"SEOUL (Reuters) - A South Korean man who played computer games for 50 hours almost non-stop died of heart failure minutes after finishing his mammoth session in an Internet cafe, authorities said Tuesday.
The 28-year-old man, identified only by his family name Lee, had been playing on-line battle simulation games at the cybercafe in the southeastern city of Taegu, police said.
Lee had planted himself in front of a computer monitor to play on-line games on Aug. 3. He only left the spot over the next three days to go to the toilet and take brief naps on a makeshift bed, they said.
"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a Taegu provincial police official said by telephone.
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."
Am I the only one who feels like there is a bunch of stuff missing from this story, like who has enough cash to quit work to play games. I truly am not making fun of the tragedy here, but this reminds me a of a guy I once knew who was addicted to Pac Man.
He used to say that he wanted a skit acted out at his funeral. He wanted someone to dress up in a Pac Man suit and be chased around the hall by four other people dressed as the ghosts who would eventually catch Pac Man who would then die.
I wonder what happened to that guy, haven't seen him in more than 20 years now.
3 comments:
The guy took naps and bathroom breaks and meal breaks. The only thing amazing about this is that he didn't do it in his own house. Otherwise, it's not too unique I would imagine.
Oh, and he died. I don't suspect "exhaustion". I suspect drugs. But I'm cynical.
Before I begin my rant on useless newspaper articles, I just want to make it clear that I am in no ways faulting Jack for posting this here.
I think this sort of so called "public interest" stuff is better posted here in the blog world or cyberspace, so when we are done reading it and had the few seconds laugh it deserves we can file it in our memories rather than our landfill sites.
I share the same position as Gavriel as I also don't see this as a highly unique situation. I wonder how many people have died in front of their computers (some day I might). It does show that stress is the real killer in games, whether sports or video games.
My question is why Reuters actually published this? We kill millions of trees every year for newspapers. This doesn't bother me as I find the lowly newspaper one of our greatest accomplishments, but must we fill them with crap.
If we remove all the useless stuff like this, and all the repetitive crap about the size of Oprah’s butt, then we may have a paper worth reading.
Admittedly a newspaper should entertain but if 9/10th of your readership reads an article and say SO WHAT, just how entertaining is it.
This article should have been caught by an editor and filed in the round blue filing system on the floor beside his/her desk.
Ps. I think Gavriel is undoubtedly too cynical, with the assumption that drugs may have been involved, but Like jack I suspect there was more to the story.
There is always a need for a good cynic.
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