All across the video game galaxy, players are gathering to memorialize Carrie Fisher, who died yesterday following a massive heart attack.
The most prominent celebrations have taken place in the BioWare MMORPG Star Wars: The Old Republic, where players are holding impromptu get-togethers in an area called House Organa, on the planet Alderaan. Fisher, of course, played Princess Leia Organa, the adopted daughter of Senator Bail Organa. So The Old Republic players on just about every server are celebrating her there.
Some fans have requested that BioWare add some sort of tribute—which would be tough, canonically, given that The Old Republic is set thousands of years before Leia was born—and others have made videos to commemorate Fisher:
Players of the biggest Star Wars game of the past few years, Battlefront, are looking for a different way to honor Fisher. In Battlefront, which is primarily a player-vs-player game, players can fight as one of several original trilogy heroes or villains, including Fisher’s Princess Leia. And some fans are suggesting that the game’s development studio DICE release a new version of Princess Leia—or finish an older one—to commemorate Fisher’s death.
On most of Battlefront’s maps, Leia appears in the cold-weather outfit she wore on the ice planet of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Last summer, however, DICE had indicated that they were creating an alternate skin, or look, based on Leia’s white outfit from the original 1977 Star Wars film. Development on it and some other skins was halted, but now many fans are saying DICE should make the Leia one. The request is awkwardly tied up with frustration the online fanbase has been expressing all year on the game’s subreddit and official message boards, regularly criticizing DICE for delivering too little content for the game.
The requests range from the reasonable—“this would be a nice way for DICE to show their love for Carrie and support our community as we mourn our loss“–to the cringeworthy (in a request not just for the skin but for more bug fixes)–“She deservers a game without bugs and absolutely enjoyable and playable.” People process grief differently, of course, and the outpouring from the fanbase on the subreddit and official forums is full of sorrow about Fisher’s passing and appreciation for her influence.