Mar 11, 2008
Heart Attack because of MMORPG
by windshell
Have you ever thought about excitement so big that can put you into danger, bigger than any Paladin sword, Shaman spell, Dwarf’s hammer or Orc’s firm grasp?
NASA scientists concluded a study 8 years ago about how video games can improve health through their technology by making the video game respond to the activity of the player's body and brain.
But, that was eight years ago. How many ‘infectious’ games have been invented since then?
Players didn’t know about World of Warcraft, not to mention its predecessors. Ok, there were online games, but not in this volume and variety.
Friends played Starcraft, but it was not built on unique world that has to be explored. That held players’ attention and drove them away from the real world for hours and days. It was not deadly, even literally.
When age of the massive online games came, everything changed.
Everyone could build perfect self, or bigger, better and stronger alter ego. There were hundreds of worlds for exploration, and that exploration sometimes could last for hours, sometimes for days.
After few hours of playing, even days of playing are recorded; body is as exhausted as after running a marathon.
Player, of course, couldn’t notice that. Player forgot to take a lunch, because he or she was in the middle of important raid. Forgot to take usual dose of eight glasses of water daily, because couldn’t leave friends without important help of own armor and weapon... and skills of course.
During that couple of hours, body lost many important enzymes. If temperature was higher, body lost important salts through the sweat.
Not to mention the stress that players are exposed to in the virtual world battles.
All of that means a loss of perfect balance of body chemistry, which could often lead to sickness and later to serious illness.
If body is exposed to similar conditions 7 days in week, then we are not far from the topic title. You’ve done math... Count all causes and consequences, multiply them with hours and days, and you’ll get the result.
You heard about the case of Chinese girl, known in WOW as Snowly, who played her favorite MMORPG for several days continuously.
She died in October 2005. Right after playing that difficult part in the WoW, during those several holiday days.
Before this case, South Korean man has died after reportedly playing Starcraft (my bad, it’s deadly as well) for 50 hours with few breaks. He collapsed after playing it in one internet club. Lack of sleep and food during the gaming session, did the damage. Cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion.
Those are individual cases, but it’s really important that this doesn’t become something normal and turn into every day’s morbid statistics.
There are a lot of players that don’t care about anything else except gaming. In that dedication, they forgot on basic needs of every human – nutrition, rest and socialization.
Unfortunately, people often forget an old advice that everything we do, should be in moderate way.
People usually stretch their habits within extremes.
It’s either abstinence, or overreaction.
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