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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."
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.
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.
Yup, Starcraft.8 /200508080012.html
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/20050
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!
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.
Has he respawned yet?
MC
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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
"I told you I was hardcore."
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
"So boss, is there anyone that's been here more than 12 hours?"
"Hmm...I don't know...we all look alike to me."