Death by Gaming
My cousin called me a few months back commenting on how stupid Koreans are. She went on to tell me about how she was watching the Korean news with my grandfather when the death of a 28-year-old was reported. It turns out the man died from playing online computer games. I was stunned. I thought I misunderstood. How could someone die from playing video games?
The man died from playing 50 hours straight – no sleep, no food, and no rest (except for quick bathroom breaks. But apparently, this isn’t the first incidence of such a death in Korea. In 2002, a man died in Kwangju after 86 hours of marathon gaming. The man who died recently was so addicted to the PC rooms that he was fired from his job due to missed absences from gaming.
The gaming craze has begun to raise concerns – currently about 35% of the population (a massive 17million) are self-labeled as obsessive. The number of counseling sessions for game addiction quadrupled last year, the government says. There were 8,978 sessions in 2004 compared with 2,243 cases the previous year, and the first seven months of this year saw 7,649 sessions.
Unfortunately, the country seems to encourage such an addiction with the world’s highest per-capita rate of broadband connectivity (70%) and the internet cafes cost only (our equivalent of) $1/hour. There is a group of people who play for months at a time who leave only in quick spurts to change clothes but who return to sleep and eat there. Additionally, because so many young people play so often, the competition is high and the nation seems to embrace the gaming world.
There are companies who hire children to play against each other with millions of dollars as an incentive for winning. There is a slang for the intense competition, “E-sports”, and even the government is chipping in to build the world’s first e-sports stadium which is to be completed by 2008. Moreover, gaming is a lucrative industry; professional gamers can earn more than $130,000/year, there are physicians who specialize in the health of gamers, and there are numerous teaching professions available in universities.
Comments
Posted by: csh11
Posted on: December 14, 2005 03:58 AM
Please, you would rather they play football?