Gamer Races with His Dead Father's Race Car Avatar

Jason Kottke highlights the moving story of a teenager whose fondest memory of his now-dead father is playing a racing game on the man's old Xbox. Ten years later, the teen drags the videogame console out of storage, and starts playing one of their favorites: The racing game RalliSport Challenge. And then realizes that the "ghost" of his father is contained within the save files of the game. In RalliSport, you see, a record of the player with the best score is displayed in the game as a "ghost" car for other players to beat. So in a sense, his father's old score became an avatar that the son could race with, years after the man was gone:

His ghost still rolls around the track today. And so I played and played, and played, until I was almost able to beat the ghost.... and stopped right in front of the finish line, just to insure I wouldn't delete it.

Since "avatar" literally means "godly incarnation on earth", I think it's accurate to call this car his father's avatar. And while it's a strange thing to read about now, but in future decades, experiences like this will be as commonplace as looking at old photos of our loved ones.

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Comments

[Pathfinder]

Wow, great story!

/me imagines firing up a copy of Skyrim and (assuming Hearthfire DLC was installed exploring a dead relative's custom-made home and interacting with their virtual spouse and virtual children.

[irihapeti]

is so cool this. that the guy not delete his Dad is a really special kindness and shows a deep generosity and character and acknowledgement of where he belongs and where he comes from

is enough to know that one day the son can be as good as the father. The father will be really pleased I think to have a son like this guy. And the son can know that I think he is worthy of his fathers name and worthy of the place to which he belongs