by Amir Hafizi
 |
| Pix credit: http://news.mmogamesite.com |
Recently, I got hooked with a game called Call
of Gods by Koramgame and for the first time ever, I spent RM20 to buy virtual
gold coins. What did I do with the gold? Sacrificed one of my heroes to level
up another one.
It was thrilling, to have some ‘gold coins’
that only money can buy (no in-game mechanics allow you to get gold coins), and
pretty soon, I spent another RM50 to sacrifice another hero and buy materials
with which I can transmute into some great equipment.
I have officially joined the millions of
people who spent anywhere between just under a billion US dollars to over US$10
billion on online games, depending on which expert you talk to. Thankfully, I
am neither dead nor have an inclination to kill someone who plundered my
in-game castle repeatedly several weeks back (I’m talking about YOU, InsaneZ! I
know where you live(in-game)!).
This - death related to online games -
happens quite a bit, really.
In May 20101, a couple in South
Korea - Kim Yun-jeong (25-years old) and Kim Jae-beom (41) were sentenced to
two years in prison because of negligent homicide. The couple was convicted of
neglecting their three-month-old daughter in order to raise a virtual magical
‘daughter’ on Prius Online.
Well, when you weigh down the two, the
child on Prius Online doesn’t crap stinking piles of Sith, doesn’t cry at
frequencies unpleasant to human ears and if it does, you can always use the
mute button and is magical.
That is as crazy as the FarmVille lady.
Alexander V Tobias from Florida shook her baby twice, according to her own
confession2, because the 12-year-old was interrupting her from
playing Farmville. Wow. Those virtual cows and chickens must be really
desirable.
 |
| Pix credit: http://blogs-images.forbes.com |
Police ruled exhaustion as cause of death.
Really? And this is just internet games, right, not the other thing?
In 2005,
another Chinese man was stabbed to death in a row over a sword in online game
Legends of Mir 3. Shanghai gamer Qiu Chengwei killed
player Zhu Caoyuan when he discovered he had sold a "dragon sabre" he
had been loaned, reported a daily newspaper in China4. Qiu was sentenced
to life.
 |
| Pix credit: myopera.com |
That sounds pretty normal NOW, but get
this, before he attacked Zhu, Qiu actually reported the theft of the virtual
sword to the police! Of course, the police in China thought it was not their
thing since the item in question doesn’t really exist.
Imagine going up to a police officer and
say, “Officer, someone stole my dragon sabre!” That takes balls, and now we
know where the idea for that episode of The Big Bang Theory came from.
Going through the news, you can find many
similar stories. Some crazy, maladjusted people going crazy over a few pixels
and start killing people, or they get so addicted, they play those games till
they die. Of ‘exhaustion’.
Then there are those who lose thousands to
Online Games, spending real money to buy fake virtual money. Zynga and its
cohorts are simply printing money. Hey, it’s like post-Nixon America - and one
of the reasons the world economy is dying!
Anyway, it’s almost time to go home now,
where I can again search for that elusive purple-level axe for my heroes, and
procure the pretty pictures with virtual gold coins which I paid with real,
hard-earned cash.
Hey! You've won a ride back to the top
0 comments: