Slashdot Mirror
Why Do Computer Games Claim Lives?
Ektar wrote to mention an article from Chosun, a Korean newspaper, asking the question why do videogames claim lives? The article is in response to some recent high profile gamer deaths. From the article: "Apparently rare overseas, such cases make frequent headlines in Korea. Why? Experts point to the poor environment of the 'PC bang' or Internet cafes that have mushroomed nationwide. Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn."
Gotta love the shift of responsibility.
I take it the game just reached out on its own volition and killed the people?
Thats as bad as saying "the SUV ran over the child", or " a gun shot the teller during the holdup".
Cant anyone take responsibility for their own actions any more?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I'm not even a gamer and I can tell this is just another example of sensationalist journalism.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Um... darkness isn't deadly.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
People die all the time while laying in beds. No one publishes an article every time it happens, wondering "why beds claim lives". Yet every time someone dies while playing a game, it's big news. Never mind that they've chosen to go for days without eating, drinking, or sleeping; apparently it was the game that killed them.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
Videogames claim lives because the government wants to regulate video games.
The longer you live, the more likely you are to die of something new. The newer it is, the more likely it gets your dead self in the newspaper.
The more hype it gets in the news, the more people think it's more significant than getting hit by a car or falling out of a tree.
Someone cries on TV. Lawyers get involved. New laws are passed that prohibit things. Life becomes a little less worth living. People resort to videogames to escape. And then...
Maybe someday, we'll wise up and just allow people to make their own choices.
Generally dark and poorly ventilated, they cater to gamers who tend to smoke heavily. The bad air and light can increase the danger of sudden death, experts warn."
So the games themselves do not cause death. Instead, and unhealthy environment, poor nutritional habits, and general Lard-assed-ness cause death.
Who knew?
Next we will discover that video games don't make you kill others, and that guns just sit there unless some picks them up and uses them.
What is this, Masters of the Obvious week?
Feh.
There was a time cars claimed lives. This was in the day when it was thought that having a sharp metal pin aimed at the drivers chest and directly connected to the front of the car was a good design feature. Same with regular glass windows and nice sharp metal knobs. Saves you the worry of how to get out of your vehicle after a crash I suppose.
In that way cars killed their passengers although the more accurate claim would be that it was the designers of the car that killed the passengers.
You can say that smoke claims lives (smoke as from a fire) but this again is a fairly direct form. You would not say that love claims lives despite the fact that an awfull lot of people commit suicide over a broken heart.
It is not the gameplay that killed them. If say you were playing a DDR game that just kept getting more and more intense until the user falls dead THEN the game would claim lives. If you played fear and got so scared you suffered a heart attack THEN the game would have claimed a live.
Just taking bad care of yourselve is not the games fault. Sitting motionless in a chair eating bad food is not restricted to gaming. Just ask your average soccer widow.
All these guys seemed to have neglected their body for a prolonged time and were probably not the most healthy in the first place.
One article claimed the 38 year old male in question had existed on a 20 day diet of instant noodles. Eheh and before? Because I know from personal experience that the body can live a lot longer then that on instant noodles. I am willing to bet a few bucks that before he wasn't exactly a 2fruit+veg a day man either. So the real newsstory is, man who neglects his health totally does not live to a ripe old age (38 was once an advanced age for a human to reach)
The other has someone having a 9 hour gaming session? Well I doubt anyone would be able to do that without having to pee and even then so what? I done far longer sessions. Perhaps this person was not the most prime example of the human species? If 9 hours in chair kills you then all this proves that darwin was on to something. You know there are people out there who for fun do 12 hour marches? What about pole-sitting contests?
Nah I am afraid that as I read these stories it is just, not very healthy person dies doing something to extreme. I had an elderly neighbour who died going to the toilet (yeah how do you like to discover that eh?) Apperently the "pressure" caused a bloodvessel (internally) to burst and she bled to death. Going to the toilet is bad for you? No she just was old and that was her time. If it hadn't been then it would have been if she had bend down to lift something heavy. Sad but that is live. No need to make a headline off it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
You can't compare IQ across populations. IQ is standardized on a population and then only predictive on that population. If the test had of been standardized on African-Americans, Asians would score below 100. Its all down to how good your culture is at answering the IQ questions picked. The source you picked is a bit suspect as at least one of the authors seems to have a racist agenda.
" In 1991 I extended my work on race differences in intelligence to other races. I concluded that the average IQ of blacks in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 70. It has long been known that the average IQ of blacks in the United States is approximately 85. The explanation for the higher IQ of American blacks is that they have about 25 per cent of Caucasian genes and a better environment." is a quote from R. Lynn's web page, and this is no where near the most blatant.
Now I suspect you didn't go far enough in your research to find this, but just remember that IQ has long been used to justify racial superiority. When ever you see a cross cultural comparison based on IQ please consider the source.
As for the rest of your post, as a psych student I would be very interested to see the correlation between intelligence and obsessive behaviour (of any kind). While it is a stereotype that more intelligent adolescents play video-games, I would need evidence to show that there is any causal relationship.
Take a look at home many gamers there are out there, then look at how many of them die from these kinds of situations. Not that terribly many, right? Now take a quick peak at two of societies most common forms of entertainment, nicotine and alcohol (for those cultures who don't subscribe to those particular poisons, I leave it up to the reader to substitute). How many people dies every year because of those two? And not just from the direct causes (alcolism / lugn cancer) but from side effects such as the users killing others.
So the point is, games are far less dangerous than alcohol and nicotine. Fix those problems first instead of whining about obvious cases of mental illness where society is unwilling to find and treat the people who are sick.
Now move along, nothing to see...