Posted on 12/09/2005 8:02:13 AM PST by Borges
SEOUL (AFP) - A South Korean man collapsed and died from exhaustion after playing computer games for 10 days without a proper rest.
The 38-year-old man collapsed Thursday as he was playing an on-line game at an Internet cafe in Incheon, west of Seoul.
"He was carried to a nearby hospital but declared dead on arrival," a police officer told AFP.
The officer said the man had played computer games from morning to night every day and had barely stopped to sleep.
In August, a 28-year-old man died in southeastern Taegu city after playing an online computer game for more than two days.
Must have been a real weakling to begin with. I didnt get real sleep until 9 days into the Iraq War and thats just because I got injured.
I hear it all the time:
"I started out winning, but then I got killed."
I read somewhere 5 days without any sleep is fatal to the brain.
Reminds me of Cyber-punk novels I've read where people jack in to their computers - directly into their nervous system and then keel over because it was so intense that they'd forget to eat or sleep.
Stupidity.
I do this with Freeping all the time.
And I very seldom die.
All your bases are belong to us.
So THERE.
Disregard previous.
Someone set him up the bomb.
That's better.
Game over, man! Game over!
By the seventh day I began dryheaving every time I woke up.
At that point, I had to grab some actual shuteye.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Believe it or not, there are gamers out there that instead of enjoying the game, would much rather buy their way up the ranks. These are the ones that the farmers target, for example do a search on ebay for wow gold.
Last I checked there was over 19,000 auctions. This doesn't even include the items for sale like swords and such. Keep in mind these are virtual, you do not own them outside of the game. Expect to see more of these "Farmers" keel over as the year progresses.
Wow. Another permanent ZOT.
Must have been something about the fear of death that has the opposite side effect.
Yeah, I guess the prospect of losing a promotion doesn't have quite the same adrenaline-producing effect.
I guess that HE LOST.
LOL! I think a lot of us do.
I see this a lot in the game World of Warcraft. There are actually sweatshop-like business, mostly in China, where people "farm" for treasure that they turn around and sell on eBay. I've heard some work upwards of 18 hours a day and make roughly $75 USD a month. I've heard estimates that 40% of the people who play WoW are doing it to make real life money, not for the enjoyment of the game itself.
Why people would actually spend real money on game money or items is beyond me. I wouldn't doubt if many Chinese gold farmers have died trying to make a buck from selling online money, probably just doesn't get reported.
For all we know he may have been THIS close to getting an extra life....
Do these people have lives?
Probably developed a blood clot in his legs similar to air passengers on long flights.
Didn't I just see this on a recent episode of CSI?
Actually he had been drinking "red bull/energy type drinks" and pissing in the bottles so he didn't have to leave... basically drank a bunch of diaretics, screwed up his electrolytes.. and cardiac arrest. (at least according to the story)
Gamer gene pool cleanup notification
This is probably going to happen to me if I don't get off Free Republic once in awhile.
No doubt that's part of it, but the Koreans in particular have a problem with online real-time strategy games.
When I played Starcraft online a few years ago, the Koreans were EVERYWHERE. They were desparately trying to climb the rankings ladder. They would quit the game if they thought they were gping to lose just to start another one. And there wasn't anything in Starcraft that you could sell to someone.
Bottom line: people overindulge in fantasy games in order to compensate for a lack of something in their real lives. Real-time strategy games provide a sense of accomplishment and a place to harness your aggression. Whatever the Koreans have for a real life doesn't seem to be working.
Also there are companies that hire these "farmers" they put them up in Internet cafes and pay them on commission "so much pay for so much wealth farmed" then these companies have brokerage web sites where they buy and sell "in-game currency and items" as well as game accounts. Hell in many of the games where you can own and develop land there are specialized real estate brokers.
Same games consider it all "against the rules: others embrace the trend. either way it is becoming a big business.
When I used to play Everquest back in '99 I became fascinated by the Ebay movement and put some items up for sale. They sold instantly for ridiculous amounts of money (An item that took me an hour to get, sold for $40.00 on EBay.) I showed this to a few friends and they didn't believe me so I listed some more items and in-game currency. We got into a great debate over the merits and longevity of such a thing. Finally someone bet me that I couldn't keep up the farming and make a living at it. So I took the bet.
Basically the bet was one month and I had to farm enough wealth (and transfer it to my regular bank account) to live on and pay my bills. By week two I was into profit, By the final Day of the month I had enough extra cash to pay for a new state of the art computer system.
Now realize at the time in Everquest there were few people selling as compared today and there were no Pro-sites up at the time to compete with.
The downside is it became a job. It was not fun any more and to this day I will not play Everquest because of it. I Played an additional 8 months after that and made quite a lot of cash. But it ruined me on the game.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie.Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
That is why you get an automated food/water/waste/electrode excise system for the hardcore cyberpunk!
He was game to the end.
Sounds like an automatic gene pool cleaning to me.
Did he get high score? A couple of free extra games maybe?....
During my online gaming heyday I spent so much time in game that I'm sure my wife would have left me - that is if she hadn't been sitting at another computer next to me doing the same thing ;-)
A victim of "Evercrack"?
For the Horde!
I just closed my WoW account after almost a year, but every server has gold farmers that overpopulate certain areas of the game. What sucked is when you had to kill x number of y monsters in an area and the same 4-5 characters were in that area day after day, killing all the monsters before you could get to them.
...noob...
Why didn't someone on his team rez him?
AAAAggghhh... Am I the only one on this earth that gets motion sickness from playing these games? I've tried to play the kids computer games and it always makes me sick. There is no way I could play for days straight. I don't have enough $$ to replace the keyboard every hour.
Wasn't there another story like this in the same place a few months ago?
Is "brain-dead" really "dead"? Better check with Dead.
I guess he got his wiiiiings.
Probably won't make it into the next ad campaign.
Why, yes!...yes there is: stupidity
My kids love WOW. They have shown me the ebay auctions and websites selling gold & such. They also get a kick out of the "farmers." I keep telling them they could make a lot of money, but they say Blizzard frowns on it and would ban their accounts if they found out.
Paging Jack Thompson. Paging Jack Thompson. Has anyone seen his book Out of Harm's Way?
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