Starving For Attention

I know I've said this before in a previous blog post, so I'll try not to be redundant and change it up.  I always suspected Asians were a bit odd, different, and were addicted to electronics, but this Korean couple definitely took it to a horrifying level.

Meet Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, a Korean couple from a suburb of Seoul, who recently gave birth to a baby girl...who is now dead (starved to death) because her parents are idiots and are addicted to some stupid MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role playing game). What the acronym should mean: YWNGLIYPTTOG (you will never get laid if you play this type of game!)

This specific MMORPG game is called "Prius online" and it reminds me of the American game, "The Sims", but in this version it's like anime and the point is to...um, well, I'm not exactly sure what the point is.  Here's what the website says about the game and it's purpose:

1. Emotional Exchange System:  Anima may seem to find it hard to express her feelings at first. Let her engage in various emotional experiences with you - you’ll notice her growth and she’ll start to show her feelings to you in return. Make no mistake - your Anima is not a passive unit that simply tags along with you and follow your orders. She is your companion with her own intentions who knows how to express her feelings.

2. Your Companion Anima: You get to meet Anima like you meet your soul mate once you start adjusting yourself to the new world. You and Anima will soon reach that quiescent place where the star tree stands through heart-pounding connection with each other. It is like a fated karma that began to revive from the distant memory of eternity.


3. Emotional Awakening System: You get to meet Anima when she lost her memory and maintains only a vague state of emotions. Nonetheless, she regains her forgotten memories one by one through various experiences you share with her along the journey.


4. Intimate Bonds: The more you sympathize with your Anima, the higher the efficiency becomes for everything she does for you. Higher intimacy allows her to kick off her skills and forces swiftly for you to escape from dangerous moments.

Basically this Korean couple put all their time and effort into raising a virtual child, time and effort that should have been spent raising their real baby!  According to the The Telegraph, this couple only fed their actual 3-month old child in between 12-hour sessions of playing this game at a neighborhood internet cafe, where they were "raising" their avatar baby.  Sounds creepy to me.

The article states: "Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level.  The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named".

In September, the couple returned home from a 12-hour session to find their real child dead.  The autopsy said the baby died from prolonged malnutrition.  My question is, what is the parents' punishment going to be? I think someone should starve them to death for doing this to an innocent child all in the name of a stupid video game!

This couple found out the hard way what video games can really do to people, families, and relationships.  I know other people and couples who struggle with the issue of spending too much time playing a video game, but I've never heard of anyone actually neglecting their own child for a virtual child.  Maybe neglecting another family member for a few hours while playing a video game, sure, but not to this extent where someone dies because of it.

Chung Jin-won, a police officer in Suwon, the Seoul suburb, gave this statement to a news agency: "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".  Um, is that a fact or are you making an assumption because you don't want to believe that people are capable of something this tragic and stupid?

I don't think they lost the will to live; clearly, they could get up and get ready for the internet cafe and had the will to live to take care of their avatar child.  And they didn't have jobs because they spent 12 hours at the internet cafe!  I think that's an excuse to cover their own asses.  But what does this baby being a premature baby have to do with anything?  


I have to admit, I personally enjoy playing video games. I have a PS2, a Nintendo Wii, and a PSP.  But my gameplay is under control. My relationships aren't neglected, nor do I waste an entire day playing a game.  There's more to life than a virtual world.


But for those of you people out there who have the tendency to get obsessed with games, or if you are feeling lonely and need to find a companion, check out the Prius game website and take care of your own anime child.  Just don't neglect your own child or other relationships because of it! No one should die because you were too addicted to a video game.

See also: "Cyber Marriage". Weird how these two blog posts intertwine so well together.