World of Warcraft is Bad for You!

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 19 2007 3:00 AM

Submitted by Sid. Edited By erin_broadley.

TAGS: video games, bingeing

I love video games as much as many of you do. Hell, I spent the last six months of my life up until my big move west working in a video game store, and playing video games between classes.

Early on, I vowed not to become one of those World of "Warcrack" addicts after dating a fellow whose idea of a date was me coming over and watching him play said game, along with Halo 2 (he made me stand in a line with him for 3 hours for the midnight release of it, where I had at least seven dudes from the line recognize me from SG), and along with Unreal Tournament, which to this day makes me dizzy watching someone play. Besides being put off by the game because of these boring "dates", I was not willing to pay a monthly fee on top of paying the initial $50 for the game, and after playing a trial version, I decided I'd rather stick to D&D anyway. No offense to WoW players, it just wasn't my cup of tea.

However, this article is not about my game play, but rather of those who over-do it.

A man in southern China appears to have died of exhaustion after a three-day Internet gaming binge, state media said Monday.

The 30-year-old man fainted at a cyber cafe in the city of Guangzhou Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. Games Digest reports:

This certainly isn�t the first time people have died as a result of obsessive video game binges, although so far all of the incidents have occurred outside Europe and North America. So -- keeping playing safe, kids and always remember to, y�know, eat and stuff.

And you may laugh at the last line of the above quote. I mean, I seriously can't fathom being so wrapped up in a video game where I can't bring my WoW character into a pub, or hit the "pause" button in Halo, or just not continue right away after an untimely death in Unreal, or what-have-you, but one 24-year old South Korean man, died from just that in 2002.

Police said Kim had been virtually glued to the computer since for 86 hours and had not slept or eaten.

And 10 days after Kim's death, 27-year old Lien Wen-cheng died after playing games for 32 hours in Taiwan.

Upon researching the writing of this article, the longest I could find anybody playing video games, in this case, Starcraft, and dying as a result was a whopping 50 hours. Dag, yo!

So be careful game addicts!

And if you're going to "binge" on your video games, make sure you stock up on those energy drinks, I recommend either:

Mountain Dew Game Fuel (in the Halo 3 can)

or, my personal favorite:

Bawls

Sid is glad that Trevor and I are lucky enough to have a cat who warns us if we've played too much by knocking the controllers out of our hands.

76 Comments

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TheWriter

Fort Worth, TX

June 2006

SEP 24, 2007 12:58 AM

Mercie said:

TheWriter said:
I'm familiar with the kind of gamer you're talking about. But I think we've all had friends and significant others who think that the only thing worth doing together is gaming. I believe, however, that this is the exception, rather than the rule. I would love to find a gal who pops onto WoW to run an instance with me from time to time, but I'd hardly consider that a date.

My idea of a perfect girl is one who prefers lunch and a matinee so we can make it back in time for our Eberron game. And I'd never cancel just because my Kara raid got pushed back.

/2 wtb [Casual Nerd Girl], pst

you wouldn't cancel for Kara?? I would. psh.