A Week In Comments

What children (regardless of sex or gender) need is games that are of high quality, and which thought has gone into. And, it turns out, there are a ton of them about. It’s just that they are mostly designed with adults in mind. If you walk into any game store, there are plenty of good games, aimed at adults, but which do not have an age rating that precludes their being played by children. And it’s those games that girls and boys would be playing in an ideal world.

Titles like Katamari Damacy, Okami, or Super Smash Bros. are all interesting in different ways, and offer great gameplay, and are suitable for children. When I was a kid, the divide between child and adult-targeted games wasn’t the same as it is now. Still, I tended to ignore games aimed exclusively at children and played titles like Monkey Island or X-Wing instead. Just because someone hasn’t hit double digits doesn’t mean they can’t tell the difference between a decent game and junk.

What is needed is for parents to understand at least the basics of what types of games are available, partly so that they can make sure the games they buy their kids are age-appropriate, but also to make sure that their kids aren’t playing rubbish. Just like I wouldn’t want my kid watching shopping channels all day when they could be watching David Attenborough or Blue Peter or something, I wouldn’t want them playing Babiez when they could be playing Rachet & Clank.

And I know that if I have kids then they certainly won’t be subject to the kind of gender indoctrination that means that daughters have to be interested in princesses and sons have to be interested in firemen. That kind of narrow-minded thinking is half the reason for these shoddy ‘girls’ games’ in the first place.

I’d squeeze milk from a gaggle of Hutt udders til the bantha come home for them to announce Battlefront III already

Their sense of press-ethics is as big as their hair is long.

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