Dead Chinese Gamer Wasn't A WoW Player

Despite earlier reports to the contrary, GamePolitics has the news that the dead Chinese gamer whose parents were suing Blizzard was not a World of Warcraft player. From the post: "World of Warcraft (WoW) was not released in China until May 2005... the actual lawsuit claimed he committed suicide after playing the real time strategy game Warcraft III... Without WoW, it would have been much harder to pin the blame on Warcraft because it's a strategy game, not role playing. But with WoW, and the recent focus on the alleged addictive qualities of MMORPGs, the lawsuit gets much more attention..."

Comments

Nip it in the bud already

[spyrochaete]

Video games are "addictive" because people are not "addicted" to the real world. They are displeased with their surroundings so they escape into a more palatable place. The cure to video game addiction is to make the real world a better place. Why haven't video game addicts sued their respective governments for driving them to games?

Causation

[GigsVT]

An interesting fact is that 100% of the people that died while playing video games had consumed substances containing dihydrogen monoxide in the last 6 hours.

Seriously though, with so many millions of people playing games upwards of 20-30 hours a week, it's expected that some people that would have died randomly anyway (heart defect, whatever) would wind up dying in front of the screen.

No one much bats an eye when some teenage athelete dies on the field, it happens all the time. Pushing yourself is more likely to cause latent disorders to surface.