Sorry again for my absence. Today I bring you a few video-game related deaths. To my knowledge, no one has ever died from playing a video game other than from exhaustion or murder. Still, it brings us to one of the more animalistic aspects of humanity that we will literally murder each other over fictional items.
Links to the news stories after the break.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-02-04/news/31022949_1_waitress-grim-discovery-chen
http://endlessparadigm.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=20105
http://www.spike.com/articles/id98jf/the-top-10-deaths-caused-by-video-games
http://www.ranker.com/list/8-people-who-died-playing-video-games/autumn-spragg
It's interesting you used the word "fictional" where you probably meant to use the word "non-physical". Items in video games are very real, and in some occasions can be worth real money (http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-5-most-absurdly-expensive-items-in-online-gaming/). Hell, our current currency is about as real as WoW gold. Just like anything else in this world, people can become obsessed with games. Hell, people have been killing each other over property, money, land, and religion obsessions for centuries (many of which are "fictional" in some way). This is just modern lethal obsession :P
ReplyDeleteFair to say! I remember the day that I realized our entire economy and government are based solely on faith and trust without concrete backing. Scared the living shits out of me. But on point, I agree that those things become real when they are assigned value within a community. I just don't think they are "real" enough to die over. I know that I sound like my mother, but in the end it is just a game.
DeleteTo play devil's advocate, I can see the reasoning behind killing someone over land and money (but not religion) because it is logical. Sick, but logical. Kill person, obtain goods or power in a very real and direct way. It's just harder for me to see the logic behind dying over in-game items.
For the kinds of people that would kill for a game, they are obsessed to the point that in-game items represent a larger portion of themselves than money or land. Those are obviously not healthy obsessions. But imo, any mindset that leads to the killing of people in order to obtain some brand of power is unhealthy. It's just interesting that "power" can mean "digital line of code that materializes a sword in some game".
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