Letting online friends know a gamer has died

March 15, 2009 at 12:00a.m.

NEW YORK (AP) — When Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game, his daughter embarked on a quest of her own: to let her father’s gaming friends know that he hadn’t just decided to desert them.

It wasn’t easy because she didn’t have her father’s “World of Warcraft” password, and the game’s publisher couldn’t help her. Eventually, Melissa Allen Spangenberg reached her father’s friends by asking around online for the “guild” he belonged to.

With online social networks becoming ever more important in our lives, they’re also becoming an important element in our deaths. Spangenberg, who died suddenly from an abdominal aneurysm at 57, was unprepared, but others are leaving detailed instructions. There’s even a tiny industry that has sprung up to help people wrap up their online contacts after their deaths.

David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, set up a site called Deathswitch, where people can set up e-mails that will be sent out automatically if they don’t check in at intervals they specify, such as once a week. For $20 per year, members can create up to 30 e-mails with attachments such as video files.

If Deathswitch sounds morbid, there’s an alternative site: Slightly Morbid. It also sends e-mail when a member dies but doesn’t rely on their logging in periodically while they’re alive. Instead, members have to give trusted friends or family the information needed to log in to the site and start the notification process if something should happen.

A third site with a similar concept plans to launch in April. Legacy Locker will charge $30 per year. It will require a copy of a death certificate before releasing information.