There are times when even the wisest of men say something that is totally inappropriate and hurtful. Now, former US vice president Joe Biden seems to have courted controversy by sharing his harsh thoughts about Silicon Valley video game developers.
The US presidential hopeful for 2020 in an interview with The New York Times reportedly called game developers he met during his time at the White House "little creeps" who made "games that teach you how to kill". He was referring to his personal experiences with high-ranking Silicon Valley executives.
Biden's gaffe
Everything was looking fine until Biden, who is known for his political gaffes in his speeches, was asked about the Obama administration's legacy on Silicon Valley regulation. He went on to talk about his meeting with leaders in Silicon Valley to discuss intellectual property rights. However, he describes an unspecified but high-ranking game developer as "one of the little creeps" who make games that "teach you how to kill people."
"And you may recall, the criticism I got for meeting with the leaders in Silicon Valley, when I was trying to work out an agreement dealing with them protecting intellectual property for artists in the United States of America. And at one point, one of the little creeps sitting around the table, who was a multi-close to a billionaire – who told me he was an artist because he was able to come up with games to teach you how to kill people, you know the --," Biden said during the interview.
'Overwhelming arrogance'
The interviewer interrupted Biden at this point to try and clarify that he was talking about video games, by asking "like video game," to which Biden agrees. The 77-year-old then went on to use the words "righteous" and "arrogant" to further describe game developers.
"And then one of these righteous people said to me that, you know 'We are the economic engine of America. We are the ones.. The point is there's an arrogance about it, an overwhelming arrogance that we are, we are the ones," Biden continued.
Biden's never been a fan of violent games
This isn't the first time Biden has been vocal about violence in games. In 2013 when he was the US vice president, he advocated taxing violent media. In the same year, The Gaming Association had published an open letter asking him to look at studies suggesting there's no link between violence and video games. Biden's concern seems to be stemming from the mass shootings that have rocked America in the past decade, but there is no real evidence to show a correlation between violence in games and the real world.
