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Video Game Addiction Saves Lives

EzRag writes "Here's a nice bit about a guy who saved a household of people from a fire, all thanks to his late-night video game addiction. Does this mean I can count all my hours of playing Chron X as community service work?"

8 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Am I the only one by rritterson · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Am I the only one who expected the person to have played something like FF3 where one of the parts of the game is to save a kid in a burning building?

    Comeon, he just happened to be awake due to video games. I wouldn't say that the video game addiction itself saved the lives.

    Plus, it would have been a lot cooler had he ran in and held up the building Sabin style while some other girl ran around and saved everyone.

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  2. Video games saving lives... by neostorm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have a good friend of mine who has a really horrid family life. Father works in the north pole for some government satelite project and is only home 2 weeks out of the year, every year. When he is home he dissappears for the majority of those two weeks, drinks constantly, cheats on his wife, and gambles all his money away in Vegas.
    My friends mom is a wreck because of this, she doesn't trust any of his friends, and right now they aren't making enough money to pay for their house, meaning my friend may have to leave school, forfeiting his education to get a job and pay the bills.
    However, with all this drama at home he is one of the most easy going, light hearted guys I know. I blame this all on his video gaming habits. I'm thoroughly convinced that if he weren't able to dive into alternate lives through his PC monitor every night for the majority of his life, he would be angry, depressed, and probably would have snapped and killed someone by now.
    Maybe my explanation doesn't paint the appropriate picture, but you get the idea. In the end, games are also a great way of dealing with stress in the real world, and can definitely benefit those in need of some vacation from reality.

    1. Re:Video games saving lives... by patch-rustem · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Mod me down, for following a troll off-topic, or being an insensitive git. I know I deserve it, but:
      ...forfeiting his education to get a job and pay the bills.
      ...lives through his PC monitor every night for the majority of his life,...

      Just a suggestions, but why can't he quit gaming and either go to night classes or work a night shift?

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    2. Re:Video games saving lives... by neostorm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nope, none of us do, but there are redeeming values to any recreational activity when done in moderation, so you don't really sound like a goddamn hippie. ;)

      That's interesting to bring up either way, since gaming is on the rise in both popularity and addictiveness, there will definitely be reprocussions to large amounts of over-interactivity. We're already seeing this in places like South-East Asian countries where Netcafes run rampant and people are keeling over dead from playing *too* long.
      I wonder how long it will be until we have a legitimage mental social disorder that's treated by modern medicine. ;)

      I've always wanted to coin the definition of "ludomentia".

  3. Absolute Crap by Metal_Demon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It is rediculous to call that guy a game addict by any stretch of the imagination (according to the article). When you consider the thousands of people, myself included, who load SWG or EQ or something as soon as they get home and play into the wee hours of the morning, nine hours or less a week is nothing. I'm quite sure I'll play more than nine hours of SWG tomorrow. I might expect this kinda crap from CNN but I thought we knew better on /. This is of course assuming he told the truth about how much he plays.

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  4. That's a tough way to do it r/o by SolemnDragon · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Take it from someone who went through a not-alike but similar adventure: tell him ot to leave school, whatever he does. He can get a night job (which will also get him out of the house) he can wait till he's 18 and tell his mum that either she makes a decision about da or deals with it on her own (Tough to say and harder to follow through with) or he can wait it out and try to get by- but the economy is on the skids, and if he doesn't get that diploma he's gonna have a real hard time with the GED instead, and they don't usually let you get a GED until your class graduates anyway.

    working your way in high school is a tough thing to do, i did it and barely graduated- but it beats working INSTEAD of high school. If he has any hope of making his life better over the next three years, dropping out of school is one of the worst things to do. It will be hard for him to stop gaming to work nights; he'll need to make some hard decisions no matter how this goes.

    Back on topic; i think that i have to agree that this guy's gaming addiction didn't save them- he saved them in spite of the gaming addiction. The fact that he had a late night sleep pattern was a factor, but it could have been from any late night activity. If he'd been an astronomy student, for example, he would have noticed the light from the fire very quickly. If he'd been reading he would have been awake, too. Does anybody else see the potential for a Sims: Catastrophe game in this? watch your sims deal with hurricanes, tornadoe, fires, carjackings, and ebola...

  5. Stupid Headline by Quill_28 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >Video game addition saves lives

    Please, it does not save lives.

    That like saying cheap alarms clocks save lives because once my alarm didn't go off, so I missed the plane that crashed.

    Silly.

    1. Re:Stupid Headline by jafuser · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe not lives, but they can certianly save money, and can help with depression.

      Since I started on my MMO addiction back in November I've been able to finally start saving money since I'm not spending my time out driving around buying junk I don't need anyway.

      I started playing MMO games when I was withdrawing from anti-depressants (be cautious about starting on Paxil -- it is evil).

      These games did a faily good job of keeping me distracted from the withdrawl symptoms. Lately, I'm still a bit dysthymic, but I'm not nearly as depressed as I was before taking the anti-depressants. I have at the very least something to look forward to at the end of the day.

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