

Other reports cited homicide or suicide cases, where video games were involved in the motivation. In the past two decades, year by year, reports could be read about people dying during playing video games, mostly young ones who had been playing for an extremely long period. But attraction sometimes escalates to obsession or addiction. Today video games provide relaxation and entertainment for billions with challenges to fulfill, new experiences to meet and new frontiers to explore. It mostly occurs in young males and it is often characterized by extremely long gaming time. Incidence of non-violent death cases linked to playing video games is presumably very low. Long sedentary position and dehydration may precipitate thromboembolism, acute blood pressure elevation during gaming may promote cerebral hemorrhage, and several factors (including acute and chronic sleep deprivation, exhaustion, stress) can lead to acute autonomic dysfunction and fatal arrhythmia. The cause of death was pulmonary embolism in 5 cases, cerebral hemorrhage in 2 cases, most of the rest was presumably due to fatal cardiac arrhythmia. In 18 cases the gaming session before death was extremely long (around a day or even several days) with minimal rest. Gamers played action-rich multiplayer games. More than half of the cases originated from Southeast Asia, and 12 deaths happened in internet cafes. Twenty-three of the victims were male, age ranged from 11 to 40 years.

ResultsĢ4 cases were found: one from 1982, the others between 20.

MethodsĬases were collected through internet search with general keywords, with ones specific to identified cases, and by working along cross references. We investigated such cases, looking for common characteristics, connection between gaming and death, and the possible reasons leading to death. Rarely, media reports about people, who have died during playing video games, but thus far no systematic, scientific study is available about the topic. Internet gaming disorder (IGD) is an emerging problem.
