Man Dies playing Internet Game

[SWAT_CDN 0]

BEIJING (AP) - 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 cybercafe in the city of Guangzhou on Saturday afternoon after he had been playing games online for three days, the Beijing News reported.

Paramedics tried to revive him but failed and he was declared dead at the cafe, it said. The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

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

It said that about 100 other surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."

China has 140 million Internet users, second only to the United States. It is one of the world's biggest markets for online games, with tens of millions of players, many of whom hunker down for hours in front of computers in public Internet cafes.

Several cities have clinics to treat what psychiatrists have dubbed "Internet addiction" in users, many of them children and teenagers, who play online games or surf the web for days at a time.

Humm, WOW?

[wex-q 0]

Wasn't this (or an alike event) like a year ago?

Where the Chinese guy died from dehydration.

Afaik, he's in the Guiness Book of world records, where his death and also the virtual funeral (visited by around 50 people) is mentioned.

[opteryx 1562]

Quote[/b] ]Humm, WOW?

[SWAT_CDN 0]

@ wex-q

This is recent, happened Monday this week.

Never heard of the virtual funeral one but ... each to their own.

[BLSmith2112 0]

He was up for 72 hours. Malnutritioned. Add unpredictable events that cause one to erupt from happyness to anger (being killed) in a fraction of a second. Add his age and current health status, and there's a perfect death for ya.

Nothing video game related

[oyman 0]

He probably getting attacked by a ling rush on a fastest map or lost temple.

[Average Joe 0]

The internet, its serious business.

[-ZG-BUZZARD 0]

Talk about a "killer application"...

Seriously, I wonder how people can go to such extremes... I mean, I've had gaming streaks but they've always been momentarily interrupted by eating, going to the bathroom, and even catching some hours of sleep...

[BlackScorpion 0]

Again?

I recall hearing of few similar events in the past few years or so... I recall they were South Korean though. Small, but game-crazed nation.

[SWAT_CDN 0]

I found the other report.

Wednesday, 10 August 2005

A South Korean man has died after reportedly playing an online computer game for 50 hours with few breaks.

The 28-year-old man collapsed after playing the game Starcraft at an internet cafe in the city of Taegu, according to South Korean authorities.

The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session, said police.

The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.

"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a Taegu provincial police official told the Reuters news agency.

He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.

They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.

[Average Joe 0]

Noobs at Life.

[Guest Ti0n3r]

That man must have had some serious problem

R.I.P.

[alext223 0]

And who said computer games don't kill people.

[Messiah 2]

they don't

what killed him was exhaustion, brought on from lack of sleep, food, movement, etc - what he was doing at the time has no relevance to the result - He could have sat and watched tv for three days straight and had the same result - but the media are unlikely to cry bloody murder over such an event.

just the media overdramatising something as always. During the final few weeks of a university year, you'll find plenty of architects spending many days on trek with little or no sleep. I've done the one week stint myself, and was a wreck afterwards - 3 years ago, one of our group collapsed with a heart condition brought on by such a stint. I don't think it even got 1 line in the local headlines.

[Commando84 0]

i love gaming and try to make others like gaming like me but seriously there is other things in life than playing games

But it seems like some people just wanna shut themselves down for real... in some countries maybe people play games and in others they use stuff like drugs n alcohol in to heavy doses..

[Placebo 29]

The title may as well be "man dies by being really, really, really stupid". Anyone with a modicum of modern sense knows that what the guy did is just asking for health issues/death, does this warrant a discussion? I really don't think so