"Gamers gedoemd mislukkelingen te worden"

Astrid (lizardtattoo)
De site GamePolitics wist enkele interessante uitspraken te noteren die FOX News presentator Bill O'Reilly deed in het programma Radio Factor. Zo te lezen is Bill nog een tikkeltje verder doorgedraaid dan Jack Thompson in zijn mening over games en diegenen die daar graag hun vrije tijd mee vullen. Naar aanleiding van de gewelddadigheden rond de PS3-launch wist hij precies te vertellen wat er mis is met mensen die graag computerspelletjes spelen en waarom de Amerikaanse samenleving gedoemd is:

"American society is changing for the worse because of the machines; In the past to flee the real world people usually chose drugs or alcohol; now you don't have to do that, Now all you have to do is have enough money to buy a machine.

Basically what you have is a large portion of the population, mostly younger people under the age of 45, who don't deal with reality - ever. So they don't know what day it is; they don't know temperature it is; they don't know what their neighbor looks like. They don't know anything; because they are constantly diverted by a machine. Now what this does is it takes a person away from reality because they've created their own reality"

Over de PlayStation 3 had hij het volgende te melden:

"The newest thing is the PlayStation 3. Now this is a machine that allows you to play games in hi-def and all this other stuff; It's the newest state of the art system from Sony. It has a video game console, plays DVDs, connects you to the Internet, tells you how handsome you are. It's six-hundred bucks. Now people lined up for hours to get this thing. Hours! The problem with this stuff is that some people can deal with it constructively; but other people get addicted to it, just like opium, just like drugs and alcohol; So this is a big, big problem. It's going to change every single thing in this country."

Blois Olson van het National Institute on Media & the Family was te gast bij het programma en vertelde iets over game-verslavingen. Vervolgens ventileerde O'Reilly zijn mening over de relatie tussen gamen en armoede.

"The have-nots are growing. Why are they growing? Because the skill set that is necessary to earn a decent living is being deemphasized in a fantasy world of football games and shooting zombies and all that. Now you have the "knows"; and the "know-nots", because if you spend all your youth being prisoners of machines... you're not going to know anything. You're gonna fail."

Uiteindelijk moet ook de iPod eraan geloven als groot gevaar voor de Verenigde Staten:

"I don't own an iPod. I would never wear an iPod; If this is your primary focus in life - the machines; it's going to have a staggeringly negative effect, all of this, for America; did you ever talk to these computer geeks? I mean, can you carry on a conversation with them? I really fear for the United States because, believe me, the jihadists? They're not playing the video games. They're killing real people over there."