Gamer’s Death After 49 Hours of Gaming Confirmed   8/10/2005 - 1,189 views,

Oh sure, you can explain away the killing of a fellow gamer as an act of passion.

And fighting over who gets custody of game points as emotions running high.

But how else, if not addiction, would you explain the death of a twenty-eight year old Korean gamer after playing the online game Starcraft for nearly fifty hours straight, stopping only to go to the bathroom, and catch catnaps on a makeshift cot in the cybercafe in which he was playing? (He was able to stay in the cybercafe for 2+ days straight because he had recently quit his job so that he could spend more time gaming.)Said a police official from the Taegu province of Korea, where the incident occured, “We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion.”

Lee collapsed heading into hour number 50, and was rushed to the hospital, where he died. All the more sadly, he had just told his mother that he was about to stop playing, and go home. Somehow, I don’t think that kind of “going home” was what he had in mind.