My sister plays this game called Bakery Story. I played for a while too and shared a lot of my sister's online friends. There were a few people who had exquisite bakeries, each a world of intricate design and my sister was in the top tier of that type of thing. My bakery was a bit more functional, I was there for sibling rivalry reasons rather than the global community.
We had not heard from one online friend for a while. But then we got a message from the daughter of the lady who had the neatest bakery in the American mid-West. As you can imagine it was doom and gloom, she had not made it out of the hospital.
Both my sister and myself were shocked by the news, however, we had been there for this lady, her life coming to a premature end in a hospital. Online her world was nothing like the sad reality of her real life. We envied her in this online world, she was in the handful of true greats, not just for the bakery but for the personality.
We did not have time for anything too fanciful, we heard our online friend was poorly and two weeks later we had the message from the daughter who was not yet teenage. Everyone in the game added a tombstone - a game prop - in memory, there was mourning going on, nobody knowing what to say for the weeks after that.
I can remember telling my workmates that I was in stunned silence due to an in-game incident, but you just don't expect online friends to die and you don't imagine that you could be stunned into silence by such an event.
We also had no further messages from the daughter so that was that, abrupt. But, if I think now of how ill she must have been and how we lavished praise on her for her creations without knowing that she was at death's door, I think we helped provide an escape. In our own special way we visited her online every day during those difficult times and talked about what mattered to her in her world.
We had not heard from one online friend for a while. But then we got a message from the daughter of the lady who had the neatest bakery in the American mid-West. As you can imagine it was doom and gloom, she had not made it out of the hospital.
Both my sister and myself were shocked by the news, however, we had been there for this lady, her life coming to a premature end in a hospital. Online her world was nothing like the sad reality of her real life. We envied her in this online world, she was in the handful of true greats, not just for the bakery but for the personality.
We did not have time for anything too fanciful, we heard our online friend was poorly and two weeks later we had the message from the daughter who was not yet teenage. Everyone in the game added a tombstone - a game prop - in memory, there was mourning going on, nobody knowing what to say for the weeks after that.
I can remember telling my workmates that I was in stunned silence due to an in-game incident, but you just don't expect online friends to die and you don't imagine that you could be stunned into silence by such an event.
We also had no further messages from the daughter so that was that, abrupt. But, if I think now of how ill she must have been and how we lavished praise on her for her creations without knowing that she was at death's door, I think we helped provide an escape. In our own special way we visited her online every day during those difficult times and talked about what mattered to her in her world.
Games can be special like that.