Another Man Dies After Marathon Gaming Session

loserMcloser writes "Another Chinese man has died after spending three days in an internet cafe for an online gaming marathon session. He apparently fainted and died at the cafe from exhaustion. 'The report did not say what the man, whose name was not given, was playing. The report said that about 100 other Web surfers "left the cafe in fear after witnessing the man's death."'"

But is it true?

[cduffy]

This is coming from state-run media, it doesn't contain enough details for easy independent verification -- and the state has indicated that combating "Internet addiction" is one of its goals.

There's a lack of truthiness here.

Wonder why..

[BosstonesOwn]

we always see this stuff coming out of countries in Asia , are they that fanatical about these games ?

I mean geez I have hard enough time playing xbox for more then an hour without having to at least get a bottle of water. How do they do it ?

Do you think when he died he dropped any loot ?

Re:But is it true?

[gEvil (beta)]

There's a lack of truthiness here.

No, there is an overabundance of truthiness here. What's lacking is truthfulness.

Re:Wonder why..

[mark-t]

Well, it *IS* the most populated place in the world... racial differences notwithstanding, statistically the odds are that for any given random human trait, you are most likely to find it there in the highest quantity.

Not really an epidemic

[OrangeTide]

A lot more people die from sky diving every year, and I think most of us accept that sky diving is not an epidemic social problem.

Real problems could include: chronic disease, car accidents, criminal violence, ...

I think it's more of a problem that 100 people fled the scene than one guy dying from his compulsive personality disorder.

How appropriate

[hansamurai]

I love the quote/proverb at the bottom of my comments:

To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so.

Re:And I thought ...

[nelsonal]

I'd guess it's one of two things, either he's earning money by farming loot and if he logs/leaves he will reduce his income substantially (because someone else will get his location or it takes a long time to reach). Or he's really just on the receiving end of a variable schedule reward system [wikipedia.org] and he misses the dopamine hits too much to leave.

Re:Darwin for the Modern Era

[Babbster]

This isn't a reason for games/console to remind players to take breaks. This is a reason to make even better games that will ensnare more of the world's obviously pathetic genetic material and flush it down the same toilet that this guy went down.

I've had VERY long gaming sessions, even ones where I (quite foolishly) remained sitting for 12 hours in a row. But, one of the reasons I've never gone much longer that is that there were warning signs that I should quit, from yawning to blurred vision. There's no doubt in my mind that people who die in this fashion suffer symptoms long before they keel over, and at the very least there are the symptoms that everyone suffers when they need sleep (like, you know, falling asleep).

Of course, there's plenty of blame to throw around to others as well. How about the staff of this cafe? What could possibly possess them to let this guy keep going? What was he ingesting in order to remain awake for that ridiculous period of time, and why didn't they either stop him ingesting it or stop serving him? Heck, after 24 hours I'd probably call an ambulance on spec! But, it's China, so who knows how people react...still, just the process of one human caring about the welfare of any other should have caused some reaction.

To reiterate my original point, though: Now that it's over, it's probably just as well that he's gone. Not only was he dumb as a half-bag of rocks, but the fact that he could do this to himself in a public place tells me that he's probably better off dead than living in his community.

Chinese != Korean

[ToastyKen]

Did I miss something? As far as I've heard, the only other case of death from gaming exhausting happened in Korea, but the submitter says "another Chinese man"...

Re:Doesn't happen here?

[MightyMartian]

I'm an Asian gamer with a mild addiction to warcraft 3. I don't understand how Asia can have a few of these incidents and the west has so none.Is there a distinct cultural difference to explain this? Or is it just statistic's? There i about 2.5 billion people in Asia proper vs 1 billion in all of the west. I don't understand how addiction is going to force you to sleep or drink or eat. I suppose I don't understand because all of my addictions are mild and state endorsed (women, video games, food, and tea).

Perhaps we have a lot less to escape from.

hypocrisy

[Lord Ender]

A few weeks ago there was a post about a programming competition sponsored by Microsoft in which students were expected to stay up for 24 hours straight and eat soda and junk food while coding.

People here are laughing about this guy because he neglected sleep and nutrition to compete in this contest. They are saying "darwin award." Where was this same sentiment when Microsoft caused students to do the same thing for a different contest?

Health should come before work and play, people! Your job is worthless if you are dead or ill from a terrible lifestyle. Don't let your boss force this behavior on you, and don't let companies like Microsoft force it on students.

Re:Marathon session

[ccozan]

Heh. In 1996 we got our university lab outfitted with 5 SUN machines. What did we do first? Put dgaDoom on them and played. We played for about 48 hours. It was crazy... With the exception of going to bathroom, we stayed and played deathmatches (!) one after another. We even hired the low-graders to bring us food and drinks :).

Man, what times ...

And can the Internet really you?

[Mjlner]

The paper said that he may have died from exhaustion brought on by too many hours on the Internet.

The article gives the impression that the Internet has something to do with his death. Exhaustion is exhaustion, regardless of whatever reason you have to stay awek. He could have just been gardening.
It would definitely be more relevant to know whether he was using any stimulants to stay awake.

Re:But is it true?

[gEvil (beta)]

The very definition of 'truthiness' is "this is the truth because I say it is" (see Colbert Report, S01E01). That is exactly what is going on here, and of which you say there is a lack of. 'Truthiness' is not synonymous with 'truthfulness'--it is the antithesis of it.

Re:Linux games

[Grishnakh]

With xmame, I have thousands of classic arcade games at my fingertips. That's enough games to play for years without a break. I think that's more than enough games for anyone.

No, they may not be the latest fancy 3D games, but classic games have something the latest games totally lack: gameplay.

Re:How can this happen?

[newgalactic]

This sounds much more likely then what the others have suggested (dehydration, sleep deprivation). Sounds much more like a case of "pre-existing condition" with a side of "bad media".

24 hours? lol

[everphilski]

24 hours is nothing. You've never pulled an all-nighter to get a semester project completed?

Are you telling me you can't see the difference between a voluntary competition (hint: its kinda fun to pull an all-nighter every now and then... I have a wife and 2 kids and if I come across a fun project, I still do it from time to time) and a man who was either incapable of determining his tolerance or chose to ignore it (most likely the latter)?

And I suppose you would have people oppose the voluntary fund raiser Up till Dawn [stjude.org] as well? I mean, think of the college students that will be kept up all night and have to go to class in the morning!

Re:Not really an epidemic

[Dirtside]

My wife pointed out that the phrase "the leading cause of death" is one we need to be careful of, because it only tells you what caused the *most* deaths, not whether something causes an unacceptably large amount of deaths. (Yes, yes, what's an "acceptable death," bite me.) It came up in the context of neonatal deaths; she pointed out that one day, all causes of neonatal death will have been wiped out, and then one newborn will get eaten by a dingo and suddenly dingoes will be the "leading cause of death among newborns," and we'll have an uproar about dingo eradication...

Re:How can this happen?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is that the people hiking and walking are in good health. The marathon gamer probably has this addiction and the negative health choices (bad diet, bad sleeping patterns, just all-around unhealthy) as a chronic problem.

Backfiring of "one child per family" policy

[ObiWonKanblomi]

I heard a really good article a few weeks ago on NPR where sociologists were looking into the root cause of internet/gaming addiction in China. One interesting theory is that this generation of gamers is the product of the "one child per family" policy in China. Essentially this generation in China is full of only-children. This is bound to cause social issues, and this internet/gaming addiction is only a symptom of a larger sociological problem.

Re:But is it true?

[fm6]

Well, you're right to doubt the honesty and motives of the China's state media. But the fact is, people do die of game addiction. An ISP where I used to work used to host LAN parties. One guy showed up who'd already been awake for a couple days. I'm told he played for 36 hours straight. Then he got up, walked out into the parking lot and collapsed. Dead before anybody could help him.

It's lucky for me I suck at hand-eye coordination things. So no FPS marathons for me. Even so, I had to smash all my Civilization and Rise of Nations discs.

I notice a lot of people taged this story "darwinaward". Smug assholes. Like they never did anything stupid, compulsive, or self-destructive.

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[MBGMorden]

Gun control basically is the same thing: for a gun to really be a problem one must already be prepared to break the law. So given that a willingness to break the law is already a prerequisite for a gun crime to take place: do you really think that the culprit is gonna give a damn that he's breaking a law by obtaining or carrying a gun?

To put it into Slashdot terms: it would be like the government outlawing encryption to prevent terrorists from communicating. If they're talking about blowing up a building do you really think they are afraid to have a copy of PGP installed on their computer? Nope. All outlawing encryption does is take it away from the people who were originally using it for non-illegal purposes, or make criminals out of those who refuse to give it up even if their original actions were perfectly legal. Same applies to guns.

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[Bluesman]

Damn straight!

Liberals are always preaching about evolution, but they never seem to want to let it happen.

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[Anonymous Coward]

Not owning/carrying a gun kind of prevents, for example:
- accidents (mis-handling, misuse by curious kids finding it)
- impulsive use (e.g. in a rage)
- another person using your gun against you

So yeah, gun control is really useless.

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[theridersofrohan]

Gun control basically is the same thing: for a gun to really be a problem one must already be prepared to break the law. So given that a willingness to break the law is already a prerequisite for a gun crime to take place: do you really think that the culprit is gonna give a damn that he's breaking a law by obtaining or carrying a gun?

That argument has two major holes:

a) It is assuming that people are rational beings and that all actions are well premeditated. It's pretty well known by now that people are irrational [blogspot.com] (hey, how's that for a slashdot audience, this is a blog entry by the gmail creator!). Basically, in a surge of emotion (think domestic fights, a depressed / severely stressed kid (say a highschool shooting)), if one can easily have access to guns (by opening the local cabinet, going to a store, etc.), they can cause massively more damage, significantly more easily.

b) That the massive number of guns going around in a society will always be used by the people they were intended in the way they were intended. This is patently not true, as demonstrated by kids getting access to their grandfather's gun, or various people we (the west) have massively funded and provided guns to (think Bin Laden and the Mujahideen's in Afganistan vs the Soviets, or Saddam versus the Iranians).

There's also, of course, a moral argument. The only primary purpose of the gun is to kill. The whole protection stuff is completely secondary; a gun 'protects' by killing, or threatening to kill. I, personally, think that society has an obligation to protect its citizens, and banning a device the purpose of which is to kill is a good idea.

Guns don't kill people, people kill people. And monkeys kill people. If you give them a gun. (to quote eddie izzard)

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[Gunther Maplethorpe]

b) That the massive number of guns going around in a society will always be used by the people they were intended in the way they were intended.

Are you trying to say that responsible gun owners/users are massively in the minority? I contest your statement that they're in the minority at all, let alone 'massively' in the minority. The BBC reports here ahref=http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/ihavearightto/four_b/casestudy_art29.shtmlrel=url2html-15758 [slashdot.org]http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/people/features/ihavearightto/four_b/casestudy_art29.shtml> that, in the US, there are some 60 million gun owners with some 200 million guns. If the majority of gun owners didn't use them responsibly, we'd be in pretty dire straits indeed.

Re:Only one thing to do then ..

[Mr. Slippery]

- accidents (mis-handling, misuse by curious kids finding it)

Firearms accidents are very rare. Of course one accidental shooting is one too many, but you are more likely to drown, be poisoned, or die in a fire, than be killed in a gun accident.

- impulsive use (e.g. in a rage)

Someone in a murderous rage who doesn't have a gun will grab a knife, a baseball bat, whatever. (Did you know that the U.S. has a higher non-gun murder rate than the total murder rate of the U.K. or Japan?)

Now, picture some big strong guy in a murderous rage with a knife in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, coming after someone you love. Do you wish your loved one had a gun?

(Yes, you might wish they had a phaser set to stun. Here in the real world however, the best way to stop someone intent on an act of great violence remains a firearm. That's why cops carry them. Mace and stunguns work for shit; unarmed self defense is better than nothing, and will teach you strategies for avoiding trouble, but even a black belt can get killed by somebody bigger and stronger with a weapon.)

- another person using your gun against you

Proper training prevents this. Your gun is locked away if it's not on your person; if it's on your person, you shoot an attacker before they get close enough to take your gun away. A gun is a distance weapon, after all. (And if they manage to get up right close to you before you get your gun out, and take it away from you that way, then they could just as easily put a knife in you if their intention is to kill you.)