![]() Look at his eyes."Īt 2:30 a.m., the girlfriend of Xerxes Jarquin marched into the gamers' sanctum to claim her beau, and off they went minutes later, disqualifying Jarquin. Robert Fraker, 17, a senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, motioned toward Chavarria and said, sotto voce, "He looks tired, man. The gamers started to size up one another. "It's fun to be here for maybe three hours, but this is so boring." "This is so boring," Yair Guterman, 17, carped to a neighboring gamer eight hours in. Johnny Chavarria, 24, of Kensington was on a couch playing the World War II-themed Call of Duty 2 when the game flashed a quote from the Roman poet Persius: "He conquers who endures." Chavarria considered it a positive sign.Īs Friday wore into Saturday, however, the participants' confidence began to ebb as gaming fatigue set in. When reminded of an Associated Press story about a 28-year-old South Korean man who dropped dead in August after a 49-hour nonstop stretch of playing computer games at an Internet cafe, Adam Engh, 17, a senior at McLean High School, said the man was probably just weak. ![]() Roy Singer, 17, of Rockville boasted his limit was 4 1/2 days. What more do you want?" - said that, based on prior experience, he'd be good for a few solid days. Brett Chavis, 14 - wearing a red shirt that read, "I'm out of bed and dressed. They offered lofty estimates of the amount of time they could stay glued to their games. The lads - and it was all men despite the organizers' assertion that some women were selected but neglected to show - were certainly confident at the outset. Store employees interrogated the players in an attempt to make sure they weren't using illegal stimulants, although caffeinated soda and Red Bull were being sold at the front desk. Cell phones were prohibited, but instant messaging was fair game. Contestants were allowed 10-minute breaks every hour to use the bathroom or go outside. As of late last night, 16 of them were still going at it.Īt stake was the highly sought Xbox 360 gaming console, to be awarded to the last two gamers left playing - a premium version to the winner and a stock version to the runner-up - as well as an assortment of gaming gear and freebies to other participants.Īccording to the event's rules, a gamer had to be constantly playing a video game or surfing the Web to stay in the contest, though not necessarily at the same computer or television in the store, so they weren't always sedentary. Friday at X3O Emerging Technologies' Gaming Center, 27 gamers, selected at random from roughly 1,500 applicants, took up the challenge of playing a video game, any video game, for as long as possible - until they physically could not, or nodded off, or just gave up. The legendary long-distance runner Bill Rodgers observed, "The marathon can humble you." A similar conclusion was reached by video game enthusiasts who slogged their way through this weekend's Game-A-Thon in Rockville.īeginning at 5 p.m.
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