Tabloid Newspaper attacks the Nintendo DS as poisonous for children.

[Brian Moy]

A very sad commentary offered by UK Newspaper Daily Mail and author Rosie Millard who decided to buy one DS to collectively use for her four small children and offers such deep parental insights such as:

Our had taken the guise of a small but toxic drug which, little by little, was poisoning my children.

young people are headed for a mass loss of personal identity, thanks to the amount of time they spend in the interactive realms of things like

using a turns my delightful, curious and funny children into argumentative demons full of aggression

Read the full article here.

Interesting to me being that the is generally known as one of the most family friendly systems in recent years with the Wii and the DS.  If you haven't been looking thru the news lately, video games in general have been fiercely attacked in the media for declining moral and parental values and leading to a range of social problems such as heroine use, autism, and  prison (yes, I've read all those things being mentioned) by celebrities and politicians - mostly in the USA and UK as far as I've seen.

[Josh Parr]

I think this latest wave of criticism, while being pushed by the release of GTA IV, has been a long time coming.  There hasn't been a huge game release to spur the criticism and this was just the motive everyone was looking for to stir up trouble again. I've seen a lot of this in the USA as a skirting of responsibility of the parents.  When I was growing up my parents knew what I was playing and generally kept tabs on me.  They weren't overbearing by any means, but they did keep an eye on what I was taking in.

I think in general in this country, everyone is looking for a scapegoat for their actions or the actions of their children.  When kids do something stupid or harmful, they blame it on the media because they know their parents will be like "Yes, it's the television/movie/music/video game fault!". 

In the UK, it has been labeled the Nanny State by many, so maybe parents over there think that the government will step in to regulate their children.  There are many things in the states like that as well.  Really a sad state of how the world is today.

What happened to family game/dinner night?  What happened to sitting around the dinner table talking about their day?  Are these lost parts of Americana?

[Brian Moy]

I may not be best person to comment as actually I don't like any of the Grand Theft Auto games either (that I've tried) and I don't really intend to get Grand Theft Auto IV - well, I'll wait until I can get it for $5 or less which won't be a problem since GTA broke the record for highest selling first week sales of any entertainment item in history (that is music, movies, video games).  Six million copies sold in the first week.  I'm sure tons of those will show up in used bargain bins eventually.  Grand Theft Auto is supposed to be violent and shocking, and I get that - that's why it sells.

Certain games nowadays do look very realistic and are too violent for me as I'm not into violent games (stuff like Max Payne) - but I don't really see that so much on the DS.  Of all the newer game systemss out there, the DS seems to me to be the tamest and friendly to play.  If she was expressing shock over a game like Grand Theft Auto IV, Manhunt 2, or Army of Two, okay I could see more where she's coming from, but Rosie Millard is calling games like Brain Trainer and Fifa 08 the source of her children's bad behavior.

Buying a single DS for four small children and the family is like buying a single console with only one controller or at dinnertime, letting them all share a fork.  Duh, of course that's not going to work and they will be arguing over it.