Wonderful game stories from beyond the grave
This just in from Rocket News, but apparently a Gamer discovers his deceased father’s ghost on an old Xbox game, challenges it to a race.
Per the story:
"[A] 16-year-old participant shared the story of his father, who passed away a decade ago. When the son was four, his dad brought home a first-generation Xbox, which provided hours of fun for the two as they played games together on it.
Recently, though, the son decided to fire up the console again for old time’s sake, popping in the disc for the 2002 racing title RalliSport Challenge.
As he waded through the menus, he came across something more surprising than the lists of all-wheel drive cars and mixed gravel/tarmac courses he’d expected.
He literally found his dad’s ghost."
And what they mean by ghost is that his father's old race data was still saved on the machine. In the appropriate play mode, one can race against said data, which is precisely what the young man did. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say that this is a charming story, if not somewhat apocryphal, as I can't seem to track down the sources proper.
It reminded me of another apocryphal/anecdotal video about a much sadder story about how a mother's love could remain (after a fashion) in Animal Crossing:
Again, I won't spoil this one either, but suffice it to say it is one of the saddest stories I have come across in terms of gaming and the deceased.
For a much more uplifting and REAL story about how games helped people cope with the death of a loved one, see Jenova Chen's most excellent talk at GDC 2013 entitled "Designing Journey" (The entire talk is absolute gold, but if you want to hear the story I'm talking about, skip to 55:48)
