Man, that is wild. A good friend of mine worked with Viktor back in the days.
There’s something extreme about someone dying at an early age when they have a job that mostly have them, their entire lives, in front of computers or going through books.
Physical jobs where folks die in their 50s, although sad, has some sense. Wear and tear. The idea that non-physical jobs will allow folks to live a longer life seems to be more and more untrue.
So many game folks dying in their 50s. I guess we’ll never acknowledge how stressful that field is, but I don’t recommend doing it if you want to have a healthy life.
Take Satoru Iwata.
Incredibly important person in the world of games. He’s the Wii and DS’s father but before that, he worked absolutely relentlessly as a programmer for HAL and Nintendo. I’m pretty sure his health deteriorated the second he started to be a programmer. He worked all the time, helped on countless, very hard problems. Passed at 55.
Game culture is reaching a wall. Its business doesn’t make any sense anymore and its heroes and icons die half-way through their lives.