On October 10, 2026, a tragic accident occurred at Yorkshire Wildlife Park in the United Kingdom, in which William Chapman, a former child actor, jumped into a tiger enclosure and died (Source: BBC).the British tabloid *Daily Mail* has reported on this incident by linking it to *The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim* (hereinafter *Skyrim*).
Did he jump into the tiger enclosure because he was a *Skyrim* fan!? Is the notion that video games are the villain still deeply entrenched overseas?
This incident, which occurred on October 10, received extensive coverage in the UK. Internationally, it sparked controversy when an AI-generated video based on the incident was posted from U.S. President Trump’s account on “Truth Social,” the social media platform he leads.
Amid this, the British tabloid *Daily Mail* wrote the following about the victim, William Chapman, portraying him as someone who was so obsessed with the game that he could no longer distinguish between reality and the game.
Questions have also been raised about how Mr. Chapman’s online gaming habits may have contributed to the deterioration of his mental state.
Like many young people his age, he was an avid gamer. In particular, he appears to have been a huge fan of the fantasy RPG “Skyrim,” in which players wield crossbows and axes to defeat monsters and ferocious predators (such as large saber-toothed cats).
Was William acting out a fantasy world in real life, or had he become trapped as the line between the online and real worlds blurred?
Jez Corden, an editor at the international media outlet Windows Central, posted a sarcastic comment on his X account: “The Daily Mail has come up with a truly brilliant theory: a man jumped into a tiger’s cage at a British zoo because of *Skyrim*, and the reason is that it features ‘large saber-toothed cats.’”
His post garnered numerous replies with comments such as the following.
First of all, *Skyrim* isn’t even an online game.
I’m honestly impressed by just how out of touch the Daily Mail is—and how they managed to come up with such a theory.
*DOOM* in the ’90s and the *GTA* series in the 2000s were criticized in the same way.
We should thank God he didn’t play *Fallout 4*—if he had, he’d probably have tried to throw a small nuclear bomb.
Ever since *Dungeons & Dragons* debuted in 1974 (with its predecessor appearing in 1971), games have been subjected to unfounded criticism(Conspiracy theories emerged claiming the game was a gateway to “satanism,” and a movie titled *The Tom Hanks Maze* was even made based on those theories).
In Japan, too, the book *The Terror of the Gamer Brain* became a bestseller (though the book has been criticized for a lack of data and intentional misinterpretations), and it seems that the trend of equating “games” with “something bad” remains strong even today, regardless of whether one is in the East or the West.
Some might say it’s in poor taste to take overseas tabloids “too seriously,” but from a gamer’s perspective, isn’t it reasonable to at least voice a reaction along the lines of “Here we go again—the tabloids are spouting nonsense” (with a touch of exasperation)?
