It would be a hard one to study in the wild though because ultimately you probably couldn’t pick the “danger gamer” from the “extreme fringe gamer”. I’ve been a bit of a gamer in the past and wonder how WOW is actually a game anyway? Isn’t it kind of like pseudo-life? I’d have enjoyed it before I reached 10 perhaps. Definately would never forget to drink.

I hope the phenomena doesn’t increase. Maybe there are some who see a WOW player dying of extreme gaming and somehow puts them on a pedestal of awe to be emulated. Maybe these guys are trying to push their physical limits. After all, they must feel thirsty and hungry and sleepy and be denying their body signals.

Yes an interesting subject you’ve raised. I’d never really thought of it in that way.

I think that there is, however, a very different phenomenon to gamers who “drop dead” after long gaming sessions.

First of all, because what they’re doing has a generally pleasurable goal (perhaps what psychiatrists call “egosyntonic”), and secondly, because many gamers haven’t been consistently doing this kind of behaviour, without end, for extended — and I mean years — amount of time.

Its this kind of phenomenon that I’m querying the pathophysiology of … and not drinking for 5 straight days might be one way you might “do” it, I think. ;)

Historically we have been slow to accept many illnesses – ie. shellshock and post traumatic stress – until many years down the track. I guess I’d just say common sense should prevail that if anyone, not just IT or managerial personell, works 16 hour days and 7 days per week something will eventually give. If we push past our barriers and at the same time lead sedentary lives that is a dangerous mix.

I’m not sure its a totally black and white subject with one side being either right or wrong in this. Plus there is the complexity we all have genetic and current health dispositions that affect how we cope with that stress.

The key is work – life balance I guess. And avoid sitting at WOW for 5 days straight forgetting that we’re not an animated character lol.

I do find it an interesting topic though :)

I ran into the concept last summer at a Uni Business School unit in Organisational Behaviour – I can’t recall off the top of my head where the online videos relating to the issue were though.

I really can’t conceive how a gamer can forget to drink for 5 days though. That’s lame.

Thanks for pointing that out. Couple things.

First of all — and I have great respect for psychiatrists, for what they do — I wouldn’t trust a psychiatrist to necessarily make a diagnosis of heart failure, any more than I’m sure they’d like me to make a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Secondly, if he didn’t drink for 5 straight days, it was probably dehydration that did him in, as it probably led to an imbalance in his sodium and potassium. Its possible if his potassium was too high (probably complicated by renal failure if he was dehydrated) then he could have had a cardiac arrest because of this; alternatively, he could have seized if his sodium levels were too high, aspirated (choked) and died that way as well.

“Heart failure”, which is a failure of the heart to pump, however, isn’t something that usually develops over the course of a few days. However, if he did have an underlying cardiac condition leading to an undiagnosed cardiomyopathy — i.e. heart failure — then all of the above would have made it worse, and in that case, it could have been a situation that contributed to it.

Thanks for letting me know about the article, though.

“He was so concentrated on his game that he forgot to eat and sleep. He died of heart failure brought on by exhaustion and dehydration,” said Park Young Woo, a Taegu Fatima Hospital psychiatrist.

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6132357.html