I don't mean the kind of sick you feel from watching the Hour of Victory trailer.

When I was about 11 years old I played Ultima 4 for 29 straight hours. By the time it was over, I was running a fever along with severe nausea. I had dreams about roaming the black and white universe of Ultima and trying to solve some riddle. It was an endless loop. I was slipping into madness.

Flash forward to around 1996 or so. I played Quake online for nearly 48 hours. The same symptoms put an end to the fragging for almost a week. I dreamt of headshots and trying to capture a flag that I could never quite touch. In my dreams my modem kept disconnecting.

Rainbow Six:Vegas. While the challenges of raising 3 kids prevent me from pulling any more 12+ hour gaming sessions, I have been startled by the sunrise on more than one occasion while playing Vegas. At the end of these sessions, I feel traces of "the sickness". I feel hot, and ever-so-nauseated. I keep thinking I hear motion sensors going off.

My questions for you are:

1. Have you ever gamed so much that you became physically ill? I believe that's what happened to me on several occasions. I have heard other gamers talk about similar experiences.
2. If this is a real ailment, what should we call it?
3. Do you have a secret for shaking it?

Please share your stories and ideas on our forums. If you haven't already done so, take 2 seconds and register.

If I watch someone else play a FPS game, there's a high liklihood I'll get nauseous. If I play it myself (first), I won't. After getting that way from watching someone else play, even if I take over, it's too late... kinda like sea sickness... once it's there, game over man...

On a side note, I was managing a video store when the N64 first came out and I actually had an employee call in sick because Mario 64 was giving her motion sickness. I told her to STOP PLAYING and come in when she felt better (ie. an hour or so). Ha ha ha... she thought she'd get the whole night off. What a wonderful boss I was. ;D

I once played through Enter the Matrix twice as each character (Niobe and Ghost) in one sitting. It was probably about a 16 hour session or more, not really sure. Anyway, after I was done I quite realistically started seeing things in a slow-mo Matrix way, as if I was in the Focus Mode-for those familiar with the game. It was cool for the first few minutes and then I felt like I was going insane. The sensation wasn't constant luckily, it just came in waves-I guess my focus meter had to recharge. Thankfully it all went away after a nice three hour nap. To this day though I refuse to play Enter the Matrix, despite actually LIKING the game a fair ammount.

Once I over dosed on caffeine...

I had around 2 or 3 Rockit Juice things
1 vamp
1 of lil jons drink
and pretty sure a pimp juice or two

all on an empty stomach

when i tried to go to sleep I dreamed that I was in a never ending fighting game that had some sort of virus in it that took control of my mind.

After having those "false wake up" things where you think you wake up but you really havent around 87565 times I forced myself awake....

I went back to sleep later and had the same dream but since this time I knew what to expect it wasn't as trippy haha

Oh yeah and I used to play ddr alot... I'd see arrows going up every time I closed my eyes

Believe it or not, this is actually quite common, and not just with video games. When I was first starting to play Dance Dance Revolution (DDR), something similar happened to me. After I got into the game and began enjoying it, I would play in 6 hour spurts. I noticed that after playing, I would close my eyes and see tons of arrows. When I went to sleep, I would have dreams of thousands of arrows flying upward, and I would be unable to control them. After doing some research, I found I was not the only one to experience this, and there is an actual medical reason for this phenomenon...

What happens is when you do something new excessively (like play a video game), your brain is learning something new, and needs to convert a lot of information from short term memory to long term memory. Because the information you are taking in is very large, it can cause a major tax on your brain, and can cause your brain to "lax" on your more mundane body functions (like heart rate, for example). This could lead to fever and a physical feeling of nausea. As you continue the same actions (like play a game over and over again), eventually your brain will convert all the necessary information to long-term memory. At that point, you will no longer have dreams of "inescapable dungeons" or "death by arrows" because everything that is needed for you to know the game inside and out is already permanently stored.

Think of it this way: When you FIRST start playing a video game, you solely rely on your ability to react to situations, solve problems, learn maps and item locations, all the while learning the controls. It's here that your brain needs to learn and store a lot of information quickly. After a while of playing, you know the controls without thinking, all item locations and physical map layouts are recalled without a moments notice, you have a good general idea of how to solve the problems within the game, and (in my case, with DDR), you are no longer merely reacting to what you see on the screen (ex: "Oh, an 'up' arrow. That means I need to put my left foot on the top panel quickly to hit it...") . You can act quickly without thinking (ex: moving your foot to the 'up' arrow pad just by seeing a quick glance of an 'up arrow' in the specific location on the screen without telling your foot to move).

As far as a name for this ailment (other than just 'learning'), I suppose I would call it VG NOOB Syndrome. Only 2 known cures: (1) Give up playing video games (like that will really ever happen), or (2) Play more!

I know this was a long post, especially for my first one ever to this forum. Hope I was at least able to shed some light on the subject, though!

I have an addiction to Blizzard's Starcraft. Even though it's gotten a lot better I was up playing it for about 30 hours straight once upon a time. After I was done going through the struggle of logging I stood up to find myself dizzy and feeling like ass. On the way to my bed I started sweating and got the shakes. I realized i felt horrible 'cause I had not eaten and barely drank anything for that long. I made a smart decision and stopped by the bathroom to yak up all of the nothing I had in my stomach. The moral is that yes, I believe that enough playtime can cause health problems. It happens though you know? I didn't learn my lesson though, I discovered Warcraft and the new C&C!!! WOOHOO!!!

I too have suffered from dizzyness, headaches, massive reconstructed visions of games hours through, prince of persia, FFX, ocarina of time. as well as others. *I don't recall the hours, per say, only that it was all day and into the night. *

lets process the symptoms:
fever
tiredness
nausea
delusions

I think its safe to assume, that dispite the game brand, similar symptoms rage from too many hours spent "in the zone". *I doubt its a virus or bacteria, as there are too many games to infest, which rules out government mindslave bacteria and zombification. *
here's a list of what medically qualifies under these realms which I think are the culprits:
Dehydration- I don't think fragging some newb with rockets 24/7 gives you enough fluids, other than batheing in the blood of your enemies. *Remember you need water to live, not a time of 0:00 in the stupid choccobo racing game!
Overstimulation-the brain sends out endorphins when you have fun, endorphins make you happy, but to much can wreck your neural network, and it will need time to restore those brain juices. *Also, the AMA's reason why games are being classified as addictive is cause of endophins, paving the way for other addictions like exercise, sports fan cheering, sex, stripper fan cheering, pleasurable music, and pain. *Though they'll never tell you that "fun" is the reason why they're going to put medical warnings on your games in the future; like a cigarette packs.
Exhaustion-when you're excited your heart races, like a mario cart liced with golden scrooms. *But you can't stay in top gear without stress. *blood flow increases, causing normal bodily fuctions to be put off. *Functions like: kidney filtering, liver detoxification, neural chemical restoration, digestion, norton immune system updates & saving your game. *Well that's gonna make all those billions of viruses you got from Dr. Mario years ago run loose like it was black friday on your body. *

In closing I'd like to stress that you play more and more, until you crash. *This is how man evolves; by stressing, and rechanneling. *That guy who plays for days, is stronger, healther, & better than you cause he can take that abuse and push himself to the limits. *That beer gut is stored fury, waiting for you to slip up, hours or days from now. *The more you survive, the better you are, like the true Spartan warrior you are.
"our chief, who areth in halo, master be thy name"
"they kill count come, they slays be done"
"on earth as it is in box canyon"

I was stuck in a 7 hour capture flag match while playing Halo. Oddly enough, my only symptoms were blurred vision from looking at the snow covered ground of Sidewinder.

I doubt games are really the cause, though I don't doubt that you can get nausea from too much tv, you symptoms sounded similar to what happens when people try to watch all three Lord of the Rings movies in a row, or every single star wars movie.

That beer gut is stored fury, waiting for you to slip up, hours or days from now. The more you survive, the better you are, like the true Spartan warrior you are.


Lol

In life just about everything can be bad for you if u do it too much (u have a dirty dirty mind)

drink too much coffee u get sick
watch too much tv u strain ur eyes
drink too much water you can die
eat too much food u get sick
drive too much n u get car sick
stay away from home too long u get home sick (lol)
do too much cocain n u OD
eat too many babbies n ur neighbors start to get suspicious

.....i think i've said too much......

anyways, no video games dont make u sick, playing video games essessively makes you sick

Lumines really comes to mind when I think games that make me sick. It got to a point where for three days, everytime I closed my eyes, falling little squares were coming down across my eyelids. And any sort of pattern in real life, even remotely looking like Lumines, I would instantly try to figure out the best way to make it fit with everything else.

Anytime that happened, I started feeling sick to my stomach like I could not escape this damn game.

Playing games (and watching me play) has been known to make my wife sick (some form of vertigo mixed with sheer frustration, as far as I can tell), but I can't say the same for myself. :P

Sure, I get exhausted from staying up until 1am for a week straight, but that is hardly an issue with the game, it's just my dumb arse not going to bed early enough.