What would be more horrifying: the cast finding out they're sentient avatars for the people who put on the headset, and seeing their real-life equivalents happily going about their lives after coming to the conclusion that the digital circus was a buggy mess of a game they couldn't get to work?

OR

The cast are real people reduced to avatars; their real bodies are long dead from dehydration. Everyone at the end, except Zooble, either abstracting, dematerializing completely in the void, or escaping the circus only to be DOA. Leaving Zooble the only one left, while more people are brought into the circus and their memories are routinely wiped.