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Man Dies After 50-hour Gaming Marathon
Orbital writes "CNN is reporting that a South Korean man has collapsed and died of heart failure just minutes after wrapping up a 50-hour gaming marathon during which he only took short breaks to go to the bathroom or a quick nap on a makeshift bed." From the article: "Lee had recently quit his job to spend more time playing games, the daily JoongAng Ilbo reported after interviewing former work colleagues and staff at the Internet cafe. After he failed to return home, Lee's mother asked his former colleagues to find him. When they reached the cafe, Lee said he would finish the game and then go home, the paper reported."
Any idea what game it was?
Vaguely surprised to see it wasn't WoW or some other MMORPG...
FTA:
"online battle simulation games "
So does that mean BF1942 or something along those lines?
ClutterMe.com - easiest site creation on the Net. Just click and type.
nt
And where can I get it?
Ok, joking. Seriously, he had other health problems for this to have happened and pushed him over the edge. He could have been at the office doing a 50 hour shift or even competing in military training. Somehow there is an unspoken link in the article suggesting that the game killed him.
My guess is it was either Lineage, or a map-hacked version of StarCraft.
The average IQ of human population suddenly increased.
As it turns out, if you wire up the part of a mouse's brain that generates sexual gratification to a switch, and then give the mouse access to that switch, it will repeatedly push that button to the abandonment of all other necessities of life (food, sleep) until it dies.
Apparently, all it took in this case was a game, and the game didn't even involve sex. I wonder what that says about humans.
is this like a once a year occurance?
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Has Hillary Clinton been alerted to this yet? We obviously need more warnings on these video games to stop this kind of horrible tragedy!
Maybe it's a byproduct of the culture of videogaming in S.Korea. Maybe it's just people with obssessive-compulsive personnalities choosing passtimes they really should not.Maybe it's that videogames are the Devil's tool and need to be restricted. Which do you think the media will repeat ad nauseam? Heh.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Yup, Starcraft.8 /200508080012.html
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/20050
Great, just what we need. More fuel for Jack Thompson. How long do you think it will take for him to latch on to this showing the "evils of video games"?
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
It's sad that he did not find out about his heart condition until it was too late. What does the fact that he was playing computer games have to do with ANYTHING?
jfs
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Do you think that it was worth it? Did the man die with a smile on his face after 50 hours of intense gaming? I would think so...
This man actually QUIT HIS JOB so that he could spend more time gaming. Perhaps some better health management could be desired, but the man was the epitome of a GAMER.
Rest in Peace buddy.
Stop complaining, get off your ass, and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
PKing obviously is a problem...
This guy sounds like he had serious problems, quitting his job to play games and basically dropping out of reality. It reminds me the TV show "Intervention", and the episode with the video game addict.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
As it turns out, if you wire up the part of a mouse's brain that generates sexual gratification to a switch, and then give the mouse access to that switch, it will repeatedly push that button ... until it dies. [emphasis added]
Are you suggesting that the game was pornographic and our new Darwin Award nominee died masturbating? Well, let that be a warning for all of you.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Too much Hot Coffee.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
This story is much less sad. I'd much rather game myself to death than work to death. Who knows what would have happened to this guy if he hadn't quit his job?
Obviously, since he perished after quiting the game, it was the "lack" of gaming that killed him. Let that be a lesson to you parents. When your kid says "5 more minutes Mom!", that might be the only thing keeping them alive.
Let me point out that if you stay up for 50 hours straight, it's going to result in health problems regardless of what you're doing. In order to stay up for so long you'd need some sort of stimulants to keep your body going. If he'd been drinking coffee or other cafinated beverages and eating sugary foods to give his body energy then it's not too hard to see that this was more likely the cause of his death than playing video games.
He could have stayed up for 50 hours watching TV, playing checkers, using his computer to browse the internet, play the piano, or just about anything else. Granted that a video game will be a little more intense, increasing adrenalin levels and resulting in the brain releasing other chemicals that might not mix well with caffine or produce undue strain on the heart and other organs.
The point I'd like to get across is that playing video games probably doens't have much to do with this. It's almost like saying that video games caused your death if your house burned down with you in it. It might be a contributing factor to some degree, but it wasn't the cause of death. Until someone takes a GameBoy or PSP to the skull at 300 miles per hour, I doubt we can say there have been many deaths caused by video games. So let's hope the crazies reason along the same line and don't start proclaiming video games as evil killing machines.
Is automatic controls in games that prevent any games from being played between the hours of midnight and 9 am. It may be tough for people with third shift jobs, but we have to think of the children!
On a more serious note, anybody else play Dungeon Keeper? I used to love the snide comments the narrator would give as it got later at night and slid into morning.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
damn that sucks...most likely didn't eat enough and his heart failed from massive adrenal shock. i would make a sick joke used in the gaming world along the lines of "can I have your stuff?" which is usually the response when someone says they are quiting but I will refrain.
yeah...
Has he respawned yet?
MC
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
Here come the Korea jokes...
I Killed Your Cat
The next time someone dies while working, can we get work banned? Heh!
On the weekend I was playing in a rather large Ultimate Frisbee tournament (high amounts of physical activity). Myself and several of my team mates went almost 50 hours with short naps and consuming large quantities of alcohol. In that time we played 5 games on Saturday (9am - 5pm), and 4 on Sunday (9am-3:30pm).
Now, by the end of it I may have wished I was dead, but it didn't kill me - soo I'm guessing this guy had other problems.
Everyone posting on here rushes to defend the game. I don't really get why you are freaking out. People are asking stupid things like "well, why are games even included in the article. He died from a bad heart." Umm, if someone does something 40 hours straight and then dies...it is probably related and would be notable if you filled in games with x. Where x could be sex, work, eating, running, kissing, reading slashdot, etc. The problem is he was addicted and pushed his body too far and died. Everything should be done in moderation. Pretty simple. The article didn't attack games, it is just a sad story about a guy who had a problem and paid the ultimate price for it.
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Oh... sweet... you quoted JongAnilbo, one of shittiest newspapers in the world.
As long as I rebember, there were two more cases like this. Both had gamer died
in Korea because of their addiction.
*FYI*
I attend a LAN party spanning Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, Sunday every summer. I have yet to die from it. How many "world record" hockey, and volleyball games have been held over the past couple years? 100+ hours and no deaths there.
Sig goes here.
He died doing what he loved. Heck, he even quit his job to play more games! The dude loved his games...
I am reminded of that South Park episode where Kenny is summoned by God to control heaven's army because he's so good at that one video game and never stopped playing it...
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I suppose it's for the best, though. How long until it KILLS AGAIN!!?!
game over man, game over!
This kind of reminds me of the central plot of the .hack//Sign anime series wherein a character named Tsukasa is unable to logout of the MMORPG known as The World. It makes me wonder if some kind of continuous login limit should be imposed for online games. I think something sensible like 12 hours with a mandatory 2 hour break perhaps. Now that said, it would all make sense, but I also think that people need to be responsible for their own actions. So while this might be a sensible thing to impose, I won't be advocating it myself. If this had happened in the U.S. though, I'm sure Jack and Hillary would be right out there getting ready to push through new legislation.
BTW, I actually like Hillary Clinton, but I think she's dead wrong with respect to regulating games.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Given that he was at an Internet cafe, I do have to wonder why they let him stay for 50 hours straight. I'm not crazy enough to blame the cafe (though you know someone will), but it seems to me it would be in their interests to apply some sort of time limit -- even if it's ridiculous, like 24 hours -- and kick him off so that another customer can get at the computer. (And yes, I'm sure he would have just gotten back in line and grabbed the next computer available.)
That, and there's nothing in the article about food or water. Did he go three days without eating? It's certainly possible, though hardly healthy. Three days without drinking? That would've killed him even without the heart condition.
50 hours of playing a video game non-stop. I've never even gone past 7. Gotta admit, the guy sure loved his game.
GNN Reports: "Some doctors say the guy could have died for not eating or actually after a 50 hour marathon with his heart condition he could have died doing macrame or just walking but for the sake of sensationalism lets just blame the evil, evil videogames, actually word is he was playing GTA with the eating babies mod."
-"Terrible, terrible news Katie, Im changing the headline to "Horrible game kills man", In other news a man stabbed himself in the chest 20 times while playing Mario bros and died, relatives are suing Nintendo and religious nutcases are demanding congressmen to ban the game."
Go ahead MOD my day!
More opinions here
As a gamer, a game developer, and a programmer in a lab that focuses on educational software explicitly designed to motivate students, the technology does scare me.
The technology to hit the pleasure centers that motivate humans is only in its infancy, but already having effects in addiction. People are already expanding our research beyond simple pavlovian reward stimuli. At GDC 2004, a psychology consultant for Microsoft games gave a talk focused around motivation curves and how to design games that maximized long term engagement (motivation type x will generally degrade at this rate, so after y minutes of gameplay offer new task types, and here are the motivation profiles for those tasks). In the education domain, we are beginning to look at the different effects of various intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on different personailties.
At what point is it the responsability of the software developer to build shutdown timers into the system? Maybe thresholds of gameplay (actual user input/interaction, not just sitting at a pause screen) over the last 8 hours, 24 hours, and 72 hours will trigger enforced breaks of progressively longer duration or just "have you eaten?" reminders.
What happens when the same technology is put into marketing? Can adware be designed to engage the user to the point practically gauranteeing a purchase?
What about the merger of the two domains? Pizza Hut already has code inside Everquest 2. This is from a application that already requires a credit card, and thus could easily look up your address and offer you a timely list of local delivery food every 4 hours. ("You've just played through your local dinner time. I bet you're hungry for one of these fine establishments still open in your area!!") As games become more adaptive, it will be easier for applications to insert more subtle hints. (Two hours into a quest with your party, you come across a ranger's camp with the smell of a fresh roast wafting through the air.)
Some would say we are beginning to allow machines to dominate human culture. The extreme view is something along the line's of Marshall Brain's Manna story (fast food workers as the arms an legs of a persuasive computer manager in a headset) and associated Robot Nation essays.
Anm
Can we please start the litmus test that requires HUMOR to be a part of getting mod points?
No.
*goes back to abusing the mod system..*
*Overrated*
*Overrated*
*Overrated*
OOh, something anti-linux.. *Offtopic*
Hmm.. *sticks tongue out*... *Redundant*
muahahahhahhaha!
I still don't get how this is entirely newsworthy.
This isn't the first guy. I mean seriously, the first time it's "OMG. Thats sad and shocking". Now it's like "Nothing to see here folks, move along."
Insert Sig Here
I thought that only old people died from gaming in South Korea?
One man's Funny is another man's Offtopic.
"I told you I was hardcore."
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
That, ladies and gentleman, is a REAL HARDCORE GAMER. Not like you pansy gamers out there. He played games so hard that HE BEAT LIFE and moved onto the next level.
RIP man
... this sort of situation is quite common at some jobs. It just (sadly) too routine and mundane to get widely reported.
If an event is commonplace, then there is no particular reason to report on that event. Now if there is something to that event that makes it unique, then it has the added characteristic of being newsworthy. You wouldn't expect a news article that some random guy is breathing, but you would expect some interest if that guy was pronounced dead and spent the night stored in a morgue.
Generally speaking, the headlines will tell you what aspects of a society are not common.
This is not my sig.
Yeah, that's rough. He was 28 years past the last checkpoint.
This just goes to show that it isn't only old people who die in Korea...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
Alcohol's a DEPRESSANT and slows the heart rate.
I suspect this guy was exhaused and hyped up on caffeine and Red Bull... (heh, I know I would've been!)
Sitting or laying in the same spot for any length of time, regardless of whether you're playing a game or doing work or lying in a hospital bed, can cause deep vein thrombosis and kill you with a blood clot.
t ifier=30100410 0156.htm
Refs:
http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?iden
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/0
rooooar
he died doing what he loved. How many of us get to die doing what we enjoy? I envy him.
(I could be wrong, of course. But please don't waste your time telling me I'm wrong unless you have something more than your own beliefs to point to. Like citations of the actual article with the wired mice.)
Addiction is real of course, and I even have my own Game-To-Death horror stories. But addiction's a lot more complicated than this urban legend suggests.
And what will happen with human race when we find a way to artificial feelings.. is yet to be seen.
So *you're* the guy who's been modding my posts down!!!
I swear, I had a post at the default Score:1, and someone modded it "Overrated". Wtf?
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Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
After playing a game for two days plus without a decent amount of sleep, he would have gone psychotic - which usually does result in death as the brain starts malfunctioning.
It's not the game that killed him, it was probably lack of sleep + lack of other basic human necessities.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
People use "overrated" and "underrated" to avoid the meta-moderators. For some illogical reason those two mods are never meta-moderated.
/.
Welcome to
so that you stop posting
Over and underrated mods are not subject to metamoderation.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
I've heard that gaming has become very deeply rooted in Korean culture. It's so much more important there than it is anywhere else in the world, or so I've heard (television channels devoted to broadcasting multiplayer games, etc).
Why Korea? Why not Japan or Spain?
didn't this happen last year? tho that guy lasted 70 hrs or so.
Is this so bad? Isn't that the end game for humanity? Get to the point where you can recreate all the time? Isn't that the Garden of Eden? Granted, it isn't terribly romantic to imagine all humans plugged into a wall matrix style enjoying whatever it is they enjoy most. That doesn't mean that given the choice people would choose that over anything else. The only thing the real world could offer that being plugged in couldn't is the belief that what you are seeing is real. Hell, even then, if believing what you are seeing is real is what makes you happy, couldn't you be tricked into believing it?
It is an interesting question, and one we will certainly have to consider if we ever end up developing AI powerful enough to replace humans in all things. If there is nothing useful you can do, what would you do? Escape into a fantasy world where you are useful? Try and upgrade yourself to be useful, accepting that you will basically destroy your old personality by expanding your intelligence and perceptions so much?
Who knows what the future holds. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how things turn out. Who knows, if Kurzweil is anywhere close in his predictions you will get to find out the answer for yourself.
why is there no mention on http://joongangdaily.joins.com/ or any other newspaper ? some other site is reporting the death of a 24year old after 86 hours of gaming http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=3&art_id=q w103415130387B262&set_id=1
but this true either ? what are they trying to sell us ?
"gaming is bad for your health" ???
This has happened before, three years ago. That time, it was a South Korean man who played 86 hours without sleep or food. Maybe South Koreans are just more hardcore than we thought?
If someone spends half their life playing computer games, there's a 50% chance they'll die playing computer games.
There's also a good chance they'll be unhealthy, not get enough exercise, and generally be at a high risk of heart problems.
I'm actually surprised this doesn't happen more often, given the number of game addicts out there.
While I'm sure video game addiction can be a big problem for some, I think we should take this time to talk about the mertis of preventative cardiac care and outreach to people who don't know heart healthy habits.
It's dependant on your computer clock's time, which in most cases is "real-world time" . The game also featured bonus levels unlocked on days when the moon is full.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
If this guy was going to play games for that long continusly then good riddance
Especially in Japan where it's almost obligatory to stay after hours and not leave before your boss for fear of being called a slacker. They call it "karoushi". Death from overwork. I would assume it's the same symptoms as extreme fatigue mixed in with hypertension and stress. Hey, that's majority of our population too...
Natural selection still rules, and there is one less brainless retard in the mankind gene pool.
I hope this guy will at least be nominated for the darwin awards. He really deserves a mention.
BBC reports he was playing StarCraft.
I have to say, I think that's pretty pathetic, all things considered - it's barely over 2 days!
--LWM
Once the anti-videogame lobby (i.e. Jack Thompson a.k.a. Deuche bag) gears this, they are going to get off of video game violence, and revive that whole "Video games are like crack" bullshit that was being spread by the media a few years back. About the guy: At least he was happy right before he croaked.
Was he Protoss, Zerg or Terran? These are the things we need to know.
In the article it says he was playing in the internet cafe.. for 50 hours. Does that mean that cafe was open 24/7 .. ?
Thanks, funniest post today, sorry I don't have mod points.