Solo Zen Master - Page 26

Online gaming is treated like a sport in many countries, especially South Korea

A man has died after reportedly playing the online computer game StarCraft II for weeks straight with extremely minimal breaks.

The 22-year-old man collapsed after playing the game Starcraft II at his private apartment located in New York, according to the local authorities.

The man had not slept properly, and had eaten very little during his marathon session, said police.

The man, identified by his gaming handle, Pennoyer, started playing Starcraft II on July 29. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.

"We presume the cause of death was heart failure stemming from exhaustion," a police official told the Reuters news agency.

He was taken to hospital following his collapse, but died shortly after, according to the police. It is not known whether he suffered from any previous health conditions.

They added that he had recently been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play computer games.

According to his close friends, Pennoyer was desperately addicting to playing 1v1 ladder matches in order to accumulate wins. They added that he was trying to win an online "achievement" called Solo Zen Master, which is awarded only after a player wins four thousand games.

Sources have indicated that a contest on gaming community TeamLiquid.net sparked the deadly addiction. The contest administrator was offering $2000 to the first person to win the Solo Zen Master achievement. Due to this unfortunately tragedy, the contest is now over.

Multi-player gaming is extremely popular thanks to its addiction factor the world's rapidly expanding broadband network. More popular games, such as StarCraft, have created an "e-Sports" following. Professional games are televised and the players are treated, as well as paid, like sports stars.

On August 25 2010 23:30 CrackedShot wrote:
Anyone else google it? even though they knew it was fake.

On August 25 2010 23:38 shinigami wrote:
Fayth is legit, and is a respected elder here on TL.net.

That being said, I think cheese should be allowed since this will directly encourage anti-cheese builds and help raise the level of play in the end.

On August 25 2010 23:38 shinigami wrote:
Fayth is legit, and is a respected elder here on TL.net.

That being said, I think cheese should be allowed since this will directly encourage anti-cheese builds and help raise the level of play in the end.

On August 25 2010 23:56 TurpinOS wrote:


Thanks for that, no one knew that fayth is legit, maybe a mod should add this in the OP so everyone knows.

On August 25 2010 23:54 shawabawa wrote:

yeah...doesn't mean it doesn't absolutely suck for him to change the rules of a competition when someone is 1000 wins into it.

and again, does he really expect someone to save the replays for all 3000 wins? It's ridiculous. He's pretty much just admitted he didn't expect anyone to do it and he doesn't want to pay out.

edit: I mean you have 180 days to do this. You need 3000 wins. That's on average 16.66 wins per day. at 50% (which you almost certainly will be) that's ~35 games/day.

Without cheesing, a very short average game length is 10 mins, probably closer to 15 but let's say 10. Thats pretty much 6 hours a day for 6 months. Nobody is going to make that and he knows it. Even pro's probably don't spend 6 hours a day *laddering*. That 6 hours is game time ignoring search time/watching replays/eating/breaks/customs/everything, not even some korean (again arbitrarily excluded) playing 12 hours a day will make this.

Somebody found a good way of getting wins fast, he realises "shit this guy's going to make it", so he changes the rules to make it even more impossible.