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GameToo Much...... And Die!
A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours, police said yesterday. The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim, was found dead at an Internet cafe in Kwangju, 260 kilometres southwest of Seoul, they said.
Quoting witnesses, police detective Oh Myong-sik in Kwangju said the man had been virtually glued to the computer since late last Friday and had no decent sleep and meals. The man collapsed in front of the counter early yesterday but soon regained consciousness. He then went to the toilet where he later was found dead, the police officer said. Initial investigation ruled out the possibility of murder, police said. An autopsy was planned.
Source Article can be found in The Sydney Morning Herald
In related gaming news: sam_handelman writes "In an article on the front page of the online edition, (free reg required) the new york times takes a rather negative look at the rise of broadband gaming in South Korea. The author, Howard W French, is a Times staff writer, with a background in staggering human tragedy, which may help to explain why he thinks my hobby is an epidemic. There was a wired article about Korean broadband (summary: they have lots), which we already discussed."
Geez, dude needed to work on his stamina...
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Thats the geek way of dieing with your boots on.
In Republican America phones tap you.
He then went to the toilet where he later was found dead
why wasn't this story called "Go to the toilet... and die!?"
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
If the guy puts in a quarter quick enough, he may be able to resume where he left Earth...
...I mean off. :-)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Unless he was playing Super Mario Bros. 1, and got stuck in minus world. (Yea, I bet nobody remembers that)
free ipod? yeah.
Thank you, Google News!
He was fine when he was playing games. Obviously it was going to the crapper that killed him!
. . . pours a bit of Red Bull on the side walk in memory of his homie. I hope I go down in glory like dat.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
Was it the first time in 86 hours that he had used the restroom? That would kill anyone.
He played for 86 hours, as in the X-86 architecture. So what's next? The new Apple Ad?
It went like, beep beep beep, and then I died
.noitacidem deen uoy siht daer nac uoy fI
now he's in heaven shouting "OMFG that was such bullshit!"
Wouldn't it be funny if he was trying to beat Doom II? Or some other old game that everybody's beaten? And especially if he didn't make it past the first level or didn't know how to switch guns or something.
Well, I guess it would be more tragic than funny, but due to the fact that it would be so darwinically sad, that it might get a chuckle or two.
You like that word "darwinically"? I just made it up, hehe.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
It'd be such a waste if he didn't. All that effort for nothing...
That video games are a bad habit and can kill you!
Wait, no, it's just proof that being a dumbass can kill you. Never mind, carry on.
SIGFEH
IANA Doctor, but although it's primarily an air travel thing, isn't it the case that sitting anywhere for too long can cause blood clots to form in the legs?
Said clots may detach and make their way to the lungs (causing pulmonary embolus) or brain (causing a stroke).
Sounds to me that this dude just suffered an extreme attack of stupidity. If you're gonna LAN for a week (or take a long flight) then at least get off your arse and walk around every few hours.
gadgetophile.com
But then, if he was a true gamer, he obviously died from "natural causes"
I know from my MUDding experiences that it's not uncommon for folks into games to stay up for more than a few days at a time with nothing but caffiene. In college I use to regularly stay awake for 48 hours straight MUDding.
I also know quite a few people who are heavily into methamphetamines that stay up for over a week at a time. I know quite a few folks who brag about having stayed awak for 9 days straight and lived to tell about it.
The best part about having been awake for more than 3 days isn't necesarily the game you're playing, it's the delusious and hallucinations you get. >3 days awake is better than most hits of LSD you get these days.
Duris MUD - The best pkill MUD. Ever.
That many of the internet cafe's there are known for spikeing the water and whatnot. Amphetamine spikeing is common to keep customers in the stores longer and whatnot. There have been several deaths related to this over the last few years.
Also a goverment crackdown has been done once, as you can see...it hasn't made much of a diffrence.
Om, nomnomnom...
Nope, it was not intentional. A real bug. Here's a ton of info on it.E2 has the scoop.
Depressed and alone on Christmas break during college, I went on a Counter-Strike spree some day in the age of Beta5 that lasted 97 hours straight, only taking breaks to quit drinking coffee and urinate.
Tiredness did not matter -- everything was a copy of a copy, and I was some sort of killing machine, though I went from top of the list to somewhere in the middle after the first day. After two days, I was screwed up beyond recognition and was hallucinating, thinking that flowers were growing in de_nuke and that Beavis and Butthead were saying "Go Go Go!."
After the third day, my head and eyes hurt terribly, I had pissed myself and didn't notice for an hour as my legs were totally numb, and everything was a nightmare. I was so wacked out I couldn't do anything but shoot at things that weren't there...... but my obsession could not end as I sat alone in my dorm room.
I passed out, collapsed on the floor, and slept for two days (well, about 28 hours) afterwards and was drowsy with a TERRIBLE, GODAWFUL headache for the entire next week, which I pretty much spent in bed.
What does this have to do with gaming? If I sat infront of a TV, computer, or alone counting bumps in paint for 86 hours straight, the same thing would happen to me.
Another lame attempt to take a stab at videogames and how EVIL they are...
It's a hard lesson to learn, but that's what happens when you don't take enough bathroom breaks while gaming.
I mean, what a way to "go" . . .
(Was it number 1 or number 2?)
blog
Maybe I was just a wuss.
I can't imagine a game more addictive than that one was, always asking you to do the NEXT THING, then do this, your city has completed a temple, what would you like to do now? There was never a natural stopping point, so you just kept going, to see what you would build or discover on the next turn, or which nation's ass you would have to kick.
I had a friend who had no computer that would come over to our dorm room and start playing in the afternoon. We'd pretty much just ignore him or hang out with him, and then I'd have to kick him out when the sun came up the next morning. I was too nice a guy back then.
Gives a different meaning to the phrase "Game Over"
Young Korean needs food...badly.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
"First things first -- but not necessarily in that order"
-- The Doctor, "Doctor
The capacity for human ignorance never fails to amuse me.
/., turn off the computer, and get some sun, will ya? ;-)
It's just not worth dying on the crapper in some internet cafe.
Kids, this is what happens when you have a society that lets people become so self-centered that the thought of actually being a responsible productive resident is considered a joke. And here I thought only the US was so encumbered. Apparently we're contagious.
I don't know what the legal system is like in South Korea, but if it's anything like here, the dude's family will probably bring a lawsuit against the gaming room, the game manufacturer, the government, and anyone else they can bilk money out of because they raised a kid with no self control who grew into a man with no self control. After all, it's already happened here.
This whole thing reminds me of the classic experiment by Olds and Milner in which they wired tiny electrodes into the limbic system of rats. The rats could give themselves a jolt of electricity by pressing a little lever. The stimulation of the limbic system was so pleasurable that some rats would press the bar thousands of times an hour for up to 20 hours at a time until they collapsed from exhaustion. When the rats recovered, they'd go right back to pressing the bar. I have a feeling that if we could do that for people, we'd find that some (like this mental midget in South Korea) would push the bar until their heads exploded.
Really people, take a break from
Crocuta
I guess I'm old, but I'd check to see if the bathroom light was out and interview a grue or two...
He's probably either:
1.riding on the meat-wagon
or
2.has been resurrected by the Necromancer.
I am, and always will be, an idiot. Karma: Coma (mostly effected by
If you have an Athlon, at least you won't have to worry about freezing to death.
Browsing at threshold +3, 37 comments into the discussion so far, and... I can't spot a single sympathetic comment. Most of us are all laughing at this guy's death in some kind of cynical Darwinistic smugness.
The games probably aren't killing anyone, but they've sure done a good job of de-sensitizing a few people...
Finally, proof that I'm not as addicted to the computer as my wife claims!
Thank's Slashdot!
HOW IN THE HELL?!?! does that get modded Interesting?!
What, are you curious about the precise methodology of feces extraction that was used?
How many of you would have clicked through if there had been a link "Would you like to know more?"
Sickos.
Well, the odds are one smaller, now.
> why exactly was he sitting in one place for 86 hours again?
It's called Camping.
Nouvelles de jeux et technologies en français. TC
Dude, do you have any idea the brain damage you inflicted on yourself? Sleep deprivation is very bad for you. Go to a Medical College Library and look up a book called "Principles of Sleep Medicine, Vol.1 & Vol.2". What you can read in there will scare the shit out of you so much that you'll go to bed every night for the rest of life consistently on time if you don't want to be either dead at 50 or drooling and smiling at a wall when you're 65. Sleep deprivation is very VERY bad for you.
Why?
Sleep not only controls our circadian rhythms, but also apetite control, immune system function, and cognitive performance. I think you can see where this is going.
Until recently (barring drug overdose...) 26 year olds did not have heart attacks
Two things first, why would you rule out drug overdose? 86 straight gameplaying? Can you say stimulants? I would almost bet on that being positive. And Stimulants can cause strokes, sudden arthymias, and heart attacks...
And I wouldn't rush to heart attack as cause of death, a Pulmonary embolis can kill suddenly and anyone can get one from sitting/not moving for long times. Rhabodmyolysis can cause kidney failure, and in extreme cases shock I think...
He could died of lots of things, almost no actually caused by video games...
DJMD - The fourth man - Planetary
I wonder how long until the Weekly World News carries this story. "Man catches Computer Virus and Dies"
Get a free ipod.
Critics say the burgeoning industry is creating millions of zombified addicts who are turning on and tuning into computer games, and dropping out of school and traditional group activities, becoming uncommunicative and even violent because of the electronic games they play.
Tsk tsk. Unlike TV, of course, which promotes intimacy, critical thinking, and feelings of peace and contentedness.
It's not hard to see what has the cultural police so alarmed: at last, a form of electronic engagement even more powerful in its spell than TV has arrived to offer young people a reality of their own shaping. And while it's hardly arguable that playing Counterstrike all day is better for you than sitting in front of a TV, there is a key difference.
Counterstrike -- or almost any online game -- can't really be used to indoctrinate. Not yet, anyway (although you might argue that running around with guns killing others for round after round is a type of indoctrination, the fact is that it's largely devoid of political context, and experientially it's all for self-aggrandizement, anyway; however, cf. the US Army's recent slippery entry into this market as the progenitor of the politicization of the FPS game).
The main problem is that you can't use Dan Blather or Brit Spume to convey the wishes of the oligarchy just when the kids have been left perfectly mollified by hours of braindead sitcoms. Cocooned digitally with only pixels and urges to guide them, they're neither being told how to think or what to buy. Online gaming is too much beyond the control of our masters.
That's intolerable to a nation that regards workaholism as the ideal state of being. It also offends our puritan traditions; next to serving your boss, only God is supposed to suck up so much of your devotion. Watch for more efforts at social control coming from such kissing cousins as Joe Lieberman and Jerry Falwell in the near future. The first step will be to apply the social definitions of addiction, whereafter, as long as the present administration is in office, you may see a faith-based solution offered for your Quake jones...
As opposed to the conservatives who just want to lock you up for any mistake unless you're the governor's daughter?
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Too much love can be stifling. Too much happinines can make you ungaurded and easy to hurt. too much clean air can lead to hyperventilation. too much good food can lead to obesity. too much good music can lead to deafness.
moral to the story: any positive can become a negative if you try hard enough.
"Me and my girl named bimbo . . . limbo . . . spam" - Captain Beefheart.
My wife says I'm the worst in the world... and now I can prove her wrong.
Actually, now you are.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Personally i hate games in which you completely defeat them and you get a nice big dick in the ass "Game over". That is what happens when you die from not being good enough at the game. "The end" is a reward from mastering the game and not being able to go any farther, hence "the end". Not to say this person reached the end of the game, and not to say he didn't deserve a "game over", but i am venting my frustrations with such games such as final fight for snes, or super smash brothers
"The guy was unemployed, and likely depressed, and he spent the last 86 hours of his life playing a pointless game, that he coudn't escape from."
That he consciously chose not to escape from. When people don't leave their homes, 99+ times out of 100 the reason is that they didn't feel like leaving, not because they were physically locked in.
"Think about what his friends and family must feel like right now."
Obviously not a whole heck of a lot if they allowed this to happen to begin with.
"I'll probably be modded down as a troll or something, but I don't think death is a joking matter."
There are schools of thought that suggest that perhaps you don't have a sufficiently developed sense of humor.
I'm probably shooting myself in the foot for bringing this up but I think Heinlein had a point in Stranger in a Strange Land: All humor revolves around the misfortunes of others. If anything laughing at something can be described as a human coping mechanism. In a world increasingly hostile to those of us who partake in electronic gaming, everybody here now has an example they can point to and say "At least I'm not this guy!"
"If someone you knew died, even in a pathetic manner like that, you would not be joking about it. "
If one of my friends died in such a manner I'd be laughing if for no other reason than I know my friend would be laughing at themselves for dying that way.
"I think all the jokes here are completly tasteless."
But jokes about hypothetical deaths are alright? Or what about jokes about people getting genuinely angry at each other? What about a particular person's sexual tastes? Or how about the way you mock something hundreds of people have been working on for dozens of years? Where do you get the moral high ground to decide for everybody else what is "tasteless" and what isn't?
"And I do think the games are _partly_ to blame. (Note that I said partly, not completly.)"
No, not even. Nobody can say that until there is solid scientific proof demonstrating a link. But in several decades of research on the subject, nobody has yet to publish "games=death" without somebody else soundly refuting it. These aren't cigarettes we're talking about here.
If there's anybody else beside the gamer that bears any of the responsiblity for this, it is the people directly around him and ignored the way he collapsed unconscious several hours before. Especially the owners of the property.
"Some games are very addictive,"
Some people are more susceptible to addictions to just about anything than other people. And until someone can solidly publish "games=addicting," I cannot and will not hold the games responsible for flaws in the gamer's personality and psyche.
"I've had my school mark drop because I've wasted my time on pointless games."
Thanks for demonstrating my "increasingly hostile" comment above. We're supposed to believe that you'd have done much better if it weren't for the games? Do you know for a fact (or can you at least say with a straight face) that you'd have done better in school if there were no games in your life? Why are we to believe that you wouldn't have found some other external vent? You're one of those people that wants to sue gun companies over murder rates, aren't you?
I've tried it both ways: School with and without games. Guess what: Without games, I just ended up finding another vent anyway (and they're called "internet chat rooms"). The problem wasn't Nintendo's, it was mine and my inability to cope with the world around me without a crutch.
And on the other hand games have actually helped me find better ways to cope. I wouldn't have all the friends I have now if it weren't for those C&C Red Alert and StarCraft LAN parties.
Gamers have no political allies. What should we do about it, you ask? Well, I'd like to welcome you to:
The LAN Party
We're a nationwide political party with growing influences around the globe, and our main focus is on the protection of the rights of gamers in America.
Our motto is:
Try us
Realize our goal
Open your mind
Level the playing field
Lead on to victory!
If you are intersted in the LAN Party affiliations, please contact us at lanpolitics@lannational.com
86 hours at the computer? That's nothing! I used to watch windows defrag!
bluHatter
Police later searched for the closest respawn point in hopes of getting more answers to no avail.
To all you liberals, grow up and start taking responsibility for your life, and make others take responsibility for theirs.
Self-responsibility is not a liberal vs. conservative issue; it is better characterized as an authoritarian vs. libertarian issue.
Liberals with an authoritarian bent would have the government outlaw "dangerous" things like offensive/hateful/politically incorrect language, games that "promote" racism, etc. Conservatives with an authoritarian bent would outlaw "dangerous" things like homosexuality, games that "promote" immorality or drug use, violence and sexuality on television, etc.
OTOH, someone with libertarian tendencies, whether they were otherwise conservative or liberal, would prefer the government stay out of people's lives. I.E., a libertarian believes people should take responsibility for themselves. They wouldn't outlaw "unsafe" games.
You bring up drugs, GHB in particular, and complain that the government prohibits "safer replacements for alcohol and antidepressants". Ignoring for the moment any debate over the merits of that particular drug, those who would prefer legalized drugs of any sort are strongly libertarian. Many are liberal, as well.
Those who "ask the government to protect them from themselves" aren't "liberal". They're authoritarian, and include just as many conservatives as liberals.
I'm actually quite surprised to see you blaming the outlawing of GHB on liberals- the most vocal proponents of harsh drug laws, generally, are conservative authoritarians.
You, it seems, do not really know who your enemies are. I consider myself quite liberal, but I agree with you that people should take more responsibility for themselves.
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
He needs to get a life. Oh, err... sorry...