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There are more stories like this. Writer Simon Parkin collected some of them, alongside other accounts of video gaming obsession, in his 2015 book Death By Video Game (you can read an excerpt from it on VICE). It details how these tragedies date back to the 1980s, and video gaming's birth into the commercial mainstream and popular culture. This is not a new thing—video gaming has been claiming victims for decades.Addiction comes in many forms, and games can be every bit as compelling as the next hit of whatever it is your veins "need" so much might be. But until now, gaming has been an activity primarily carried out with external distractions very much in evidence. You look at a screen, but that screen is in a room, a room full of other things, perhaps other people, friends or family who can pull you out of the unreality. Solitary sorts who plough tens of hours into games in complete privacy might not have the luxury of someone to tell them when enough is enough, but even they will typically appreciate when it's dawn, when the cat comes into the room hungry, or when there's a knock at the door because the postman can't fit your new statuette based on some niche gaming franchise through the letterbox.This is not a new thing—video gaming has been claiming victims for decades.
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You may think that masturbating more than usual is not a massive problem, but, according to neuropsychiatrist Dr. Valerie Voon of the University of Cambridge, sexual addiction, both physical and via porn, causes the same changes in the brain as drug addiction. You need it. You crave it. And you will do anything to get that next orgasmic high. You'll abandon obligations, and you'll push human closeness aside. It's overwhelming to even think about the possibilities of what can be experienced in VR, and the private nature of masturbation combined with the isolation that VR provides will encourage people to experiment. We've already had reports of a guy plugging into VR porn for 12 hours straight and passing out as he mixed a headset with self-administered erotic asphyxiation. That's an illustration of the power of VR: It can manifest a perfect fantasy for you to experience in the same way you experience reality, just without any of the bullshit. So why leave it?VR is the definition of escapism. The positive potential for the medium is manifold—those struck down by paralysis might "move" again, and the opportunities for training in safe, VR environments stretches from car repair to heart surgery via basic home DIY and plumbing. It could do wonders for people suffering from PTSD, bipolar disorder, and eating problems. VR is not to be demonized before it's really started to impact upon the everyman. But at the same time, the warnings of addiction, of becoming completely lost in a virtual world, need to be heeded. Because through VR, we can all choose a different life for ourselves, and those choices could, not just theoretically, lead to deaths. And the development community is aware of this. In 2014, the creative director of Cloudhead Games, Denny Unger, commented on the risk of playing a horror game in VR: "We're very close to having the first death in VR. I firmly believe that. Somebody is going to scare somebody to death—somebody with a heart condition or something like that. It is going to happen. Absolutely."Buy up your VR headsets and explore all these new worlds. This technology should be embraced. It's an exciting new frontier for gaming and so very far beyond. But take care of yourselves, too. History tells us terrible stories about video gaming addiction and how any kind of compulsive habit can mess us up, even kill us where we sit. Nobody wants to be reading about the first guy to die from spending too long in VR anytime soon. But as the reports from Korea, Taiwan, and Russia prove, technology that benefits our everyday life, entertainment at that, can in exceptional circumstances become a mortal enemy.Follow Alex Tisdale on Twitter.Sexual addiction, both physical and via porn, causes the same changes in the brain as drug addiction.