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."

Comments

Most important details missing -

[MBraynard]

What game was he playing?

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.

push push push

[Dachannien]

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.

again?

[enrico_suave]

is this like a once a year occurance?

Now what we need...

[faloi]

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.

Devil's Advocate...

[Anm]

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

Re:Starcraft...

[Anonymous Coward]

to stay up 50+ hours he may have been heavy into caffeine (or something stronger)...

The fact that the guy died from heart failure makes me assume the same thing.

However you don't need drugs to stay up that long. By using drugs you probably increase any health risks.

When stimulants are introduced, the body becomes more alert/active, but that eventually fades. That drop makes it hard to stay awake and more stimulants would be the quick answer. The problem is that the next drop will be even harder to manage and the cycle becomes a crazy rollercoaster.

If you abstain from all drugs, your willpower can maintain you for a surprisingly long time. NOTE: I don't recommend doing so - I was starting to hallucinate slightly in a very distracting manner (in the area of peripheral vision).

Now for the anecdote:
At one point in my life I stayed awake for just over 100 hours straight - no drugs (reasons already given). When I was ready to sleep, I actually had to hold my eyelids down.

By the way, when I finally got to sleep it was for 1.67 days which interestingly averaged the hours/day of sleep that week to just over 7 (exactly what I was getting before the marathon).

Re:How about common sense?

[PakProtector]

My god. I wish you people would stop saying these things about staying up. Staying, like anything else, will generally only cause health problems in people who already have them.

My Grandfather once had to stay up for over a week straight in the 50's when he was in the Army going into Military Intelligence, to see what exactly he would do if sleep deprived. All that happened to him was he temporarally lost his colour vision.

I myself have stayed up for 97 hours straight without sleep, and suffered no ill effects. This person died most likely because he was already infirm, or because he was taking massive ammounts of stimulants to keep awake, which will cause heart failure.

The fact is, while it is possible for permanant psychological damage or personality change to result from lack of sleep (I believe anything over 120 hours is supposed to be guarranteed of doing that), that it is impossible for a Human being to die of lack of sleep, like a rat can, for the simple fact that we 'microsleep.'

Ever been tired and driving and nod off for a half a second? Or had it happen some other time? That's your body forcing you to sleep for a fraction of a second, and it's impossible to stop. Human beings do not die from lack of sleep, but we can die from what comes from lack of sleep -- the body will not produce certain neccessities (anyone on the 'Uberman Diet' must eat lots of grape/grape product to make up for this,) and it can lead to behaviour that will cause death due to drowsiness and inattentiveness.

But lack of sleep by itself will not kill you anymore than a gun by itself will kill you. But lack of sleep will make it easier for you to be killed through your own negligence and stupidity, just as a gun makes it easier for you to be killed by someone else's negligence, stupidity, or malice.

Please, think.

Also, when I stayed up, I did it without stimulants, aside from 'friends' who 'smacked me' when I started to get tired.