I couldn’t believe this when I came across this story on CNN. A woman was arrested in Japan for killing her husbands avatar in the game Maple Story. The woman said she killed her husbands avatar because he divorced her in the game. I mean come on now! She is not being arrested for murder but for hacking.

Let me give you a little background on my experience with these games before I tell you how I feel about them.  The Tech department at my university is exploring the value of using Second Life as an alternative for classrooms.  I cant believe that they are even thinking about this.  My Networking class has regular (optional) meetings in Second Life.  I even have a friend that gets paid to play the game and help professors create buildings and other things in the game.  What is this world coming to?  Are we no longer able to interact with human beings any more?  All these games provide to the younger generation is a way to avoid human contact.

I personally think that these games are a bunch of crap.  People should interact with real people and not hide behid these “avatars”.  I refuse to install Second Life as a protest to my teacher.  He says that Second Life is the new way to interact with people.  I still hold my stance that all these programs do is hide us from any real social interaction.

Check out the article at CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/ptech/10/23/avatar.murder.japan.ap/index.html

I’d like to hear what you have to think!