I agree, parents should be parenting, but you know what, at a time when more and more families have 2 working parents, or single parent homes have a working parent, everyone wants parents to spend more time with the kiddies, but then keep coming up with the fact kids are NOT responsible for their actions, someone else always is, so if you climb a tree today, and scrap a knee, it the tree owner that's responsible, not the climber (!). 
Well when we were lucky enough to have a parent at home, we did have more control, but was it really better (at least WE where responsible as kids, for falling out of a tree we where NOT supposed to climb...) ? 
We have to wait and see how they grow up before we judge games, internet, iphones or whatever else. I remember when I was young, Dongeons and Dragons (the RPG board game) got a bad rap because a few toke the game too far... (BTW the game DID teach a whole lot of things, if you paid attention, history, religions, some design skills (if you where a DM, etc..) today we tend 
to find a quick blame for every thing, everything except us that is... well, we all do it to a point (see the start of my reply for a great example ;) ) but we need to let kids be kids and experiment to find their own way, and kids learn best by playing, so....
have a great day !
That's my 2 cents.

The Pokémon franchise's many media forms promote friendship, loyalty and other morals almost to the point of being patronising. Therefore, I suggest children are dragged away from channel 4 to play pokémon, daily. Until they learn the difference between right and wrong, or catch 'em all.

Bollocks. Virtual worlds are nothing, and anyone trying to convince people that games are important and should have a "message" are just as nuts as that rabid lawyer Thomson.
Games are just games. Kids have been playing with death since the dawn of Humanity, it's a part of life. Which boy out there has never played cops & robbers ? Or cowboys & indians ?
We all have, and our children will as well. Whether or not it is deemed acceptable by some goody-two-shoes or not.
Cut it out with games, start talking about being responsible parents.
Yeah, I know, it's a lot easier to blame pixels. But frankly, pixels do NOT bring up children. Parents do.

Well, they're supposed to anyway.

Mark: Nonsense. The setting of a gangster story in a world of children, replacing bullets with custard et cetera, wittily expresses the very childishness of the motivations and actions of the players in such a world -- and you are deceiving yourself if you think children can't understand that message implicitly. Children see adults do things on screen and idealise themselves growing into those roles. When they see children doing things which are ridiculous, and the children are their own age, that makes more apparent the inherent non-sense in a transition to such a world, rather than glamorising it.

Reality isn't a solution to anything, and the reality of this is that they ARE just consumers and will be no matter how hard they try, no matter if they become fundamentalist angry maniac who blow up people, or goto india and learn to be vague, they will still be used as part of the consumer machine.
Hope that's settled then :)

Guess what? There's a quick and easy solution to this, it's called "reality." As an added bonus, you also get all the consumerism, media bombardment, bullies, etc. that you may find in "virtual worlds" as well. No subscription fee.

Maybe he wants these "virtual worlds" to inherit the value of blaming technology, among other things, for social failures that transcend all communication mediums. Yeah, that's "meaning."

Bugsy Malone - romantic portrayal of gangsterism acted out by children. There is not much more poisonous to a young mind than that. 

Whatever damage is done to children by computer games is minuscule compared with that from the politically correct TV and cinema. Society began its downfall long before the prevalence of gaming.

These people whine not because they care about children, but because they are no longer driving force of corruption.