The New York Times editorial board conducts a series of interviews with presidential candidates to determine which one the publication will publicly endorse. The newspaper recently published its interview with former Vice President Joe Biden, and it includes a line that may be of interest to gamers. During the interview, Biden referred to an unknown top video game executive as a "little creep."
In the interview, Kathleen Kingsbury asks Biden about how Silicon Valley's power "expanded greatly" under the Obama administration. Biden then spoke about how he met with Silicon Valley leaders about protecting IP for artists in the United States. "And at one point, one of the little creeps sitting around that 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-"
New York Times writer Charlie Warzel then suggested, "Like video games." Biden continued, "Yeah, video games. And I was lectured by one of the senior leaders there that by saying if I insisted on what Leahy'd put together and we were, I thought we were going to fully support, that they would blow up the network, figuratively speaking. Have everybody contact. They get out and go out and contact the switchboard, just blow it up."
As for which video game executive Joe Biden was referring to, that isn't clear. However, Kotaku's Ethan Gach has narrowed it down to a few distinct possibilities. Depending on which meeting Biden was referring to in the interview, it's possible that he is talking about either former Entertainment Software Association head Michael Gallagher, Zynga founder Mark Pincus, or former EA CEO John Riccitiello. Out of these possibilities, Riccitiello seems like the most likely candidate, as EA develops shooter games and Riccitiello was at one of the Silicon Valley meetings.
The possibility was also presented that Joe Biden is confusing his meeting with Silicon Valley leaders with the meeting he had with video game executives in 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
There hasn't been any further clarification on Biden's comments at the time of this writing. It would be interesting to know exactly which video game executive he was referring to, but it seems unlikely that the Joe Biden campaign will release a statement on the matter.
Source: New York Times (via Kotaku)