14 DAY TRIAL // I must say I'm shocked, I feel outdated and completely out of this world, even though I'm in my mid 20s, for God's sake! But there are some games out there that just make me wonder. And I'm not talking about obscure, independent and M rated games where you are "Mr. Robot" and you have to please "Ultra Vixen". This time a game for kids, for girls aged 8-12 really makes me wonder. And here we go again, people will say that I'm crazy.
Everything seemed like a really boring piece of news, when I started to read the announcement: Virgin Play will produce and distribute a video game called Lola & Virginia, based on the series with the same name (I've never heard of it, unfortunately), that's going to be distributed as a Nintendo DS exclusive starting this fall. It also said that the game is developed for girls between 8 and 12 years old, so it wasn't exactly what I wanted to write about. But I've read a little bit more and that was what shocked me.
The player will control Lola which is, apparently, stupid and "doesn't have boys". Oh, one more thing: she's 12! Virginia, her rival, is smart and beautiful, "has boys" and can do whatever she wants. She's 12, too. Here's the official word if you think I'm making this up right now (even though this is not the biggest shocker): "[Lola] feels like the Queen of the hill, that is, until Virginia comes along. Virginia has everything that Lola doesn't, looks, brains, boys, money and parents who let her do whatever she wants."
Even more (and the actual reason I was shocked in the first place) is that the developers say loud and clear that the game is aimed for girls aged 8-12 and "mirrors the same traits that are of interest in this age group: fashion, being the most popular girl in school and getting the cute kid in class to like you". Well, pardon me, but when I was 8 I couldn't care less about fashion (actually, together with my friends, I thought that mud was cool), nobody was "popular" (that's just for B or C rated Hollywood movies) and I really didn't care if the cutest girl liked me or not as long as I had my Conan sword to play with. Not to mention that my girl colleagues only had eyes for their Barbie and Cindy dolls...
So why, oh, why are people developing games where 8 years-old girls will learn that being popular, bitchy, and "having boys" is a good thing? Where's this world going? We're all going to burn in the triple X hell. Where's Jack Thompson when you need him?