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Games are "Satan's sudoku", claims Times

Newspapers at it again.

Dark blue icons of video game controllers on a light blue background
Image credit: Eurogamer

Times journalist Janice Turner has accused videogames of being "Satan's Sudoku" and "crack cocaine of the brain".

Her article quotes figures from market research company Childwise which say British children spend an average of five hours and 20 minutes in front of multimedia devices each day.

According to Turner, it used to be kids whose parents refused to let them watch TV who "would be the playground outcasts, but no longer".

"Mine are. Because, unlike the TV-hating parents, I refuse to buy them portable gaming consoles, Xboxes, GameCubes, PS2s," she wrote.

"These are Satan's Sudoku, crack cocaine of the brain. Even the crappiest cartoon or lamest soap teaches a child about character, plot, drama, humour, life. Playing videogames, children are mentally imprisoned, wired into their evil creators' brains."

We find it hard to see how Doctors is better for kids than Super Mario Galaxy, but then we're wired into Shigeru Miyamoto's evil brains.

Who knows, perhaps the increasing number of hours we spend in front of tellies or monitors or virtual reality machines from the future is a real problem. So how would you go about solving it, Eurogamer reader?

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