The Beijing News is reporting that a man in southern China collapsed in an internet cafe after spending three straight days playing online games. The 30-year old user collapsed in front of his computer terminal and emergency personnel were unable to revive him. A medic was quoted as saying that the length of time he spent online could have triggered heart problems, according to their initial findings. About a 100 other patrons left the cafe in fear after the man died.
I don’t find it hard to believe that a person could suddenly die while playing video games, but do we really know that’s all he was doing on there? Has anyone checked his Myspace account? If it’s decked out with every graphic and font known to man, I think we’ve found the culprit.
Via CBS News
No Comments to Online Gamer Dies After Three-Day Binge?
by: Peter
On September 17, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Some people actually live in these cafes as it costs less to stay there for 8 hours than to rent an appartment. So these people work, then go there and do their thing, maybe get some sleep, then go back to work.
by: weclock
On September 17, 2007 at 12:26 pm
I wish I could put this to the test, as I wouldn’t mind dying.
by: somewhat
On September 17, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Isn’t China that country that censores everything and everyone ? Is this not part of their villification of the Internetz ?
by: William
On September 17, 2007 at 1:32 pm
this may sound bad, but if I take the dirt nap anytime soon, I’d like to go out while playing Halo 3 for like 72 hours non-stop. I actually played Halo 2 once for 35 hours non-stop…only taking bathroom and water breaks.
by: Jonathan
On September 17, 2007 at 2:02 pm
@somewhat: yeah, china censors a lot of things, including the internet, but still has the most people online next to the U.S. they did recently begin a program that has online gaming sites penalizing people for spending too much time in a game, but that’s mostly an attempt to curb “internet addiction” and cases like the one above.
i actually lived in china for 3 years a long while ago, and if you’re a foreigner, you can really see how things are censored. we’d have access to the internet, but certain pages were banned altogether and we couldn’t access news sites like cnn.com on certain days. later we’d find out that a government somewhere had been overthrown or something like that. that was in the mid-90′s though, so things may have changed a lot since then. it’s not that they really villify the internet, so much as the spread of certain information. yeah, it’s strange.
by: somewhat
On September 17, 2007 at 2:03 pm
@ Will
LOL ! I know about those long periods without sleep. I’ve been prepping my wife so she doesn’t go ballistic after 48 hours non-stop. I called work today and took off, and we’ll only be coming up for a stop at the local Subway about half-way through campaign !
by: Daniel
On September 17, 2007 at 2:15 pm
I recall once playing Resident Evil 2 while having strep throat late at night. Word to the wise: Never play a Resident Evil game while trying to recover from a really high fever. I was freaking out every step of the way because I was at the point of hallucination.
Ahh…those were the days…