Times columnist: I hate video games

It didn’t take long for

The Telegraph

to follow

The Daily Mail’s

lead in taking potshots at the video games industry this morning.

And now fellow national newspaper The Times has got in on the act, in perhaps the most explicit manner yet – as columnist Giles Whittell admits ‘I hate video games’.

In an opinion piece entitled ‘Video games: I’ll never buy one’, Whittell unashamedly retreats to the anti-entertainment shtick of a set-in-his-ways, education-obsessed curmudgeon.

‘I hate videogames, on or offline,’ writes Whittell.

‘I hate the way they suck real people into fake worlds and hold on to them for decades at a time. I hate being made to feel hateful for saying so, and I hate being told to immerse myself in them before passing judgment, because it feels like being told to immerse myself in smack and teenage pregnancy before passing judgment on them.

‘This is not because of anything wrong or bad about video games or heroin or teenage parents. It’s not even because of game-induced homicide or web-grooming of little girls by perverts – serious problems, but statistically low-risk. It’s because, compared with everything else on offer in a kid’s life, video games and heroin and teenage pregnancy are a colossal waste of time.’

To read the full article, click here.