StarCraft remained popular for years following its debut in 1998. It has been one of the top real-time strategy choices for extremely hardcore and professional gamers. These gamers take StarCraft very seriously. If you’ve seen videos of gamers engaged in an online match, you already know how incredibly focused they can be. Their fingers move so fast, you could swear the video was being sped up. However there is a problem with videogame addiction in Korea. Some gamers are known to literally play themselves to death. This prompted South Korean psychiatrists to figure out a way to treat videogame addiction.

A US Army press release sent out earlier this week (January 17, 2008) is crediting Paxton Galvanek, twenty-eight, with saving a life last year because of skills he received while playing America’s Army, a first-person shooter based on and funded by the US military.

On November 23, 2007, Galvanek witnessed a sports utility vehicle loose control while driving west on I-40 in North Carolina with his family. Galvanek was able to remove two men from the wreckage and administer first aid to one of the passengers who had lost two fingers. America’s Army project director Colonel Casey Wardynski had this to say ((IN THE PRESS RELEASE?)) regarding Galvanek’s actions that day:

Because of the training he received in [the] America’s Amry virtual classroom, Mr. Galvanek had mastered the basics of first aid and had the confidence to take appropriate action when others might do nothing. He took the initiative to assess the situation, prioritize actions and apply the correct procedures…Paxton is a true hero. We are pleased to have played a role in providing the lifesaving training that he employed so successfully at the scene.

This causes a few interesting conjectures to drift through the brain, should the parties in thought be willing…