Awhile back, in Wii Is Dangerous, I reported that some British doctors are expecting more Wii-related injuries this holiday. However, you don’t need to be careless or over-enthusiastic with a Wii to hurt yourself playing a game.
Over at Destructoid, megaStryke writes about “Games That Destroy Us”. The title may be a little over the top (although appropriate to the site name); no one, so far as we know, has ever been “destroyed” by playing a game. Hurt, that’s another matter.
He looks at three games, one of which is mechanical: the arm-wrestling machine in Japan that broke some arms before it was taken off the market. The other two, though, are video games. One you’ve probably heard of before. You’ll have to follow the link to see what they are.
Of course, you can give yourself some pain just by playing too much. I’ve had times in the past when my right arm started hurting, usually because I was at Diablo 2 a bit too long.
Oddly, I never had that problem in the good old Apple days. For all the hours I spent at the keyboard, there was never any pain in my arm, or hands. Maybe it has something to do with the mouse, and using just two fingers on those buttons.
In any case, check out the article. Did you ever play a computer game that caused you pain, or even a real injury?
Does Carpal Tunnel Syndrome count? not that I have one but its just a thought LOL. I had friend though, it was way way back then when he was playing Tristan Pinball (Does anybody remember that game?) on the computer. He got so frustrated by not beating the high score hat he yelled at the computer for cheating and punched the monitor and broke his hand, Luckily the monitor was unharmed LOL
hours at the keyboard on apple //?
i recall catching a train to go to Uttrech just to get a trackball for my apple // back in 83. so mouse/track balls were around for a long time. it was more the windows III enivornment that copied the Mac OS that made mouse clicking what it is.
the original warlords 95 dallas con purchase played for 17 hours straight. had to tape two fingers together for the final hour so i’d have enough finger strength to mouse click.
I never had CP trouble prior to the early 90’s yet I played more hours each day previously (I entered university in ’91).
Before that I had an IBM PC, Apple ][, and Com 64.
I think the difference was when games became primarily real time and you had to keep your fingers poised on the keys to instantly react to changes in events. (Thank you Doom) Prior to that you only typed when you needed to do something. Even Elite wasn’t that pervasive in it’s keyboard intensity given the easy left/right-up/down movement scheme.
I just finished a 4 hour bout of playing Fallout 3 with it’s WASD + multiple keyboard combos. My left arm is hurting.
I don’t remember that feeling at all from my years in pre-1991 gaming.
good point, real time constant action vrs type some and then ponder get a drink check the main and then respond, MAKES one heck of a difference
sturm, ouch! He’s lucky that just his hand broke. Hate to think what would have happened if he’d gone through the glass. I’ve had feelings like that myself, but I’ve managed to restrain myself ;)
Ag, that’s dedication. Also, madness ;) And how was your hand after that little marathon? How long before you could use it normally again?
TW, hmmm. Interesting thought, but I’m not so sure. After all, in games like Wizardry, Ultima, etc., you were always hitting a key to move, or turn around. Plenty of finger action there. I still think it has to be the mouse and those two buttons.
Part of the reason that I never went gaga over X-Com was its insane amount of necessary mouse maneuvers and resulting RSI. My shoulder and wrist would hurt after a day of playing it for more than a few hours. Joysticks and wheels will thankfully give you blisters–aka “Hey, stupid, stop playing!”–before RSI, but mice won’t. The concave American style of coin-op button also promotes blisters. Japanese arcades and joysticks use convex buttons.
If I’d liked the Bigfoot 4×4 coin-op very much, it would have done bad things to my wrists and fingers, thanks to its Track & Field-style method of generating speed by rapidly alternating on two buttons.
Punching through the glass of a CRT is awfully unlikely. One of my idiot neighbors recently threw a TV not much larger than a computer monitor into the complex’s compactor dumpster. The resulting compaction cycle revealed glass easily an inch thick. Even with glass thickness varying with the square of CRT size, that’s still at least half an inch of glass on a typical computer monitor.
I started having some wrist pain issues on my Atari ST and Amiga in the mid 80s. I switched to using trackballs where I am only moving my thumb instead of the entire wrist to move the pointer and have not had any issues since. I still continue to use a Logitech Trackman Wheel to this day at home and work.