GameSpot has a pretty good featured section on buying gifts this year with options about platforms, target age groups, various levels of interest - which might need to be taken with a grain of salt or two. While I don’t plan on buying Karaoke Revolution Vol 3 or Need for Speed Underground 2 for my folks they seem to think I would. It’s supposed to be updated in real time as prices and ratings change though so hopefully it’ll get better.

Also, if you care, a group led by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (who I’m guessing aren’t talking about fiscal responsibility) have come up with a list of this years most offensive games. They also criticize the ESRB as being too vague in their ratings and stores not enforcing the ratings system universally.

I wonder what these people would find to complain about if the game companies actually agreed with them and stopped making sex and violence freely available to their twelve year olds?

And for the younger kids there’s a website run by the Coalition for Quality Children’s Media (who I’d like to note don’t have a religious agenda or an arbitrary ratings system but encourage parents actively reviewing material with their kids instead of just relying on other people to tell them what is and isn’t ok for their own children) that reviews cdroms and interactive dvds as well as audio and video for our little budding technophiles out there.