Obama: "Turn off the video games and pick up a book."

[Pyro Paul]

Screw him. I read as much as I game and I love doing both equally as much. Shit id say for the most part all the gamers I know are the same way. Be it comics, manga, novels, or even fanfic *shudders* they still read and are enjoying it. Forcing a kid to read wont make him like reading, it will make him hate it. The way to get kids to read is to give them a book they absolutely love, then you cant seperate them from books.

sitting down with your child with a book and reading it togeather will have a much more restounding impact on their life then just buying them the newest flashy game you barely understand and leaving them in their room for days on end with no interaction save a casual shuffle in the hallway or kitchen.

he is saying 'Interact with your Kids!' not 'Books>Video Games'

 

[Saviordd1]

Screw him. I read as much as I game and I love doing both equally as much. Shit id say for the most part all the gamers I know are the same way. Be it comics, manga, novels, or even fanfic *shudders* they still read and are enjoying it. Forcing a kid to read wont make him like reading, it will make him hate it. The way to get kids to read is to give them a book they absolutely love, then you cant seperate them from books.

He's not saying "take your kid, shove a book in his face, and scream for him to read it" He's saying for fathers to ENCOURAGE kids to read, there's a huge difference.

 

[Saviordd1]

the funny thing is that he is trying to be reasonable and logical yet because of so much political clout his message is being broken apart down to the vowels to try and find some hidden message or agenda.

There is a big problem with america... it isn't video games, it is poor parenting.

People whom build their childs nutritional intake on the Fast Food menu...
that treat TVs and Video games as baby sitters...
that leave their children to raise themselves because they personally are too busy with themselves to be bothered with nuances such as 'raising a kid'.

but...
what do we read from it?

Obama is Attacking Video Games!
He is touting a Sword of vengence to kill our source of joy!
etc. etc.

take it at face value.
Politians are often no more intellegent then the common man... they oft don't have secret agendas or grand schemes...

Yes but no one can allow a man to speak a basic message anymore. Its all about turning us to communism and taking away our rights! Damn them democrats trying to encourage intelligence! Damn reds....
[/sarcasm]

 

[NeoNomad]

Yes, let's put down L.A. Noire and pick up Green Eggs and Ham. Let's throw away Fable 3 and dust off Gulliver's Travels. Let's ignore all the powerful messages and ideas in Bioshock and instead be enlightened by the next year of Hogwarts. What Obama just did with that statement is not only group ALL video games together, but ALL books as well. Then, he used the fact that books were BOOKS to put more value on them than video games because they are VIDEO GAMES. Not only is it insulting to the video game industry to compare "Portal 2" to "Duke Nukem," but also its just as insulting to literature to compare "Let's learn our ABCs" to "The Odyssey." What we truly need to take from this is not that books are "better" than games, but that you must judge an individual on merit, not what it is.

 

[Dr_Cuddles]

It's just a nice way of saying "Get your obese, dumb-ass kids away from the T.V and make them do something productive every once in awhile".

Gamers always seem to freak out anytime a political figure mentions anything about playing less/stop playing video games, when in reality most of the time it's directed more towards the parents who let their kids play non-stop day after day, or 'nerds' who sit at home for endless hours on end playing something *CoughWoWCough* instead of doing, well, pretty much anything else.

Everything in moderation.

Of course there are always the politicians who scream "CHILDREN WHO PLAY GAMES BECOME SERIAL MURDERERS AND CANT FUNCTION IN SOCIETY", but then again, fuck 'em.

 

[Acting like a FOOL]

Turn off the spending and pick up an Economics book.

 

[ninja51]

Learned more from the Total War series and their mods than I ever have from a book

 

[thecoreyhlltt]

i'm not going to stop gaming, besides, you don't need to read them thar fancy book thingies to be smart!!!
just watch tons of natgeo, discover, travel, and stuff like that... i'd say at least 78% of what i know i learned from tv and video games

 

[Katana314]

Yes, let's put down L.A. Noire and pick up Green Eggs and Ham. Let's throw away Fable 3 and dust off Gulliver's Travels. Let's ignore all the powerful messages and ideas in Bioshock and instead be enlightened by the next year of Hogwarts. What Obama just did with that statement is not only group ALL video games together, but ALL books as well. Then, he used the fact that books were BOOKS to put more value on them than video games because they are VIDEO GAMES. Not only is it insulting to the video game industry to compare "Portal 2" to "Duke Nukem," but also its just as insulting to literature to compare "Let's learn our ABCs" to "The Odyssey." What we truly need to take from this is not that books are "better" than games, but that you must judge an individual on merit, not what it is.

Just like video games are better in some aspects of media, books are better in some aspects as well. For starters, they leave your mind to imagine up the mental image of the level, and gives you approximate details for starters. It's so that when you grow up and start designing levels for games, they're not all ripped out of the backdrops of the sci-fi movies you watched; your creativity was prompted to think something up. This is true even of bad books (though you could say it's true of Minecraft too).

 

[Towels]

I will, Mr. President! Starting with "Going Rogue" by Sarah Palin, and then "Arguing with Idiots" by Glenn Beck.

 

[Aprilgold]

Yes, let's put down L.A. Noire and pick up Green Eggs and Ham. Let's throw away Fable 3 and dust off Gulliver's Travels. Let's ignore all the powerful messages and ideas in Bioshock and instead be enlightened by the next year of Hogwarts. What Obama just did with that statement is not only group ALL video games together, but ALL books as well. Then, he used the fact that books were BOOKS to put more value on them than video games because they are VIDEO GAMES. Not only is it insulting to the video game industry to compare "Portal 2" to "Duke Nukem," but also its just as insulting to literature to compare "Let's learn our ABCs" to "The Odyssey." What we truly need to take from this is not that books are "better" than games, but that you must judge an individual on merit, not what it is.

This, just this. You explained EVERYTHING I wanted to say, thank you.

I'll read more books when they start sucking less. Seriously, almost everything fantasy or scifi is badly written these days.

Also this, and most if not all of them involve a love triangle.

 

[William Ossiss]

considering that ive finished the series of the dresden files this month and last, as well as playing massive amounts of video games... obama can stuff it.

 

[General BrEeZy]

just because he said this, not out of disrespect for him or anything, but F*CK YOU IM GONNA GO PLAY RIGHT NOW! see ya internet! xD

 

[General BrEeZy]

response: Read video game books!

I win!

Q.E.D.

 

[MrCherry]

I'm with Obama on this one. I've seen people say how video games contain alot of reading etc etc, but you can't use your imagination, the designers have drawn that one out for you.

Children do need to get away from the screen and start doing other things.. If not reading then another healthy hobby (and still game in moderation).

But hey, i'm just a new age english guy, what do i know >.>

 

[Gorilla Gunk]

I look down on people who don't read.

 

[Axelhander]

I remember when Kotaku posted this story with their own unique brand of braindead editorial bias. That's when I realized Kotaku was garbage.