Girls get a new generation of baby doll to play with, à la Nintendo DS

Nobilis, the French publication company, has released their My Baby duo, including My Baby Boy and My Baby Girl, for the Nintendo DS to several countries which has been met with tremendous success. My initial protest with the My Baby game concept is that while they appear to be marketed to younger market, the game is a life sim, incorporating aspects of daily living in raising a baby from birth up. This initially grated all over my nerves, after all, aren’t young people having children far too young these days? It appeared an awful lot like they were encouraging children that having babies was not a bad thing at all.

As I was preparing to protest, thinking of my lovely ten year old daughter who would, no doubt, love this game, I realized, why shouldn’t she play e-dollies? Didn’t I play with baby dolls when I was growing up? Isn’t My Baby Girl or My Baby Boy simply an electronic extension of the baby dolls I grew up with? If only I could have had a DS version when I was ten! How much cooler would that have been, and something I could have truly embraced instead of pretending to be a girly girl, maybe then I could have embraced having been the girly geek that I truly am.

The added plus to My Baby Girl/Boy is this digital baby at least costs far less on pampers and formula and hopefully will teach the younger generation some of the ins and outs of parenting, which frankly, this world needs. So, as I look at all the benefits of this cutesy little game, I cannot help but think that gaming industry, with the help of Nobilis, has just stepped up and taken a stand that not many would take in a way that makes learning how to parent fun. What I realized was that young people choose to have babies young because of their own stubborn choices, not because of a game. Hopefully, parents are around to help the kids make wise choices, because kids can’t teach babies how to grow up healthy and strong.