Terrible Journalism

I ran across this article on the Something Awful forum:
Game 'with no end' spurs parent concern. It's a quick 'n' dirty news/fluff/hit/piece about the concern that children will spend all of their time playing video games like World of Warcraft because MMORPGs have no scripted endings.

After reading the article and some of the thread, where people quickly came to the same conclusions that any sane person would, I sent an email to the author of the piece:

"An online game similar to Dungeons and Dragons has some parents wondering when their child will hit the off button and step back into reality."

Probably right about the time that the parents step in and turn the game off, like parents are supposed to do. Why wasn't the emphasis of this piece about the fact that there's a woman who lets her kid play video games 17 hours a day? Instead of fearmongering about video games, an easy target over the last 20 years, why not expose this woman's lack of parental control over her own child? The game has to be purchased for a minimum of $19.99 with upgrades costing $39.99, a monthly subscription fee of $9.99 has to be paid in order to play the game, and the kid is most likely using a broadband internet connection that costs at least $29.99 per month. Oh, and the computer on which it is played, that's a minimum of $499.99 for the most basic of computers. Unless the kid has a job, which is unlikely given his age and lack of time to work given the time he spends playing the game, who is paying for all of this? The videogame fairy or the kid's mother?

I'm pretty sure shitty parenting is going to destroy our society, unless the Bush Administration gets there first.