever I see Disney and even though I never knew Walt, I miss him. How dare they continue on his RL business and dream after he died!!!

A business is a business. Whether it be a billion dollar business, or one that manages to pay the bills, it's still a business. The sickness is not those who go on trying to make a living and moving on, the sickness is those who sit back and try and judge those people because they are so self-centered and selfish, they don't realise there is a whole other world out there, that doesn't revolve around them.

Get a life people. Leave them alone. If you don't like what they are doing, don't buy their products anymore. They are just moving on and doing what they feel to be right. If you don't like it, well... take a hike. But don't bud your nose into something that isn't your 'business' in the first place.