The Digital Memorial Edition

One from the archives today. Back tomorrow. -Colin (CJN)

Colin here. There was a rather melancholy story that made the internet rounds a while back. A son plugged in an old console only to find a “ghost” of his late father. Jalopnik recounts: 

Well, when i was 4, my dad bought a trusty XBox. you know, the first, ruggedy, blocky one from 2001. we had tons and tons and tons of fun playing all kinds of games together - until he died, when i was just 6.

i couldnt touch that console for 10 years.

but once i did, i noticed something.

we used to play a racing game, Rally Sports Challenge. actually pretty awesome for the time it came.

and once i started meddling around... i found a GHOST.

literaly.

you know, when a time race happens, that the fastest lap so far gets recorded as a ghost driver? yep, you guessed it - his ghost still rolls around the track today.

and so i played and played, and played, untill i was almost able to beat the ghost. until one day i got ahead of it, i surpassed it, and...

i stopped right in front of the finish line, just to ensure i wouldnt delete it.

Bliss.

It was a weird internet story excavated from a forum that managed to capture feels but also had a sense of poignancy to it: a game that had shared value to them and bonding time, with a digital spirit that lived on in the pixels and console memory. 

I was reminded of this story when I saw the elegant gesture that EA just made with the launch of FIFA 21. Fast Company gives some context: 

When players open the fanatically popular FIFA 21 today, they’ll have access to the game’s newest star. Thirty-year-old Kiyan Prince is at the pinnacle of his career, flying high with some of the best skill ratings in the game and backed by marquee sponsors such as Adidas.

But Kiyan Prince has been dead for 15 years, killed on May 18, 2006. At the time, Prince was arguably the brightest young soccer prospect in England. He was stabbed to death while trying to break up a fight outside of his school.

Why is this interesting? 

Just as the father’s lap time was memorialized in digital amber, so too is the late Mr. Prince. Every characteristic was faithfully represented in the game, from his likeness, to speed, to style of play. 

“Virtually recreating any player is significantly complicated; from the outset of the project, we were committed to representing Kiyan as authentically as possible, from aging his appearance using images from his teen years, to developing his on-pitch characteristics and style of play,” says [James Salmon, EA Sports’ global marketing director for the FIFA franchise]. “We wanted to ensure Kiyan featured in-game as the superstar he would’ve been and to build on our work to date supporting the Kiyan Prince Foundation.”

When I first saw it, I got chills. I was unfamiliar with the story but the gesture of bringing a life tragically cut short back to one of the most popular games in the world was powerful. And the painstaking detail that went into creating his characteristics shows the depth of the gesture. It wasn’t just a token thing: “designers at EA Sports and Framestore—the company behind Avengers: Endgame and Bladerunner 2049—used 3D scans of his father, siblings, and grandfather, along with photos from friends and family.”

The game will also support the Kiyan Prince Foundation (KPF) which has been campaigning against knife crime in the UK and for better community and educational support systems to prevent it. (CJN)

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Thanks for reading,

Noah (NRB) & Colin (CJN)

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