videogame epilepsy

[thecyke]

Just participating in a thread on my forum about seizures caused by gaming. Nowadays warnings are standard, but back when it was news i`m convinced people tried to sue some gaming companies. Does anybody know anything of the results? And has anybody ever seen figures on how many people are affected by this? Is there more than one form of epilepsy? Was it all blown out of proportion?

cheers,
cyke

webbie of The Last Outpost
www.classicgaming.com/thelastoutpost

[Mike Cathcart]

Well, I got tendonitis playing Warcraft III, let me know if that counts for anything (other than me being a complete dork).

[xahlt]

I will forego a "carpal tunnel syndrome playing Virtual Valerie" joke.

This is one of those issues that always causes big sensation for a day's worth of headlines and then disappears utterly. I remember the same thing happening many years ago when the local news did a report on Pokemon (before it was big) which had scenes that were supposed to give Japanese children seizures. The next year they showed the cartoons and I could never figure out whether scenes were deleted or what, because stuff flashed and flickered like crazy from what I could tell.

I've never known what to think. On the one hand, maybe this is a serious medical issue. On the other hand, as far as I know it might be completely bogus. What I do know is that the sensation seems far more important when these things are being reported on than giving the facts of what happened.

[Bub, Andrew]

It's a big enough issue that all game manuals have epilepsy warnings. Really. Look for it. But I've never heard of an electronics manufacturer being held at fault for it.

The Simpsons riffed on the Japanese thing really well a couple years ago.

[Mark Bussman]

Knife goes in! Guts come out! :lol:

[thecyke]

I can recall sensationalist headlines on local lowbrow papers such as The Sun saying "Nintendo killed my child" and similar.