K&AJones

From Yahoo News....

The family of a budding computer programmer have on Saturday launched a campaign to raise awareness about the health risks of playing online computer games after their son died following a marathon session on his Xbox.

A post-mortem revealed that 20-year-old Chris Staniforth -- who was offered a place to study Game Design at Leicester University -- was killed by a pulmonary embolism, which can occur if someone sits in the same position for several hours.


Full story here....

http://news.yahoo.com/xbox-addict-di...111934041.html

Liver&Onions

Great, now we're going to get the "Maybe you should take a break" notifications in all games, not just Kinect or 3DS ones.

Groucho

This would never have happened if he was a Playstation addict!

The network would have gone down 3-4 times during that 20 hour period, forcing a break.

Supermallet

redcat

Title Fixed: "Xbox addict dies from being too stupid to move around once in awhile - gene pool breathes a huge sigh of relief"

nickdawgy

They do this in WoW, too.

But yeah, 12 hours in front of your Xbox? Get a life.

nickdawgy

pinata242

On the flip-side, maybe I can use this to do even less work at work.

MoviePage

I've spent many marathon sessions of 12 hours or more playing videogames, especially during the summer season, so this is a valid concern for me.

RocShemp

Osiris3657

and your gamerscore backs that up Jesus dude, do you even have a job? I can't figure out how you could have a full time job and also have the time necessary to accumulate that kind of number.

I'm not impressed by people with gamerscores in the six figures, I just pity them.

pinata242

This is why I stopped just shy. I need your love. You seem like a swell and unassuming person and I want to be just like you when I grow up.

MoviePage

Yes, yes I do.

I'm sorry that you can't figure that out.

Cool!

PopcornTreeCt

At least he died doing something that he loved.

Edit: Cool gamer score, Moviepage. Mine is hovering around in the 40k range.

For anyone that doesn't understand, one word: Gamefly. If I had kept up my subscription I could easily be at 100k+.

glassdragon

I have the unlimited out in store plan at blockbuster so I can get 5 to 7 games a month. Just because someone has a high score doesn't mean they bought all those games, and some games are easy score, who are we to say what they should and shouldn't do with their free time lol

Decker

From a medical standpoint, throwing a pulmonary embolism would be extremely uncommon in a 20 year old, unless he was actually bedridden. One prolonged gaming session wouldn't do much, unless he was in a hypercoagulable state -- smoking can do this, as can taking birth control pills (though I assume and hope he wasn't doing that). Perhaps he was morbidly obese and lived a very sedentary lifestyle. Certain people have a genetic condition that can cause for hypercoagulability (kind of the opposite of hemophilia). Certain cancers can cause it as well. In any event, as with most "video games are evil" news stories, there's more to this one than meets the eye.

That said, Movie Page, taking one baby aspirin a day might not be such a bad idea for you. Along with the occasional game breaks to stretch your legs.

Drexl

Yeah, I bet if this was really a problem we would hear about it more often. And I'm sure this could never happen with television, only video games, right?

MoviePage

Mmm...baby aspirin. Wait, are those flavored? I can't remember.

Anyway, most of my time away from gaming is spent reading or sitting at a desk, so that probably doesn't help with this issue.

Thanks, and yes, I've played many games through Gamefly, although the deals that are frequently posted here don't hurt (help?) either. I freely admit that it's a hobby that can get out of hand, and I'm always aware that I could probably be doing better things with that time.

Michael Corvin

I'd say time is a much larger factor than a rental service.

I'm not there yet, if you got a 360 at launch you are looking at completing 16 games a year in that time. Barely more than one a month. It's not that big a stretch.

Decker

Orange. More accurately : that artificial fake orange flavor that doesn't taste anything like an actual orange, but you know that was the flavor they were shooting for. Anyway it was delicious. Which isn't that great a thing when you're targeting a medicine at little kids that can cause bleeding dyscrasias and gastric ulcers when overdosed.
We don't officially call it Baby Aspirin any more; it's "low-dose aspirin" now. We don't give any aspirin to children at all any more out of concerns for Reyes disease -- even though it's pretty controversial whether aspirin and Reyes are actually causally related at all.


Very long-winded answer, I know.

edstein

I don't see the difference between playing a video game console for 10 hours or sitting behind my computer at work for the same time steady every day of week. Leave us gamers alone, sheesh.

majorjoe23

Didn't this guy ever get up to take a piss? Someone needed to walk to the bathroom every few hours instead of refilling old Mt Dew bottles.

Cusm

Even when I was in full out WoW Raiding mode, I would get up to use the bathroom, get food/drink, go out for a smoke, no excuse for sitting that long.

orangecrush

There are times when I wish I was a single teacher, just so I could play countless hours of videogames in the summer...

dom56

I had blood clot on my left leg last year and it's was painful to walk. Had to get surgery and spend a week at the hospital. After that I had to take blood thinner drug for six months til my doctor told me to stop and take aspirin a day. He said I should take a walk for two hours cause he believe that sitting down and playing video game or watching tv all day is what causing the blood clot to form.