The Daily Mail versus Scrabble DS
Game turns child into evil swearing little shitbag
As part of its long-standing quest to vilify every videogame ever produced (in fact, everything fun ever created), righteous hatemonger ‘newspaper’ the Daily Mail earlier this week published a story about a mother’s fury over a Nintendo DS Scrabble game that taught her son “vile swear words”. (And in the Daily Mail’s usual sterling reporting, it’s amusing to note that the game in question is Scrabble 2007—there’s nothing like getting the scoop on a new product, and this article is nothing like getting a scoop on a new product.)
Of course, it’s implausible that Mrs Carrington’s eight-year-old could have discovered these words by any other means. Although it’s not mentioned in the article, it’s safe to assume that he’ll now need life-long counselling having been exposed to ‘toke’, ‘tits’ and ‘shit’. (Choice quote: “Shit had come up as well. I was absolutely mortified.” I’ll bet. You don’t want shit coming up when you’re playing a videogame—it can really knock you off your stride.)
Following Britain’s typical dive into knee-jerk reactionism, the mother has now banned her son from playing the virtual wordgame, which has been linked to people becoming slightly more educated, and is therefore reprehensible and evil. Publisher Ubisoft’s response about the ‘junior’ option that removes naughty words was met by a typically Daily Mail-style retort from Carrington: “I read the booklet that came with it, and there was no mention of a junior version. It should be made much clearer.” This is fair enough—after all, it’s really hard to spot the ‘Junior mode’ checkbox that’s directly under the player’s name when you’re picking a profile on first launching the game.
Translation: “I can’t be arsed to play real Scrabble with my son, so I threw this game at him, without actually bothering to in any way check it first. And now my little baby is surrounded by tits and shit, and the only way to deal with this is to get those true bastions of public decency and morality involved—the Daily Mail”.
My opinion: it’s a fucking disgrace. (Now, had she moaned at length about Scrabble 2007’s lack of single-console multiplayer support, I’d have been right behind her. IN A NON-OFFENSIVE MANNER.)
Great article. On the day the article was published, the Daily Mail GAVE AWAY 10 Nintendo DS’, therefore polluting it’s readers with foreign based gypsy propaganda such as Scrabble.
Personally, I blame the credit crunch/immigrants/chavs.
Besides, tits is a word. It’s more than one bird from the “tit” family.
“Stupid” “right” “wing” “propaganda” “filled” “hate” “rag” are all words in Scrabble 07 too, a clear and direct attack against the Daily Mail.
Hmm, how are the circulation & advertising figures going for this “newspaper”?
Maybe it could collapse in a pile of steaming debt?
…that would be “good news”!
I wonder if the woman is banning her poor son from playing any of the other games on the DS? From my experience, most games involve beating, shooting, crushing, bombing, spanking the living “shit” out of something and being rewarded for doing so. “tits” tee hee *blush
Apparently, the Daily Fail had a similar article a few months ago about the previous version of Scrabble on the DS.
Now, somebody make a videogame about Princess Diana…
Hmm. I thought ‘Focker’ was a type of airplane.