Little Corner of Ania

According to China Daily, a 41 year old Chineese guy killed another guy in real life after disagreements about a weapon in the onlinegame "Legend of Mir III".

Apparantly these two men was together in the game when they found a really, really good weapon, which one of them then proceed to sell for like 870 USD. The seller promised to share the money, but the other guy lost patience. After being rejected by the police (saying that theft of virtual items really wasn't their field), he decided to go on and stab the other guy to death.

Now he risks being setenced to death himself, all this because of a virtual weapon....

Now, this is really an interesting (although tragic) case. Players who spend hours in a virtual world - working their butts off to obtain better and better items - no wonder they feel helpless and angry when they lose their hard obtained things in unfair ways, like being scammed or hacked. What can one do? In most cases, it's just like, shit happens, suck it up and move on ("it's just a game"). The online game companies in Shanghai however, are currently planning to set up "cyber courts", "dispute system where aggrieved players can find recourse" according to ChinaDaily. It'd be interesting to see how it'd work out, if they ever manage to create one...I mean, we already have people paying for virtual items with real, hard cash, people paying real money for services in the game, people paying real money for virtual areas and so on.... when people actually are willing to pay real money for virtual things, things excisting in games only, should we also proceed to try and protect their virtual items then? Is it possible to compare the "pain" from say, having your begonias intentionally ruined by drunk kids if you're a gardener, to being scammed and losing a really good item you own in a game? Hm... the feelings might be true and comparable, but hrm...this sure requires more thinking :p

Jeje..