Death by Video Game: Tales of Obsession From the Virtual Frontline Read Online Free
Author: Simon Parkin
Tags: Social Science, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, Popular Culture
shoulder, wincing, gloating, his eyes lit by a galaxy of strife.
You think I exaggerate? I do but only slightly. Afterall, the obsession/addiction factor is central to the game’s success: you might even say that video-dependence is programmed into the computer.
The ‘obsession factor’ of which Amis speaks is something that is common to many types of game, not just those that are projected on a screen. The following excerpt is taken from an article titled ‘Chess-playing excitement,’ published in the July 2, 1859, issue of Scientific American .
Those who are engaged in mental pursuits should avoid a chessboard as they would an adder’s nest, because chess misdirects and exhausts their intellectual energies … It is a game which no man who depends on his trade, business or profession can afford to waste time in practicing; it is an amusement—and a very unprofitable one—which the independently wealthy alone can afford time to lose in its pursuit. As there can be no great proficiency in this intricate game without long-continued practice, which demands a great deal of time, no young man who designs to be useful in the world can prosecute it without danger to his best interests.
Like Amis, the author describes one particular player’s addict-like resolution to swear off the game.
A young gentleman of our acquaintance, who had become a somewhat skillful player, recently pushed the chessboard from him at the end of the game, declaring, ‘I have wasted too much time upon it already; I cannot afford to do this any longer; this is my last game.’ We recommendhis resolution to all those who have been foolishly led away by the present chess-excitement, as skill in this game is neither a useful nor graceful accomplishment.
In Taiwan, there have been enough café deaths that the government is no longer content with issuing mere recommendations for players to, as Scientific American puts it, ‘make this their last game.’ Government officials have developed measures to help curtail the amount of time that people play games: a more forceful kind of intervention than Nintendo’s gentle reminder of the great outdoors.
According to the section chief for the Economic Development Bureau of the Tainan City Government, the police routinely carry out spot checks after 10 p.m. on cafés to see whether there are any under-eighteens on the premises. During the summer holidays the local government now runs a Youth Project, which warns young people about the dangers of playing games for too long. The government is even in the process of drafting new regulations for Internet cafés that will decree when and for how long teenagers will be allowed to play on the premises. Similar legislation is already in place in South Korea where, in 2011, after a spate of similar deaths, the government introduced the Youth Protection Revision bill (sometimes known as the ‘Cinderella law’) which prohibits teenagers from playing online games in Internet cafés after midnight.
Films are awarded age ratings that dictate the age limits of those who are allowed to view them. But video games will perhaps be the first entertainment medium in history to inspire legislation with regard to how long a person is able to interact with them before taking a break.
Amis was right: games are somehow different. We consume a book, but a game consumes us. It leaves us reeling and bewildered, hungry and ghosted in the fug of chronoslip.
The Big Net café, where Chuang Cheng Feng died, is a small business in a quiet town on the rural outskirts of Tainan. It’s one of the only Internet cafés in the area. Months after the incident, the owner is unwilling to talk about what happened. The death on the premises has frightened away customers, she claims, many of whom believe that the cause of death was something to do with the café itself, rather than the amount of time Chuang Cheng Feng spent playing the game without interruption.
‘I am afraid that recent
You think I exaggerate? I do but only slightly. Afterall, the obsession/addiction factor is central to the game’s success: you might even say that video-dependence is programmed into the computer.
The ‘obsession factor’ of which Amis speaks is something that is common to many types of game, not just those that are projected on a screen. The following excerpt is taken from an article titled ‘Chess-playing excitement,’ published in the July 2, 1859, issue of Scientific American .
Those who are engaged in mental pursuits should avoid a chessboard as they would an adder’s nest, because chess misdirects and exhausts their intellectual energies … It is a game which no man who depends on his trade, business or profession can afford to waste time in practicing; it is an amusement—and a very unprofitable one—which the independently wealthy alone can afford time to lose in its pursuit. As there can be no great proficiency in this intricate game without long-continued practice, which demands a great deal of time, no young man who designs to be useful in the world can prosecute it without danger to his best interests.
Like Amis, the author describes one particular player’s addict-like resolution to swear off the game.
A young gentleman of our acquaintance, who had become a somewhat skillful player, recently pushed the chessboard from him at the end of the game, declaring, ‘I have wasted too much time upon it already; I cannot afford to do this any longer; this is my last game.’ We recommendhis resolution to all those who have been foolishly led away by the present chess-excitement, as skill in this game is neither a useful nor graceful accomplishment.
In Taiwan, there have been enough café deaths that the government is no longer content with issuing mere recommendations for players to, as Scientific American puts it, ‘make this their last game.’ Government officials have developed measures to help curtail the amount of time that people play games: a more forceful kind of intervention than Nintendo’s gentle reminder of the great outdoors.
According to the section chief for the Economic Development Bureau of the Tainan City Government, the police routinely carry out spot checks after 10 p.m. on cafés to see whether there are any under-eighteens on the premises. During the summer holidays the local government now runs a Youth Project, which warns young people about the dangers of playing games for too long. The government is even in the process of drafting new regulations for Internet cafés that will decree when and for how long teenagers will be allowed to play on the premises. Similar legislation is already in place in South Korea where, in 2011, after a spate of similar deaths, the government introduced the Youth Protection Revision bill (sometimes known as the ‘Cinderella law’) which prohibits teenagers from playing online games in Internet cafés after midnight.
Films are awarded age ratings that dictate the age limits of those who are allowed to view them. But video games will perhaps be the first entertainment medium in history to inspire legislation with regard to how long a person is able to interact with them before taking a break.
Amis was right: games are somehow different. We consume a book, but a game consumes us. It leaves us reeling and bewildered, hungry and ghosted in the fug of chronoslip.
The Big Net café, where Chuang Cheng Feng died, is a small business in a quiet town on the rural outskirts of Tainan. It’s one of the only Internet cafés in the area. Months after the incident, the owner is unwilling to talk about what happened. The death on the premises has frightened away customers, she claims, many of whom believe that the cause of death was something to do with the café itself, rather than the amount of time Chuang Cheng Feng spent playing the game without interruption.
‘I am afraid that recent
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