Two parents in South Korea were obsessed with online MMO Prius Online they would go to a internet cafe for upwards of 12 hours a day during which they would raise a virtual character named Anima. They loved Anima and played with the character every day, I'm not familiar with Prius Online so I can't speak to specific details other then what authorities and journalists have reported.
Well apparently the parents would feed their three month old baby once a day in between trips to the net cafe. The baby ended up dying from neglect and the parents were arrested for their neglegance.
"The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life, because they didn't have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby," said Chung Jin-won, a police officer."They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby."
Professor Kwak Dae-kyung of Seoul's Dongguk University in talking with Yonhap News Agency concluded that the couple appears to have been dragged out of reality, losing all sense of what is real and not."Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world. It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter." The Proffessor is urging the Government to work on programs that will help online addicts and allow them to be reported so that they can recieve treatment and prevent a horrible instance like this from re-occuring. "This kind of situation is not a problem that an individual can solve,"
-JC7
"In God We Trust - In Games We Play " - Joel Reimer
