Personally, I thought the speech itself was fine, but it lasted a bit long. In the light novel, exposition is fine as you read past it pretty quickly but especially with the scenes to illustrate what he's saying, it lasted too long. As a storytelling device, it's an episode-long exposition. One time when accurately porting from the novel might have needed tweaks.
The speech itself is understandable. While I don't think focusing on a game to that extent is a good thing per se, there are a -lot- of people who look down on various hobbies. MMOs have been going mainstream for a while, but I still see people saying silly things like 'Go out and play football' or such. And while American television is very conservative medium about social trends so take it with a grain of salt, a lot of 'geeky' hobbies still have a tendency to be painted as odd or wrong.
