A Prius Kills
posted Sunday Mar 7, 2010 by Scott Ertz
I know what you're all thinking - another Toyota car fails? Big surprise. Well, this story is not at all what you're expecting. In Asia there is a free-to-play MMO called Prius in which you take care and raise "Anima" children. A couple allegedly let their real life baby starve so they could focus their energy on their virtual child instead.
Apparently these "parents" were spending up to 12 hours each day in Internet cafes playing this game, all the while leaving their 3-month old baby at home by itself. Now, if it were a 3-month old poodle, there would have been little to no problem, but baby humans tend to need a little more attention and food than their canine counterparts at this point.
The local police are attributing the game addiction to a desire to hide from reality because they had no jobs and the baby was born premature. I don't buy it, though. It seems to me this is when you need most to be focused in reality, so you can protect the child who has only you to care for it.
If you are a loyal reader, then you'll know that we usually try to inject comedy into our stories, but there is no comedy here. The death of a child is always tragic, but never so much as when it could have been entirely prevented with minimal effort. Our hearts go out to the family.