quote
"Notable deaths
Globally, there have been deaths caused directly by exhaustion from playing games for excessive periods of time. There have also been deaths of gamers and/or others related to playing of video games.
China
In 2007, it was reported that Xu Yan died in Jinzhou after playing online games persistently for over 15 days during the Lunar New Year holiday. Later 2007 reports indicated that a 30-year-old male died in Guangzhou after playing video games continuously for three days.
In June 2005, one news agency reported, "Xiao Yi was thirteen when he threw himself from the top of a twenty-four story tower block in his home town, leaving notes that spoke of his addiction and his hope of being reunited with fellow cyber-players in heaven. The suicide notes were written through the eyes of a gaming character ..."
In March 2005, the BBC reported a murder in Shanghai, when Qiu Chengwei fatally stabbed fellow player Zhu Caoyuan, who had sold on eBay a dragon sabre sword he had been lent in a Legend of Mir 3 game, and was given a suspended death sentence.
South Korea
In 2005, Seungseob Lee (Hangul: 이승섭
visited an Internet cafe in the city of Taegu and played StarCraft almost continuously for fifty hours. He went into cardiac arrest, and died at a local hospital. A friend reported: "...he was a game addict. We all knew about it. He couldn't stop himself." About six weeks before his death, his girlfriend, also an avid gamer, broke up with him, and he had been fired from his job for repeated tardiness.
Vietnam
An Earthtimes.org article reported in 2007 that police arrested a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering and robbing an 81-year-old woman. A local policeman was quoted as saying that the boy "...confessed that he needed money to play online games and decided to kill and rob..." the victim. The article further related a police report that the murder by strangling netted the thief 100,000 Vietnamese dong (US$6.20).
United States
Press reports in November 2005 state that Gregg J. Kleinmark, 24, plead "guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter". He "left fraternal twins Drew and Bryn Kleinmark unattended in a bathtub for 30 minutes, in order to go three rooms away and play on his Game Boy Advance" while "in the mean time, the two ten-months old kids drowned".
Tyrone Spellman, 27, of Philadelphia, was convicted of third-degree murder for killing his 17-month old daughter in a rage over a broken Xbox.
Ohio teen Daniel Petric shot his parents, killing his mother, after they took away his copy of Halo 3 in October 2007. In a sentencing hearing after the teen was found guilty of aggravated murder, the judge said, "I firmly believe that Daniel Petric had no idea at the time he hatched this plot that if he killed his parents they would be dead forever." On 16 June 2009, Petric was sentenced to 23 years to life in prison.
Canada
Brandon Crisp, an Ontario 15-year-old, ran away from home on Thanksgiving Monday in 2008 after his parents took away his Xbox 360 due to falling grades and excessive play of Call of Duty 4. He was last seen alive on a bicycle trail. His body was found weeks later, about three miles away, by a party of hunters. An autopsy determined that he died when he fell from a tree. /endquote
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction#Notable_deaths
that aside, tons of people have lost their jobs, been fivorced or left by their partners, have gone into deep depressions, etc, over video games. i know a dude in japan legally married a video game character.
so id say sure. whether people like it or not, anything that can take your mind out reality whether it be virtual or not, is potentially addictive, even to the point of mortality.
