Dying to play video games? Well, some people have..

What got me started on this topic was a headline regarding a story about a man in Kansas this week. The man woke up in the middle of the night when his house was engulfed by flames. He fled the fire but moments later, he confused fire crews and paramedics when he ran back into the house. He wasn’t trying to save a loved one or a pet. He ran back inside the burning home to save his Xbox! Fortunately the man only suffered smoke inhalation but the fire cause $80,000 worth of damage to his home.

After further reading, it seems like video game addictions have led to many deaths around the world. An 18 year old man in Taiwan died in an internet cafe after playing Diablo 3 for 40 hours straight. He was in a public place and nobody even noticed. Does this worry anybody else?

If 40 hours isn’t long enough, a 33 year old man in China died after 650 hours of continuous video game play. Reports state his diet consisted of small quantities of ramen noodles and he rarely slept. The man’s cause of death was heart failure and malnutrition.

There has also been many cases where video game addictions have not only caused the deaths of the players, but motivated them to murder ‘real life’ family and friends. In Florida in 2010, a woman shook her baby to death because it was crying too loud while she was trying to play Farmville with her friends over Facebook.

If I ever needed an excuse to log off and back away from the computer. This is it.

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