Free time
Some people have too much of it.
We all know gamers spend too long on their consoles, but even the craziest of enthusiasts tend to hit the sack when the sun rises. Bedtime, however, was the last thing on one madcap Australian's mind this week, as he attempted to set a world record for the longest videogame marathon known to man. Retail worker Okan Kaya played …
I remember listening to a British round-the-world solo yachtsman on the radio, talking about never sleeping for too long because of the need to avoid other vessels or deal with weather situations. Twenty minutes here, maybe an hour if he was lucky.
He said that he had sponsorship from the USAF, I think collected data on himself too, since they wanted data about sleep deprivation and alertness, so that combat flight rosters could be most effectively drawn-up.
I'd love to see a graph plotting his K:D ratio during the course of this record. I'd imagine it'd look like a slightly less steep backslash.
Otherwise, good on him. Being called a "fag", "gay", "loser" and whatever other insults squeaky American children hurl down their microphone for that amount of time takes some determination.
I used to, from 97-00 play Longbow Apache, and other flight sims. Then, I learned about Half Life, and played the hell out of it. Later came Counterstrike, along with the frackin cheaters who sucked the soul out of fair players. Soldier of Fortune became more fun, on or offline. On some Fridays, i would get home around 9pm after a 1.5 hour drive to home from work. After showering and eating, i would play CS from around 2230 through Saturdy, nap maybe a couple of hours, then resume through Sunday 2200 or so, to try to climb into bed to be to work by Noon on Monday. I usually punctuated game play by going to the store, to get out of the house, to get food, fresh outdoors air, and daylight.
But, the end came when on a few occasions in 2004/2001 i felt something like OBE or soul-shifting going on. Playing on autopilot, blacking out, and not have the sensation of possessing a body became too scary. Havent done rpg since maybe 2004, maybe 8 hours across several sessions, and do not really miss it. Well, Longbow was fun, but my discs got scratched, and that ended that.
C'mon, that allows him 4 hours per 24 for sleep and bathroom breaks! I typically only sleep 5-6 hours a night (without needing an alarm or caffeine) and can get by on less when needed. While I know that's not common, it's certainly not all that rare, either. I imagine even people who need more like 6-8 hours for a proper rest could get by on 3 1/2 a night for a week if they really wanted.
This "record" doesn't seem too hard to beat, except that you'd get bored out of your mind playing a game for six days straight. I'm not a gamer so I have no idea how hard it may be to keep your concentration that long, but the record doesn't appear to require you to play well, only to play.
Why do I think there are people reading this forum who have beat this record over Christmas break but didn't have anyone around to vouch for them?