My brother's computer, whenever he plays games on it, shuts down.?

Whenever my brother plays Spore on his computer, his computer abruptly shuts down without warning. When rebooting computer, the computer notifies us that "The system has recovered from a serious error". Why do you think that this is occurring? Is it because the system gets overwhelmed or because the computer is struggling in performance or something else? It is an IBM computer, I think. I would appreciate any suggestions or help